06/06/2025
Washingtonpost: Ice baths and cold plunges have grown wildly popular in recent years thanks to your favorite podcasters, influencers and athletes touting their benefits for both body and mind, lifting moods, building grit, soothing aches and stiffness and speeding up and intensifying recovery from exercise.
But little science has supported the purported benefits of ice baths, and in recent years, studies have frequently undercut them.
A 2015 experiment found cold plungers’ muscles were nearly 20 percent smaller and weaker than the other men’s, although everyone followed the same exercise routine. Similarly, a 2024 review of prior research, concluded that the best available research indicated cold plunges after resistance training can
“attenuate hypertrophic changes.” In other words, your muscles won’t grow as much.