Gym Jones: Trapped Under Ice

  • Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 9:29 pm by Neal Taflinger
It just looks that way in cold water. Seriously.

"It just looks that way in cold water. Seriously."

A lot of young guys at the gym don’t warm up that much, they don’t stretch very extensively, and I can’t imagine they take rest and recovery too seriously, either. I’m only 30 but my body has already lost the ability to recover rapidly from sleep deprivation, injury or illness.

I wasn’t a serious jock in high school so I’d never taken an ice bath before my trainer Pat suggested it one day when I was especially torn up. After my first real day back in the gym after an extended layoff, my thighs, shins, and ankles were battered from muay Thai drills so I decided to reacquaint myself with this particularly unpleasant process.

Intended to serve as a topical analgesic and anti-inflammatory, ice baths are as old school as you can get in athletic training. Some swear by them, some think it’s a bunch of 20th century hokum. The jury is still out on the efficacy of ice baths, and at least one study claims that simple cold water has the same benefits of a frigid bath but the practice remains par for the course when dealing with minor aches and pains, muscle soreness and inflammation, the minor nicks and bruises of hard training.

I hate every minute of it every time I do it but as far as I’m concerned, there’s no better, cheaper way of keeping your body in condition to take the abuse that is part and parcel of MMA training. How do you maintain your body?

“Gym Jones” is dedicated to life in the gym, in particular, Neal Taflinger’s life in the Integrated Fighting Gym and any others he comes across in his travels.

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