Ice baths are magic! I ran nine miles pretty hard and feel great now..like I could go do nine more. I am ready for washington half. Bring it!
The way you set up an ice bath is get two+ bags of ice from store. fill up tub with cold water. sit in cold water to acclimate. then add the ice. too hard to get into the water if you add ice first. Sit there for 15-20 min. Then take a nice warm shower to warm up the skin and muscle, but not long enough to warm up into the joints. That’s how i do it anyway.
The secret to tolerating an ice bath is bundling up your core with fleece jacket and hat! Hey, notice anything interesting in the picture below? I’ll post more about that later!
Haha. I don’t get why so many people bundle up for ice baths. Strip down and learn to love the ice!
If you want to get cold. Get cold. None of this half (frozen) ass stuff!
Granted, I only stay in for 4-6 minutes, but it definitely does the trick.
Hey, cool, glad I’m doing it right, at least the heat part! Thanks for sharing! When I did my mountain metric century, the hotel had a really cold pool and a hot tub. I didn’t know if it was good for me, but i sat in the pool till i was real cold, then moved to the hot tub, then back and forth again. It was marvelous!
I was lucky enough to attend a tri clinic by an Olympian from Team USA. He talked about ice baths, he also said that cold water baths have the exact same results minus the pain of ice and most people forget or dont followup with heat recovery immediatley after the ice bath. That we should also be taking hot baths right after an ice bath for full recovery potential