Does Cold Water Immersion, AKA Ice Baths, work?
Ice baths have been popular for a while now – it seems that every health and fitness influencer has themselves a pretty epic ice bath setup, and I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t considered how cool it would be to have an ice bath as part of my morning routine or a quick post workout dip. But do you know what’s nicer than an ice bath? Pretty much anything else, ever, like anything. There is a degree of suffering that comes with having an ice bath, so the benefits need to outweigh the suffering. I might get some stick for this from the ice bath community, but all I'm doing here is showing the data. Don't shoot the messenger!
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Ice Baths and Muscle Building
The main benefit I was chasing when considering cold plunges was the potential benefit to my training recovery, but as shown in a systematic review with meta-analysis by Piñero et al. (2024), ice baths can attenuate gains in muscle hypertrophy, as they reduce muscle protein synthesis rates and suppress satellite cell activation – not ideal when looking to make gains!
Now, studies do suggest that they can reduce soreness, which could mean you’re able to hit your next session with more intensity and vigour. However, if they also attenuate gains, then you could simply just train less or not go as hard if minimising soreness truly was the primary goal. But for most, the goal is muscle growth, and we don’t want to be doing too many things that negatively impact this beautiful process of making gains.
Ice Baths and General Health
However, people don’t just want to make gains – many people use ice baths for health benefits, so let’s look into that as well. A systematic review and meta-analysis by Cain et al. (2025), these are studies of studies, revealed several potential benefits, including a reduction in stress 12 hours post cold water immersion, with improvements also noted in sleep quality and quality of life. However, many purported benefits remain unsubstantiated, with inconclusive evidence regarding cold water immersion’s impact on immunity and mood. It concluded that while cold water immersion shows promise for specific outcomes, more robust evidence is required to establish its safety profile and validate its purported health benefits.
Fitness enthusiasts do rave about ice baths, but as you can see, I find the reference section much more enlightening.
Personal Opinion
Personally, if I were looking at doing this, knowing full well it’s not good for my gains, I would be doing it for the claimed benefits of improving mood. I mean, if it makes you feel awesome each day, then let’s do it, but there was no significant difference seen for improving mood. So, it’s not ideal for recovery or particularly good at improving mood, so for me, I’m like, what’s the point?
Parting shot
Ice baths can be a nice addition to a solid daily routine, but based on the current available evidence, it looks like they’re actually pretty overrated, particularly for fitness enthusiasts looking to get swoll. Does that mean for the people who find huge benefits to ice baths, they should bin them off, hell no! Studies show data based on the impacts of many people; in fact, the Cain et al. study I referenced contained over 3,000 participants, but among those 3000 participants, some people will have seen much more benefits than others. Some might think this is the best thing since sliced bread; others, not so much. This is just my opinion, but many people need a physical challenge in their life, and an ice bath is actually a very practical way of quickly pushing yourself to your limit – it’s instant pain and hardship, and when you’re able to overcome that each day, exercise some pretty impresive discipline, it feels good. For me, I get that from lifting heavy things, and doing a little bit of intense running, cycling, hiking and martial arts, but for others, it’s ice baths, and that’s cool – you do you!