Working out is an essential part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. But equally important is what we do after the workout, like taking a recovery break and hydrating. One post-workout routine that is gaining popularity is taking a cold shower. But have you ever wondered about the actual benefits, or potential drawbacks, of taking a cold shower after a workout? In this article, we’ll hone in on the two primary benefits of cold exposure (including cold showers) after exercise: muscle recovery and the mitigation of systemic overheating. Potential drawbacks include the possibility that muscle growth could be somewhat hindered, for athletes performing resistance (anaerobic) activities, although the research is still preliminary. Interestingly, showering prior to exercise may prove particularly beneficial for endurance athletes, prior to a long event in warm weather. And cold exposure during athletic training may hold the most potential for significant gains in many metrics of athletic performance.

What is cold exposure therapy?

Cold exposure is the practice of subjecting the body to extremely cold temperatures for short periods of time either by taking a cold shower, cold bath, swimming in very cold water, wrapping parts of your body with cold, wet rags, or even just stepping outside in cold weather without adequate clothing. (Others may call it cryotherapy, but don’t confuse cold exposure with the medical term of cryotherapy, which refers to certain procedures such as the freezing of skin to remove skin tags or cancer, in dermatology; cryotherapy for treating prostate and other cancers; or nasal cryotherapy for treating rhinitis.) When water is involved, as is most often the case, those forms of cold exposure may be referred to as hydrotherapy.

How do cold showers compare with other cold exposure methods?

As we detailed in our article, What are the benefits of cold exposure?, a cold shower is just one type of cold exposure. Professional athletes more commonly employ cold water immersion (CWI), which is essentially a cold bath done in various locations such as indoor or outdoor tubs, specially designed tanks or plunge barrels, or in lakes or the ocean. Some studies suggest a temperature of 50-60ºF (10-15º C) for 3-5 minutes, but there really aren’t definite standard temperatures nor duration guidelines. Cold showers typically involve water temperature below 60ºF for two to three minutes at a time. Other modalities include the dry-air-chamber method called whole-body cryotherapy (WBC), localized cryotherapy (applying extreme cold to specific areas of the body, such as joints or muscles, using devices like ice packs or cryotherapy machines), and contrast therapy (bathing alternately in warm and cold water).  

All of these cold exposure modalities produce essentially the same physiological impacts, including an adrenaline boost, vasoconstriction, increased metabolic rate, heart rate and blood pressure rise, and more. The impact of a cold shower will vary depending on the temperature and duration, as will the other modalities. So comparisons among them are difficult to quantify. However, one significant difference with a shower is that you are likely moving around in it, and movement during cold exposure can actually keep your core temperature lower, ironically. Contrast that with cold water immersion: if you don’t move in a bathtub of cold water, or in a cold lake, the water near your skin’s surface begins to warm up, helping to insulate you from some of the cold. This layer of water is known as the boundary layer. However, if you flail around a lot in the cold water, you will actually feel (and be) colder. Arguably, the colder you are, the more heat you will lose, and heat loss is what you want to achieve if you are an athlete looking to bring down your body temperature. Why? Because overheated muscles and organs do not perform as well, and small muscle tears (typical from overexertion) heal faster, or recover faster, when those muscles are cooler.

Muscle recovery: The primary benefit of post-exercise cold therapy 

The effectiveness of cold showers post-workout does not thrive only on hearsay, but is also grounded in science. The most evidenced-backed benefit of cold exposure methods generally, including cold showers, is muscle recovery following intense exertion. 

After an intensive amount of exercise, you may experience what clinicians call delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS. There is a substantial amount of clinical evidence that cold exposure post-workout helps mitigate DOMS, enhancing muscle recovery; see our cold exposure report for further details. Therefore, athletic trainers often recommend CWI or another form of cold exposure following a day of intense exertion, especially in the midst of a multi-day competition (when an athlete may have to “get back out on the field or court” the following day). As the muscles are recovering, the cold exposure also produces an analgesic effect that may reduce pain.

Cold exposure, showers included, also help treat systemic overheating or heat stroke, as our previous report detailed. 

Other benefits of post-workout cold showers are largely anecdotal or vary considerably based on the individual subject and circumstances. Our previous report did acknowledge that the intense physical response to cold exposure, including the adrenaline effect and the release of endorphins and other hormones, could boost your mood at least over the short term, and some small studies have found a correlation with cold immersion or regular cold showers with reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, although the results to date are far from definitive. Bear in mind, too, that studies looking at cold exposure after exercise may have found mood improvements, but many scientists would argue that the endorphin rise, for example, may be more the result of the exercise than it is from the post-exercise cold therapy! But if the feel-good effect is even just short-term, or even if it’s only a placebo effect (“I did it, I went in cold water, I’m tough and resilient, I feel better about myself”), that could be a real positive for you, and beneficial if it improves your work productivity or motivates you to get back out and exercise some more. 

Touted health benefits such as improved immunity and weight loss have not held up under the scrutiny of clinical research. Some studies have found improved “biomarkers” or other such indicators of improved health metrics, but significant changes in actual medical outcomes have not been well documented. 

Some tout a link between cold exposure and improved sleep quality, but again the relationship is unclear. While a drop in external body temperature can initiate the body's natural preparation for sleep, leading to deeper and more restful sleep, remember also that your body actually starts heating up after cold exposure; and that heating-up process can keep you awake! (Thus, it is ill-advised to undergo cold exposure close to your bedtime.)

Potential drawbacks of cold showers post-workouts

The muscle growth debate

While the relief from soreness (muscle recovery) from cold exposure post-workouts is a very real benefit for many athletes, there is controversy over the impact to athletic performance long-term, especially for athletes involved primarily in anaerobic activities, such as weight lifting. 

A number of research studies (such as this 2022 meta-analysis) have determined that chronic, repeated cold exposure can impair strength adaptations, meaning that while cold therapy may reduce initial muscle soreness, it ultimately may mitigate muscle growth and decrease fatigue resistance following resistance training. 

Researchers explain that the reduction in inflammation brought on by cold exposure, which is what relieves muscle soreness short-term, might actually hinder muscle growth over the longer term. This effect was also observed in a 2021 study, which found that the regular use of CWI associated with exercise programs has a deleterious effect on resistance training adaptations, but does not appear to affect aerobic exercise performance. 

Another 2021 study, similarly, determined that “although post-exercise CWI may enhance short-term recovery following resistance exercise, current evidence suggests CWI has either nil or detrimental effects on physiological adaptations to resistance training, including muscle hypertrophy and measures of maximal strength, strength endurance, and power/RFD, as well as the molecular responses that underpin adaptation to resistance training in skeletal muscle.” 

Readers should note that most of these studies employed CWI as the mode of cold exposure; so it’s uncertain whether cold showers would produce the same results. 

Meanwhile, other scientists caution that even locally-administered cold on the specific muscles you may be using in an anaerobic activity, e.g., cold packs on your quads, can only do so much for performance (defined as the ability to continue to “work,” i.e. use your muscles effectively, or at all) because your body is such a good insulator. The only way heat can leave your muscles is via the blood. Furthermore, cold towels on your neck or near or on your head may be even less effective, as they just “cool the thermostat” that resides in your brain, tricking you (because it may feel good) into thinking that you’ve cooled down, when your core body temperature may have not, or not enough.

General risks and contraindications

Risks associated with cold exposure, including cold showers, include hypothermia, heart arrhythmias and even heart attacks. If you have any known or suspected medical conditions, consult with your medical provider before undergoing any cold exposure experience, especially if you have known cardiac or pulmonary disease, diabetes, or are prone to allergy symptoms triggered by cold. 

Are there better times to have a cold shower than after your workout?

While cooling down after exertion may make sense for any number of reasons, including muscle recovery and systemic reduction of overheating, for athletic performance for particular types of athletes, cold exposure before or during exercise may have unique benefits.

“Pre-cooling” may be uniquely beneficial for endurance athletes: While research into this approach is scarce, initial evidence indicates that CWI before endurance exercise may improve endurance performance (especially in hot conditions), as concluded in this 2012 review. (Interestingly, cooling garments appear of limited efficacy, despite their frequent use. More on that later.) As expert Heller explains, during an aerobic activity, such as running or cycling, your heat gradually rises and spreads all over your body, eventually hindering your performance. A cold shower or bath prior to such activity could help increase the capacity of your body mass to absorb that excess heat, thereby elongating the time it takes you to heat up, potentially increasing your speed or your ability to continue the activity longer/farther or both. Pre-cooling does not appear efficacious in anaerobic activities (e.g., weight lifting), during which your individual muscles heat up far more than does your whole body. When that muscle-specific hyperthermia gets too great, that muscle simply can no longer perform adequately due to muscle fatigue.

Cooling during exercise/training, where and when feasible, holds distinct potential for many types of athletes: For example, a group at Stanford have determined that it’s the “glaborous” (non-hairy/furry) skin — which you only have on the palms of your hands and feet and on parts of your face — that can most rapidly cool athletes’ core temperatures and thereby dramatically improve exercise recovery and performance. So they’re developing a commercial version of their specialized heat extraction device, known as “the glove,” which has demonstrated an ability to reduce fatigue onset during resistive exercise, leading to improving strength and work volume training responses. The product is still in development, and logistically it may not have practical application (as currently devised) during certain live sporting events (e.g., where there are no “time-outs,” like in a marathon or a bike race). But it may hold potential in numerous training applications, and it could even be housed in golf carts during tournaments and on the sidelines during football and baseball games, as just two examples. Applications for individuals who are physically hindered, e.g., with multiple sclerosis, also appear promising.  

Key takeaways

Cold exposure, including cold showering after a workout, is an area of therapeutic interest — particularly among athletes. As a “recovery therapy,” cold exposure techniques have clear merit for reducing muscle soreness after extreme exertion. Whether those benefits translate into longer-term improvements in physical performance remains under study. For endurance athletes, the benefit of cooling down before lengthy aerobic sessions appears to promise distinct advantages. For athletes engaged in resistance training, or anaerobic activities, the short-term muscle soreness relief from cold exposure is also distinct, and yet studies have raised the issue of whether repeated cold exposure following exercise might hinder muscle building over the long term. Novel approaches to cold therapy during training or exercise, while logistically challenging, hold promise. Exercise aside, cold exposure is a wellness fad that appears to make some individuals more alert and in a better mood, although touted health benefits ranging from improved immunity to weight loss to a cure for depression seem quite far-fetched and unfounded.

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