Do Cold Plunges Actually Help Recovery? What a New Review of 161 Studies Found
8 min read
Cold plunges have become one of the most recognizable trends in fitness and recovery. From professional athletes using ice baths after competition to recreational lifters incorporating cold-water immersion into their daily routines, the practice is often promoted as a way to reduce inflammation, accelerate recovery, and improve physical performance.
The appeal is understandable. After a demanding training session, spending several minutes in cold water may leave someone feeling refreshed, less sore, and more prepared for their next workout.
But feeling recovered and actually recovering are not necessarily the same thing. And recovering quickly from a workout is not always the same as maximizing the adaptations that workout was intended to produce.
A 2026 umbrella review published in Sports Medicine – Open examined 15 systematic reviews and meta-analyses representing 161 unique studies and approximately 3,210 participants. The researchers evaluated how post-exercise cold-water immersion affects soreness, physical performance, physiological recovery, and long-term training adaptations.
The findings suggest that cold plunges can provide meaningful benefits in certain situations. They also raise questions about routinely using them after resistance training, particularly when building muscle and strength is the primary objective.
What Did the New Research Examine?
The review, led by Berjisian and colleagues, evaluated research on cold-water immersion following exercise. Across the included studies, immersion protocols generally involved water temperatures between 5°C and 15°C, with durations ranging from approximately 3 to 20 minutes.
The researchers examined several outcomes, including muscle soreness, strength recovery, power, jumping performance, endurance performance, markers of muscle damage and inflammation, and longer-term adaptations to training.
Importantly, this was an umbrella review. Rather than conducting a new experiment, the authors evaluated existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses to develop a broader understanding of the evidence.
That provides a substantial research base, but the number of studies should not be mistaken for uniformly strong evidence. The authors rated the methodological quality of the included reviews as low or critically low, with certainty of evidence generally low to very low. Many participants were young men, and some of the reviews relied on overlapping primary studies.
Those limitations are important when interpreting the results, particularly when deciding whether a recovery strategy should become a permanent part of someone's training routine.
Cold Plunges Can Reduce Muscle Soreness
One of the clearest findings was that cold-water immersion can reduce perceived muscle soreness after exercise.
Across six systematic reviews with meta-analyses, cold-water immersion generally reduced soreness during the first 96 hours following exercise, with particularly noticeable benefits after high-intensity training.
That supports one of the most common reasons people use ice baths: they may genuinely help someone feel less sore after demanding physical activity.
The researchers also identified reductions in creatine kinase concentrations between approximately 24 and 72 hours after exercise. Creatine kinase is an enzyme that can enter the bloodstream following muscle damage, although its concentration is an imperfect measure of the amount of damage or recovery taking place.
Other findings were less convincing. Cold-water immersion did not consistently reduce C-reactive protein or interleukin-6, two commonly measured markers associated with inflammatory responses.
So while cold exposure may improve certain recovery-related measures, the evidence does not support the broad claim that ice baths simply eliminate exercise-induced inflammation.
More importantly, reduced soreness does not automatically mean that muscle tissue has recovered faster or that someone is prepared to perform better.
Soreness is a subjective experience. It can influence how someone feels about training, but it is not a direct measurement of muscle repair, strength restoration, or adaptation.
Someone may feel substantially better after a cold plunge without experiencing an equivalent improvement in their ability to produce force.
Do Cold Plunges Actually Restore Performance?
The answer depends on which performance outcome is being measured and when that measurement takes place.
For muscular strength, the review found no consistent improvement in recovery following cold-water immersion compared with passive rest or other recovery strategies.
That finding is particularly relevant for people who assume that less soreness means their muscles are ready to lift heavier weights.
Power and jumping performance produced a more complicated picture.
Some analyses found improvements in muscular power approximately 24 to 72 hours after exercise. Jumping performance also improved at certain later measurement points.
However, cold-water immersion sometimes impaired explosive performance immediately after treatment. One analysis reported lower jump height shortly after immersion, followed by improved performance approximately 24 hours later.
Endurance performance showed a similar dependence on timing. Some evidence suggested improved performance when assessed within approximately one hour after cold-water immersion, but the benefits were not consistently maintained at later measurements.
These findings suggest that cold-water immersion may be useful when the objective is restoring specific aspects of performance between demanding events or training sessions.
For an athlete competing repeatedly over a short period, reducing soreness and potentially improving subsequent power output could be valuable.
For someone whose primary goal is progressive strength training, however, the immediate sensation of recovery may be less important than the cumulative adaptations occurring over weeks and months.
Could Cold Plunges Interfere With Muscle Growth?
This is where the findings become particularly relevant to resistance training.
Several analyses included in the umbrella review examined what happens when cold-water immersion is used repeatedly after resistance training rather than occasionally following a demanding workout.
The evidence suggests that regular post-exercise immersion may modestly reduce gains in muscle size.
A Bayesian meta-analysis included in the review reported a corrected standardized mean difference of approximately −0.22 for hypertrophy, indicating a small disadvantage for resistance training combined with cold-water immersion compared with resistance training alone.
That number is an effect size, not a percentage reduction in muscle growth. It does not mean that cold plunges reduce hypertrophy by 22%.
The same general concern appeared in research examining strength adaptations. Some analyses found smaller strength improvements when cold-water immersion was used repeatedly after resistance training.
However, the findings were not identical across immersion methods. One subgroup analysis found reduced strength gains following limb-only immersion, while whole-body immersion did not demonstrate a clear negative effect.
The hypertrophy evidence also came from a relatively limited group of studies, and the underlying research had methodological weaknesses. The results therefore support caution rather than certainty.
Still, the potential trade-off is important.
Resistance training creates a stimulus that encourages the body to adapt. Those adaptations include changes in muscle protein turnover, cellular signaling, and the structural properties of muscle tissue.
Some physiological responses to training are part of the process through which adaptation occurs. A recovery intervention that modifies those responses may reduce discomfort without necessarily improving the eventual training outcome.
Researchers have proposed several mechanisms through which immediate cooling could influence muscle adaptation, including changes in muscle temperature, blood flow, and anabolic signaling. The precise mechanisms and their relative importance remain under investigation.
The practical concern is not that cold water destroys muscle or makes strength training ineffective.
It is that routinely using cold-water immersion immediately after lifting may slightly reduce the adaptations someone is trying to maximize.
This is especially relevant for people following structured hypertrophy programs, where the objective is to accumulate productive training over time rather than simply minimize discomfort after individual sessions.
As we've discussed in When Does More Volume Stop Producing More Muscle?, training adaptations depend on balancing an adequate stimulus with the ability to recover from that stimulus.
Recovery strategies should support that process, not automatically suppress every physiological response associated with training.
Does Timing Matter?
One of the most important limitations of the current research concerns when cold-water immersion occurs.
Much of the evidence examining reduced hypertrophy involves cold-water immersion performed shortly after resistance training, often within approximately 15 minutes of completing a session.
That does not establish that a cold plunge performed several hours later has the same effect.
It also does not establish that occasional cold exposure, morning cold plunges on nontraining days, or brief cold showers interfere with muscle growth.
Those practices may involve different temperatures, exposure durations, and timing relative to the training stimulus.
The distinction matters because cold plunges are frequently discussed as though every form of cold exposure produces the same physiological consequences.
That is not what the research demonstrates.
The review identified immersion protocols of approximately 10 to 15 minutes at temperatures between 5°C and 15°C as frequently associated with favorable recovery outcomes. But those findings should not be interpreted as an ideal protocol for everyone, particularly when the objective is maximizing hypertrophy.
There is also insufficient evidence to establish a specific waiting period after resistance training that completely eliminates the possibility of interference with adaptation.
For someone prioritizing muscle growth, the most defensible approach is to avoid making immediate post-lifting cold-water immersion a routine practice until stronger evidence clarifies its long-term effects.
When Do Cold Plunges Make Sense?
The research does not suggest that cold-water immersion is universally beneficial or universally harmful.
Its usefulness depends on the objective.
Consider an athlete who has completed a demanding competition and must perform again the following day. In that situation, reducing soreness and potentially restoring aspects of power or jumping performance may be more important than maximizing the adaptive response to a single training session.
Cold-water immersion could be a reasonable recovery strategy in that context.
Now consider someone training four days per week with the primary goal of building muscle. Their objective is not simply to feel better immediately after lifting. It is to progressively improve performance and accumulate muscular adaptations over months and years.
For that individual, routinely using cold-water immersion immediately after resistance training may offer little additional value while introducing a possible disadvantage.
There is also a difference between using cold exposure to manage an unusually demanding training period and treating it as an essential part of every workout.
Recovery should be evaluated according to the demands of the program and the athlete's goals, rather than the popularity of a particular intervention.
That principle also applies to how we evaluate training progress. In How Do You Know if Your Training Program Is Actually Working?, we explain why meaningful changes in performance and adaptation provide more useful information than how exhausting or satisfying an individual session feels.
The same reasoning applies to recovery. Feeling refreshed after a cold plunge is not necessarily evidence that the intervention is improving long-term results.
The Bigger Lesson: Recovery Should Support Adaptation
Cold plunges are not a fitness scam, but neither are they a universally beneficial recovery tool.
The 2026 umbrella review suggests that post-exercise cold-water immersion can reduce soreness and improve certain short-term performance outcomes. At the same time, repeated use immediately after resistance training may modestly interfere with strength and hypertrophy adaptations.
The evidence is not strong enough to make absolute claims, particularly about different cold exposure protocols or immersion performed well after exercise.
But it is sufficient to challenge the assumption that every recovery intervention should be used as frequently as possible.
For people primarily interested in muscle growth, strength, and body composition, the foundations of recovery remain relatively straightforward: appropriate training volume, adequate nutrition, sufficient sleep, and a program that manages fatigue while allowing progressive adaptation.
Cold-water immersion may have a place within that process, but it should serve a specific purpose.
The goal of recovery is not simply to feel less sore. It is to become better adapted to the training you performed.
That approach is consistent with The Foundation, where we explain the evidence-based principles behind structured training, progression, and long-term physical development.
For most recreational lifters, the question should not be whether cold plunges are good or bad. It should be whether they help accomplish the specific goal of the training program.
References
Berjisian E, et al. Strategic Application of Post-exercise Cold-Water Immersion to Enhance Performance Recovery and Adaptation: An Umbrella Review of 15 Published Systematic Reviews with Meta-analysis. Sports Medicine – Open. 2026. doi:10.1186/s40798-026-01116-8.
Throwing Cold Water on Muscle Growth: A Systematic Review with Meta-analysis of the Effects of Postexercise Cold Water Immersion on Resistance Training-Induced Hypertrophy. 2024. Available through PubMed Central: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11235606/.
About the Author
AFT Fitness Coaching develops structured, evidence-based training systems for adults who want to build muscle, improve body composition, and train with greater confidence. The Arcos Program combines proven training principles with long-term progression, giving members a clear plan instead of another random workout.