Scientific Study: Massage helps you recover, ice baths don't appear to do anything

No educated opinion on thus. But one time I was running the Rocklin, CA Marathon and I developed severe heel pain that continued to the finish. I just kept on jogging to a country overpass nearby where a small stream flowed. Wading in the cold water reduced the p a in and swelling and so...but what I want to say is that when I first clambered down the hill to the creek I saw two deer standing in the water. They bounced and I stayed, thinking those guys were probably also cooling their heels, and so it seemed a natural thing, if so.

The study does not say that cold therapy does nothing. It says that it appears massage does more for what was tested.

The sample size was 16 massage / 16 cold therapy / 16 control. Men only.

It seems like they could have also measured other metrics like lactate levels.

It is interesting but like with most studies the effort can not yield a strong conclusion.

Also, read on to learn that participants had a race time of 34.5 for a 10k defined as “recreationally active.” Sounds like let’s run standards.

Anyway the measured test 24 hours after the exhaustive test was 18 minutes at an average of 14 km per hour in 6 minute increments of 12 km per hour / 14/ 16. Very pedestrian for a 34.5 10k runner.

The cold water immersion was only one rep for 10 minutes at 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

I'm not reading the whole study, but these are two weird things to compare. I always used massage as a post race activity and ice baths as a pre race activity (ie night before the race to increase elasticity and muscle tension)

It is interesting to note that some of the greatest runners in history never iced. I never iced as a runner, but I did so several times after a football game and it does help with soreness. I didn't read the report, but it seems to me that icing is perhaps helpful for your legs immediately after a hard workout to recover quicker. I am speaking in terms of how it makes you feel, but I don't think it has any long term therapeutic or performance benefits. I made ice baths available but never mandatory during mu coaching days. I've had some good athletes who did it fairly regularly, but 2 of the best athletes I ever coached never did. I know for a fact that a proper massage prior to a race helps.

TrackCoach wrote:

It is interesting to note that some of the greatest runners in history never iced. I never iced as a runner, but I did so several times after a football game and it does help with soreness. I didn't read the report, but it seems to me that icing is perhaps helpful for your legs immediately after a hard workout to recover quicker. I am speaking in terms of how it makes you feel, but I don't think it has any long term therapeutic or performance benefits. I made ice baths available but never mandatory during mu coaching days. I've had some good athletes who did it fairly regularly, but 2 of the best athletes I ever coached never did. I know for a fact that a proper massage prior to a race helps.

I was taught that there needs to be a discernible reason for why something "works". What is the mechanism that makes massage effective? Assuming this holds up under replication.

The CWI is interesting with the best advice I have seen is using it at certain times during a training cycle such as during a competitive season. The inflammation from training has ergogenic effects that CWI seem to impair.

As with any study one can find issues with it. The first thing is that I had never thought of looking at stride height and angle changes as something indicative of recovery. Alas, I don't read as much in this area as I once did either.

Also, while the differences may be statistically significant, are they physiologically significant? That is do the differences mean anything in real life performance.

I am a big fan of massage. I find them enjoyable for the most part. Cannot say the say for CWI! But the usual claims are suspect especially the ones about "flushing toxins" and "removing lactic acid". (If you do nothing the lactate will return to normal levels in a few hours so does shortening that by half mean anything for most who do not train 2x a day)?

Let's see if someone can replicate the findings. It is pretty amazing how often the results cannot be replicated.

otter wrote:

The study does not say that cold therapy does nothing. It says that it appears massage does more for what was tested.

The sample size was 16 massage / 16 cold therapy / 16 control. Men only.

It seems like they could have also measured other metrics like lactate levels.

It is interesting but like with most studies the effort can not yield a strong conclusion.

I have not tracked down the whole paper yet, but I am curious about the definition of "recovery"? I had never seen stride height used as a metric for recovery. (Not that I read as much in this area as I once did.)

It's somewhat individual. I never found icing worked for me, despite experimenting a lot with it after training sessions.

samcallan wrote:

otter wrote:

The study does not say that cold therapy does nothing. It says that it appears massage does more for what was tested.

The sample size was 16 massage / 16 cold therapy / 16 control. Men only.

It seems like they could have also measured other metrics like lactate levels.

It is interesting but like with most studies the effort can not yield a strong conclusion.

I have not tracked down the whole paper yet, but I am curious about the definition of "recovery"? I had never seen stride height used as a metric for recovery. (Not that I read as much in this area as I once did.)

Yes, I had the same thought. That seems like a weird metric for recovery. I could believe massage helps loosen muscles up and help with running economy, but is that recovery?

Oppenheimer wrote:

samcallan wrote:

I have not tracked down the whole paper yet, but I am curious about the definition of "recovery"? I had never seen stride height used as a metric for recovery. (Not that I read as much in this area as I once did.)

Yes, I had the same thought. That seems like a weird metric for recovery. I could believe massage helps loosen muscles up and help with running economy, but is that recovery?

This threw me also. Also, I have coached a lot of runners that have very different biomechanics while on a treadmill.

I appreciate the efforts. It seems like a well-designed study. But 16 participants in each group? In isolation, this is a worthless study. This would need to be replicated numerous times with similar results to have any significance at all.

My understanding on the totality of evidence of massage is that it does nothing at all.

Massage="greater stride height and angle changes as they sped up"

Massage physically breaks up scar tissue, realigns muscle fibers, and moves fluid around in one's muscles. This helps recovery and proper form recovery back to normal=recovery.

Ice baths do not directly help muscle tissue recover from an athletics standpoint. Cold therapy can be generally productive via white fat cells activation, hormone balance, and other mitochondrial effects, but it wont physically restore muscles to working order like physical tissue realignment.

I thought we already know what ice or ice baths can and can’t do? It’s great at reducing inflammation, so you feel better after icing. Unfortunately, inflammation is your body’s natural way of repairing itself, so reducing the inflammation slows down the recovery process. Ice baths are also effective at quickly decreasing your core body temperature immediately after a workout on a hot day to reduce the risk of any heat-related damage.

Idk about this one. Vasoconstriction (achieved through cold therapy) and Vasodilation (achieved through heat therapy) have been proven to aid recovery and reduce inflammation

They need to do the test again on someone with an injury.

Also they use cold water on horse legs after racing and they're worth a lot more than most runners! I prefer to use that rather than ice as it helps with tight calves and is a lot easier to do at the end of the shower.

samcallan wrote:

I was taught that there needs to be a discernible reason for why something "works". What is the mechanism that makes massage effective? Assuming this holds up under replication.

Speaking of mechanisms at play; Icing may reduce soreness and pain because it decreases blood flow (inflammation). But in terms of actual recovery, reduced blood flow would reduce the body's ability to repair damage to tissue, right? Why would anyone want to slow down tissue repair? Makes sense why someone might ice in the day/s leading up to a specific event or maybe during an event, but as a recovery protocol during a training block it's counterintuitive.

Massage, at the bare minimum, increases blood flow to a region of the body with fatigue (tissue damage). Even ignoring other studies that show lower lactate volumes post-massage (which might just be because of the blood flow?), the increased blood flow would make it a valid recovery protocol.

Another poster mentioned cold water instead of ice. Lots of athletes are saying water pressure helps with recovery. So is it the water pressure or the cold? That one and its mechanisms seem interesting to me!

The ice bath benefit is there. The experts just don't know how to measure it yet.

On the ice baths…I am thinking “great all that time I wasted doing something I f***ing hated.”