Arctic Plunge

In this edition of the Rundown, two new mobility tools hit the market and researchers offer some insight into staying motivated and how ice baths may harm muscle growth.

Mobility Matters. Used consistently, mobility tools like the basic roller and lacrosse ball have been shown to help with pain and soreness, reduce the risk of injury and lead to better performance. If you’re looking to add to your collection or just get started, here are two new devices to keep on your radar. Roll Recovery R8 Plus is a dual roller, deep tissue massager with an adjustable tension wheel that you can dial up or down to control the pressure. The R8 Plus is TSA approved and a FDA registered medical device. For head, neck and shoulder pain, Aletha Health has released the Nuckle. A small plastic device in the shape of a pyramid, the Nuckle’s design targets the small muscles at the base of the skull in order to relax and release the neck and shoulders.

Reward Yourself. By February, those well-meaning New Year’s exercise resolutions can feel like a memory and many people are searching for ways to stay motivated. Researchers have a few ideas. According to a study published in Nature (read the abstract) at the end of 2021, one of the most effective tools to keep people exercising was offering them rewards points or a freebie—in this case, a free audiobook. The idea was that it gave them something to look forward to while working out.

The study enlisted over 61,000 members of the 24 Hour Fitness chain, and tested the effectiveness of 54 different approaches to motivating them to exercise. Beyond material incentives, the research found that in general, if you want to exercise regularly: 1) Plan a workout schedule that is reasonable. 2) Keep reminders of that schedule in a phone or get a spouse or training partner to help with accountability. 3) Find small ways to reward yourself. 4) Try not to skip more than one workout. When you make an effort to show up after missing a session, it might be effective in helping you to keep showing up, workout after workout.

Easy on the Ice Baths. Fans of cold water immersion believe that among other outcomes, it reduces muscle soreness and inflammation and allows for a faster return to training. But what happens at a molecular level inside muscles when exercisers jump into an ice bath? To explore this question, a new study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology divided 16 healthy young men who were not lifting weights into two groups. Both groups began a full-body progressive resistance-training program, working out three times a week for seven weeks. Before and after the first workout, the scientists biopsied a muscle in the men’s legs.

After each exercise session, one group recovered in a room for 15 minutes while the other group sat in cold baths (50 degrees Fahrenheit) for 15 minutes. At the end of the seven weeks, the volunteers’ leg muscles were biopsied again. All of the men developed larger muscle fibers but the increase in fiber size was much larger for the men who had sat in the room than for those who had taken the ice baths. The bathers’ muscles also showed lower levels of a protein that stimulates tissue growth and higher amounts of a protein that is part of tissue breakdown. The researchers think that the ice baths could have started complex metabolic reactions that keep tissues warm rather than helping them grow, but note that future experiments would need to study this theory.