You’ve been here before – one too many sets of squats and you just know tomorrow you’re going to be feeling the burn. The question is, to recover as quickly as possible, are you better off using an ice pack or a heat pack?
The short answer is, it depends. Here’s what we know at the moment, and a few things to consider so you can make the best decision for you and your muscles.
That’s the conclusion of a new study published in early 2021, which found that applying heat or cold to a muscle shortly after a workout worked equally well at decreasing exercise-related muscle soreness, technically known as delayed-onset muscle soreness, or DOMS, in the first 24 hours post-workout.
That’s the message from the same study, which found that while hot and cold both worked well for keeping pain at bay the day after exercise, applying heat therapy soon after a workout was more effective at helping to protect against pain that lingered longer than 24 hours.
Contrasting between a cold and a hot pack intermittently has also been shown to be effective at reducing muscle soreness and may give you the best of both worlds.
When they first occur, injuries should only ever be treated with ice, which constricts blood vessels to numb pain, relieve inflammation and limit the bruising. Once an injury is older than six weeks, it’s okay to introduce some heat, but if you apply it too soon – or in other words when an injury is still ‘acute’ – it can increase inflammation and delay proper healing.
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