WATER IMMERSION AS A POST-EFFORT RECOVERY FACTOR. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Titel:
WATER IMMERSION AS A POST-EFFORT RECOVERY FACTOR. A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW
Auteur:
Chulvi-Medrano. I. LLana-Belloch. S. 1 Pérez-Soriano, P.
Verschenen in:
Citius Altius Fortius
Paginering:
Jaargang 23 (2009) nr. 2 pagina's 28-39
Jaar:
2009
Inhoud:
In physical preparation is well established the importance of recovery processes in order to achieve highlevels of performance. Therefore, and due to the high demands required in the current sports competitions, toenhance recovery processes play an important role in the final performance. Water immersions have been usedas a recovery agent by coaches for long. However, only in recent years have been published scientific paperswhich investigate this topic. The purpose of this work was to establish a theoretic framework based on thesepublications. It has conducted a thorough bibliographical review in databases Pubmed and SportDiscus, usingthe keywords “Post-exercise recovery "," water immersion "," thermal responses” and “cryotherapy”. Afterpurifying the papers retrieved, 39 papers were obtained, of which 33 are original research work and 6 arereviews. We must highlight a limiting factor in the extraction of general conclusions: the absence of standard protocols. Therefore, sometimes it is difficult to compare results from different studies. However, two conclusions can be drawn: (1) Hot water (> 33º C) is not a good regenerating agent post-effort, and (2)immersion in cold water (15ºC) for 1o minutes, split into periods, facilitates regenerative processes post-effort.About contrasts (alternate cold and hot water) there is less information and results are sometimes contradictory.