If ever there was a match made in heaven.. it could be that Cryotherapy and Sports is it.
Cryotherapy can bring so many benefits to athletes that it’s a wonder every sports team doesn’t have their own personal Cryotherapist.
Cryotherapy can bring a range of benefits to people who take part in sports either as a hobby or professionally and in this article we’re going to talk through the potential benefits of using cryotherapy as part of your training and recovery routine.
What is Cryotherapy?
Cryotherapy is extremely cold air being applied to specific parts of your body in order to stimulate health benefits.
Very low temperatures experienced during a cryotherapy session triggers your blood vessels in your skin’s surface and muscle tissue to constrict, forcing blood away from your peripheral tissues towards the organs in the core of your body. where the blood is filtered, removing toxins.
As your body starts to warm up after the cryotherapy session, your blood cells expand and cause a significant increase in the blood flow. Your blood is now enriched with oxygen, enzymes, collagen and other nutrients to a much greater degree than under normal balanced conditions.
What Sports can benefit from Cryotherapy treatments?
Honestly, the answer is probably all of them but below we’ll take a look at a few specific ones and highlight the benefits…
Cryotherapy for Rugby
Cryotherapy treatment for rugby players has been going on a long time… maybe you’ve seen photos of players after a rugby match ‘enjoying’ an ice bath. While it’s a bit cruder than modern methods the ice bath is still a rudimentary form of cryotherapy.
Rugby can be a hard game and cryotherapy is used to treat pain and inflammation and to increase recovery speed. For some players it’s possible that soreness and bruising can be alleviated all-together.
Cryo-Wellbeing are experts in this field as we provide Cryotherapy services to the Dragons Rugby Team
Athletics
As with other sports, using Cryotherapy can increase blood flow and boost the hormones while reducing toxins in an athlete’s body after a cryotherapy session. Not only preventing soreness and muscle-aches, this speeds up recovery time – allowing athletes to potentially train harder. The increased oxygenated blood and mental health benefits of regular cryotherapy could lead to better performance on the track with athletes better equipped to push beyond their existing thresholds.
Tennis
You may not have expected to see Tennis cryotherapy on the list, but Tennis and many other sports with very repetitive motions can benefit from participants taking part in some cryotherapy sessions.
Tennis elbow is a very real ailment (not always limited to tennis players!), that may be treated by cryotherapy. Cryotherapy has been shown to reduce inflammation and help recovery of micro-tears in the muscle fibre, caused by the repetitive motion of swinging the racket during regular games.
Cryotherapy for Football
It was going to be hard to put a list about sports together without mentioning football.
Football is a great example of a sport which can really benefit from cryotherapy. With much of the physicality of rugby, much of the exertion of athleteics and some reptitive movement (throw-ins, kicks etc..). Football makes use of all the cryotherapy tools, from tacking pain, muscle soreness, inflammation and faster recovery. Any football teams using cryo in their recovery plans might find themselves getting higher up their league!
Any sport!
If you’re part of a team or you take part alone – get in touch with us and we can give you advice and an overview of how cryotherapy may be able to help you.
But there’s more…
As you can see, Cryotherapy can make a huge difference to individuals and teams engaging in regulart sporting activity, at Cryo-Wellbeing we can help plan and implement a cryo session tailored to your needs. In addition we can offer sports massage which compliments perfectly the cryotherapy treatment and can add an extra level to your recovery plan.