CrossFit – Strength Training?
So When Shouldn’t you use Cryotherapy?
When to Avoid Cryotherapy
This is one important area worth mentioning. When you’re strength training, the oxidative stress generates reactive oxygen species (ROS) that actually help increase muscle mass. If you expose yourself to cold within the first hour after strength training, you suppress that beneficial process, so avoid doing cold immersion (such as a really cold shower or ice bath) immediately after strength training.
Though heat has benefits, spending some time in the sauna after exercise may actually help increase muscle mass. It’ll also help with detoxification, allowing you to sweat out toxins that can wreak havoc on mitochondrial function.
As explained by Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D.
“This is what’s important to understand: Exercise is a stress on the body. You’re generating inflammation. But that’s a good thing … There’s a one-hour timeframe from the time you stop exercising [in which inflammation peaks].
That is a stressful period. But then as soon as an hour hits, the stress response kicks in and you start to have a potent anti-inflammatory [response]. You start having an antioxidant response from activating all these good genes that stay activate for a long time.
What happens is that because the cold also is causing an anti-inflammatory response, it’s important that you don’t get that anti-inflammatory response too soon because you need some of that inflammation. You want that inflammation to happen. That’s important for strength training.
The inflammation generated during the strength training is part of the mechanism for making more proteins in the skeletal muscle. If you blunt that, then you blunt the effects of the strength training.
The question is then can you do it an hour or two hours later? Studies have shown, yes, you can do cold exposure, cold water immersion and actually get some performance enhancements even from doing [that].”
So to summarise
After a serious training session to get the optimal results, cryotherapy no sooner than 2 hours.