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Trendy wellness hack used by Olympians and celebrities could actually be shrinking your muscles
The wellness world is alight with people freezing themselves after workouts who believe that doing so will help them get the most out of their gym session.
This includes actor and muscle-man Chris Hemsworth, popstar Lizzo and wellness guru Gwyneth Paltrow - and at this year's Olympics.
But experts caution that doing this right after lifting weights could actually be halting your muscle growth.
Research actually shows taking a plunge in cold water gets in the way of how your body grows muscles, and can make it harder for you to get bigger and stronger in the long term.
Hemsworth has shared that he enjoys ice baths for muscle recovery. Pictured here in 2022, he participated in a three minute ice bath on Instagram to raise awareness for Alzheimer's disease
Taking a cold plunge in the hours after weight training can make it harder for your body to build up muscles, experts said
'Performing cold water immersion after exercise is probably harming your gains,' Dr Rhonda Patrick, a fitness educator who studied Biomedical Science and Nutritional Biochemistry, said.
Dr Patrick shared in an X that the chilling effect can actually reduce the amount of proteins your body makes after a workout to build up your muscles.
During weight lifting, muscles tear. The body patches those tears with proteins, which over time make muscles bigger and stronger.
The less proteins the body makes, the less the muscle is reinforced and grown.
'People looking to improve their muscle conditioning should reconsider using cooling as part of their recovery strategy,' she said.
The baths are best used as a way to treat injuries immediately after a workout, not as a way to improve your physique, Dr Luc Van Loon, a Professor of Physiology of Exercise and Nutrition at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, said.
If you're injured during exercise, the cold can help reduce swelling and pain and soreness.
But experts recommend against ice baths in the long term because evidence shows that they makes it harder for muscles to grow and strengthen, Andrew Jagim, a sports medicine specialist with Mayo Clinic, said.
If you're looking to grow your muscles, avoid doing cold plunges on the same day that you lift weights or do calisthenics, Dr Patrick said.
Despite these warnings, cold therapy after exercise seems to be at peak popularity.
Google searches for ice baths have roughly doubled since 2019 and searches for cold plunge have increased nearly 50 fold over the same period, thanks in part to how popular they've become online.
Joe Rogan promotes them on one of the world's most popular podcasts. International sports legends like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lebron James have been seen lounging in the polar tubs after games.
In response, many different at-home cold plunge products have popped up. These include The Ice Pod's portable ice bath for $99 to SunHome Sauna's option for $4,499 to BlueCube's Elite Cold Plunge Tub for $21,490.
Though Dr Patrick is a fan of ice baths and cold showers for their purported benefits in reducing inflammation, she doesn't suggest them in every situation.
She explained this with a clip from an interview with Dr Van Loon on her podcast called Found My Fitness.
'From a muscle perspective nothing makes sense on recovery after exercise that cold would actually be helpful,' Dr Van Loon said.
In the interview, Dr Van Loon explained a study he performed in 2019, which included twelve young men and was posted in The Journal of Physiology in 2019.
Study participants placed one leg in cold water and one leg in room temperature water 15 minutes after doing some form of resistance exercise. They did this six times over two weeks.
The scientists then observed how the muscles behaved. They found the leg placed in cold water had a harder time manufacturing proteins than the leg placed in lukewarm water.
He said he predicted these effects would flatten over the two weeks of the study- but that over time, the leg that was submerged in cold water had less muscle recovery than the leg in warm water.
A separate paper performed by exercise scientists at City University of New York in 2024 which reviewed eight older studies on the topic found similar results.
It found that existing studies of both athletes who used cold therapy showed that using cold therapy after resistance training blunted the body's ability to build muscle.
The researchers concluded that getting cold right after a workout doesn't fully prevent someone from developing their muscles, but that doing resistance training without a cold plunge was more effective overall in those trying to add bulk.
These results also don't mean that there's no benefits to using cold water after exercise, Dr Van Loon said.
He mentioned that professional and extreme athletes can benefit from ice baths after a session because it helps heal their wounds.
Users on X were quick to point out that ice baths are still a favorite of sports superstars.
'In football (soccer), during season our goal is to maximize recovery. So it really depends on what the goal is. Pre season, different story,' X user seitentaisei11 said.
But if you're an average gym-goer attempting to build muscle, using a cold plunge in the six hours after lifting weights or doing calisthenics could be inhibiting your growth, Dr Van Loon said.
You don't have to avoid cold plunges all together, Dr Patrick said. But she said should just wait until a day you're not lifting weights, wait for six hours after a session or opt for a less extreme cold, like taking a cold shower.
'Adjusting how and when you use cold water immersion is important to optimize muscle gains,' Dr Patrick said.