Are You Freezing Your Gainz?: The Impact of Cold Water Therapy on Building Muscle.

Cold-water immersion (CWI) has become a popular recovery tool in the fitness world, known for reducing soreness and speeding up recovery.?

Most people do “Recovery” wrong.?

They try and add things in like foam rolling, massage guns and CWI.

All good tools by the way, but people seem to skip over the basics.

Time, sleep, nutrition, stress.?

Sometimes you need to do more of the basics first to improve, not just in recovery but everything!?

As effective as CWI may be for reducing certain aspects such as muscle pain, recent research suggests that it might come at a cost—slower muscle growth.

In this article, we'll explore how CWI works in the body, review the findings from the a recent meta-analysis

How Cold-Water Immersion Affects the Body

When you submerge yourself in cold water (below 15°C/59°F), your body undergoes several physiological changes.?

These include:

Reduced Inflammation: Cold exposure constricts blood vessels and reduces blood flow, limiting the build up of inflammatory substances in muscles post-exercise.?

This is why CWI is effective at reducing soreness and speeding up recovery.

But when it comes to muscle building, we inflammation is an important part of the process?

Decreased Muscle Protein Synthesis (MPS): By reducing inflammation, CWI may also blunt the natural increase in muscle protein synthesis, which is essential for muscle growth after a workout.

Suppressed Hormonal Response: Cold exposure might also reduce the release of important muscle-building hormones like testosterone, growth hormone, and IGF-1, which are typically elevated after resistance training to promote muscle repair and hypertrophy.

Reduced Satellite Cell Activity: Satellite cells, which help repair muscle tissue after exercise, may also be less active following cold exposure, further limiting the hypertrophic response.

Introducing Pinero et al (2023)

The study Throwing Cold Water on Muscle Growth provides a comprehensive analysis of how post-exercise CWI impacts muscle hypertrophy (growth).?

The researchers reviewed eight studies that investigated the effects of CWI on muscle growth after resistance training. Here’s what they found:

Mild Blunting of Muscle Growth: The meta-analysis showed that while CWI doesn't entirely prevent muscle hypertrophy, it does have a mild blunting effect on the muscle-building process.?

This was especially apparent in studies where participants used CWI immediately after workouts, compared to those who didn’t.

Specific Mechanisms: The researchers pointed out that CWI can inhibit muscle growth by limiting inflammation and reducing muscle protein synthesis.?

While inflammation is often seen as negative, some degree of post-exercise inflammation is necessary for muscle repair and growth.

Impact on Different Muscle Groups: Not all the studies in the review were consistent in their methods. Some focused on lower-body muscles, others on the upper body, and a few on whole-body immersion.?

However, the general finding remained the same—CWI right after resistance training appears to slightly slow down muscle growth.

You can view the research here

What Does This Mean for You?

The key takeaway is that CWI can be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it helps reduce soreness and speed up recovery, making it a useful tool for athletes engaged in high-volume or high-intensity training.

On the other hand, if your main goal is hypertrophy (muscle growth), using CWI immediately after resistance training might be working against you.

Training Takeaways

Timing Matters: CWI may hinder muscle growth when used right after a workout. To maximize hypertrophy, consider delaying cold exposure to allow your muscles to go through their natural repair process without interference.

CWI Isn’t All Bad: For endurance athletes or those focused on recovery, CWI can still be beneficial. It reduces fatigue and speeds up recovery times, making it useful for people training multiple times a day or those in need of faster recovery between sessions.

Adaptations to Consider: The body’s ability to adapt to stress, known as hormesis, is a principle that applies here. A small amount of stress (like the inflammation after a workout) is beneficial for muscle growth. However, CWI may reduce that stress to the point where it dampens those adaptations.

Bottom Line

Cold-water immersion can be a valuable recovery tool, but if hypertrophy is your goal, it’s worth reconsidering its use immediately post-workout.?

The study Throwing Cold Water on Muscle Growth shows that while CWI helps reduce soreness and fatigue, it may slow down the muscle-building process by limiting inflammation, muscle protein synthesis, and satellite cell activity.

To maximize muscle growth, give your body time to recover naturally after resistance training before jumping into a cold plunge.?

CWI still has its place in recovery, especially for reducing soreness or improving endurance, but timing is everything when it comes to building muscle.

It’s also important to note that most of these studies were conducted vert close to finishing training, up to 1 hour.?

More research needs to be done to gain more knowledge.?

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See you soon.

Carl "The Evidence" Simpson