Most sports trainers believe in icing as a way to help with healing and reducing swelling. There was a study done a few years ago that contradicts this popular belief. A study was done on 9 men in their 20’s. After strenuous excercise they measured their range of motion, creatine kinase, and muscle soreness. 14 days later(with no excercise between these 2 weeks) they did the excercises again. They then seperated the two groups one getting an ice massage with a 250ml thermal polystyrene ice ball and the other getting a “fake” one. They analyzed 24, 48,72 post massage and the results showed there was no significant impact between the placebo and non-placebo group.

Final thoughts:

While this study may seem to blow old tradition right out the window, it is only 9 volunteers, hardly a sizeable sample space to be outside of statistical significance. None of the participants had a true injury either, where icing may actually have a benefit in reducing extreme swelling.