Males benefit more from cold water immersion during repeated handgrip contractions than females despite similar oxygen kinetics

Jiří Baláš,Dominika Krupková,David Giles,Jan Kodejška

doi:10.1186/s12576-020-00742-5

Jiří Baláš, Dominika Krupková + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12576-020-00742-5

Copy DOI

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effect of different water immersion temperatures on handgrip performance and haemodynamic changes in the forearm flexors of males and females. Twenty-nine rock-climbers performed three repeated intermittent handgrip contractions to failure with 20 min recovery on three separate laboratory visits. For each visit, a randomly assigned recovery strategy was applied: cold water immersion (CWI) at 8 °C (CW8), 15 °C (CW15) or passive recovery (PAS). While handgrip performance significantly decreased in the subsequent trials for the PAS (p < 0.05), there was a significant increase in time to failure for the second and third trial for CW15 and in the second trial for CW8; males having greater performance improvement (44%) after CW15 than females (26%). The results indicate that CW15 was a more tolerable and effective recovery strategy than CW8 and the same CWI protocol may lead to different recovery in males and females.

Highlights

Repeated contractions of the forearms are required for many daily physical activities and forearm strength and endurance are known to be performance-limiting factors in sports, such as rock climbing and canoeing [11, 18]
After cold water immersion at 15 °C (CW15), 10 males improved over the minimal detectable change (6323 Ns), this was only true for 6 females (Fig. 2)
The results demonstrate that CWI (1) attenuated the decrease in intermittent handgrip performance to failure in both males and females; (2) prolonged time to failure in the subsequent tests; and, Fig. 2 Handgrip performance (FTI force–time integral) during: (1) passive recovery (PAS); (2) cold water immersion at 8 °C (CW8); and (3) at 15 °C (CW15) in males (a) and females (b)

Summary

Introduction

Repeated contractions of the forearms are required for many daily physical activities and forearm strength and endurance are known to be performance-limiting factors in sports, such as rock climbing and canoeing [11, 18]. It was proposed that the dominant mechanism by which CWI facilitates short-term recovery is (1) via ameliorating hyperthermia, which is associated with central nervous system-mediated fatigue; (2) by reducing cardiovascular strain through the redistribution of blood flow from the periphery to the core which increases cardiac output; and (3) by faster removal of muscle metabolites [13]. This is only known to be valid for whole body endurance exercise in hot and humid environments. During and after resistance exercise, the main physiological mechanisms responsible for

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion