Lucas A. is a busy man.
The 44-year-old works as an attorney and runs every day, including on the weekends. On top of that, he attends guided, hour-long sauna and cold plunge classes at Revivery six days a week.
“It has become something that’s pretty much non-negotiable,” Lucas said about his sessions at Revivery.
Lucas prioritizes his cold plunge and sauna classes because they make it possible for him to train day in and day out, every day of the week—no matter the weather or his work schedule—even in his forties.
“If I can find the time, even if it’s a little bit inconvenient, it’s definitely worth doing. It’s never something that you’re going to regret making the time for,” he said.
To understand how a cold plunge routine benefits athletes, let’s dig into the science.
What the Research Says about Cold Water and Exercise
Recovery is essential for anyone who wants to keep improving their athletic performance.
“If you don’t recover, not only will you not get better, you’ll get worse,” said Andrew Huberman, a podcaster and neuroscientist who teaches at Stanford University School of Medicine.
On a podcast episode about how cooling the body helps with exercise performance and recovery, Huberman reviewed a 2022 meta-analysis on the impact of cold water immersion on athletic performance. The results were clear: cold water immersion is an effective recovery method after high intensity exercise.
“They observed positive outcomes and improvements in certain variables, including muscular power, muscular soreness, and perceived recovery after 24 hours,” Huberman said about the study.
The study found the amount of time immersed in cold water was not as important as the temperature. You can spend 45 minutes or five minutes immersed in cold water, as long as it’s cold enough that psychologically you want to get out as soon as possible, but not so cold that it’s unsafe.
“Cold water immersion in the immediate minutes or even the immediate hours following your training has been shown to be beneficial,” Huberman said.
While cold plunges have been shown to improve performance when done immediately after an endurance event or a high intensity interval training workout, if your goal is to build muscle, you’ll want to wait to get into that cold water following training.
“It is probably best to avoid cold water immersion and ice bath immersion in the four hours immediately following that strength and or hypertrophy [increasing muscle size] training,” Huberman said.
The Science Behind Cold Plunge and Exercise Recovery
While there is a good amount of research showing that cold plunges help with exercise recovery, the mechanism behind it is not entirely understood by scientists.
However, experts have proposed different theories for the beneficial effects of cold water immersion on recovery, including blood vessel constriction, pain relief, and reduction in inflammation pathways.
The analgesic, or pain relief, effect will be familiar to anyone who has used an ice pack for an injury. Putting ice on sore or aching muscles helps relieve the pain.
Cold water also encourages blood vessel constriction, or vasoconstriction. This leads to reduced blood flow throughout the body, a good thing when your muscles are aching from strenuous exercise, because it cuts down on inflammation. Many scientists point to blood vessel constriction and the resulting reduction in inflammation as the key reasons why cold water helps with exercise recovery.
“If you do the cold plunge after your workout you stop the inflammation in the muscles,” said Dr. Susanna Søberg, an expert in cold and heat therapy with a PhD in metabolism from The University of Copenhagen.
“It will then recover your muscles better, which means that you will have less pain in the muscles after you work out,” Dr. Søberg said.
When you sit in a cold plunge, you’re essentially slowing down your body’s reaction to the damage caused by exercise, leading to reduced soreness.
While it will be interesting to follow the science in the future to see exactly how cold plunge helps with athletic performance and recovery, most people don’t need to know exactly how it helps them recover and from a run or a HIIT workout at the gym—just that does.
Cold Plunge Can Help You Stay Active Longer
Before Lucas began going to classes at Revivery, he’d often dump five or six bags of ice in the bathtub and fill it with water after a long run. After learning about this time-consuming habit, a friend of his suggested he try a class at Revivery.
Lucas wasn’t sure what to expect from his first session, but what he remembers most was how he felt afterward. It was the middle of the day on a Sunday, a time when he often felt sluggish and fatigued.
“Walking out of there I felt focused and energized,” he said.
Then came the next surprise: that night he slept better than he had in some time. The combination of those two things, he said, “is what got me hooked.”
Since that day, Lucas incorporated Revivery classes into his schedule.
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BECOME A FOUNDING MEMBERAs a dedicated runner, he said the sauna and cold plunge sessions help relieve the everyday aches and soreness that come with an active lifestyle so he can keep running every day.
“I think it helps with that day-to-day, especially immediately after a class,” he said.
In fact, the sauna and cold plunge have become so important to Lucas that when he’s planning a vacation, the first thing he does is look for a similar facility in that area, so he doesn’t have to miss any sessions. If he skips a Revivery class for two or three days, Lucas says he feels a difference–both mentally and physically.
“I feel like I’m a little bit more stressed,” he says when he has to go without a sauna and cold plunge class for a few days.
It takes dedication for Lucas to fit in a daily run and a Revivery session when he works a full-time, demanding job.
The sacrifice is worth it.
“It’s both a mental and physical benefit,” he said about Revivery, “including the ability to fall asleep easier, which comes from just being able to shut your mind off and not have it race the way it would sometimes if maybe I didn’t get the opportunity to go to sauna.”
In addition to the physical and mental benefits of his regular sauna and cold plunge classes at Revivery, Lucas has also found a supportive, welcoming community.
“I love getting to actually hang out with people who have become friends through this process that I probably never would have met otherwise,” he said.
As someone who is interested in improving his health and fitness, Lucas was excited to discover a way he could boost his longevity and mimic exercise without wearing down on his joints or battling constant aches and pains.
It’s hard for me to overstate the positive impact that I think that contrast therapy has had just in terms of not only the physical benefits, but something that’s good for you that doesn’t beat up on your body like the way running does.Lucas A., Member The Physical Benefits
Taking that time away from his phone, away from his responsibilities, allows Lucas to refresh not only his body, but also his mind.
“It’s an hour that I can reserve that allows me to just shut off, to just be able to reset,” he said, “it’s my time.”
