The more I read about it, the more I am convinced that I hamper my day to day recovery from endurance pursuits because of my love for my hot tub. I will easily spend 20-40 minutes every couple days soaking in a 104* hot tub, sweat pouring off my face, a good book or magazine article helping me unwind from the day.
An unfortunate consequence of my current quest for quicker recovery is leading me to sacrifice my beloved hot tub by cutting my immersion by 50-75% a week. In fact I am going to go in the exact opposite direction and begin taking cold showers and using my pool as a cold plunge especially as a post workout recovery.
You see it is not so much that the additional heat from my soaks is harming my recovery as it is the lack of ice baths, cold plunges and the like that actually have verifiable restorative property's post activity. Rather than put myself in a position to have the hot tub suck more vital metabolic energy from me when I need it most, in recovery, and potentially increasing muscle fiber tear down I will be instead constricting blood flow, halting tissue breakdown and decreasing swelling. If this cyrotherapy does as it should, it would halt muscle fiber breakdown which lessens my naturally occurring Rhabdo and therefore help my blood recover and clear itself faster through my kidneys.
Not looking forward to adding cold showers to my routine. Not sure I can do it daily. I do believe that after all home based training I can cold plunge in my pool. I know this is not going to be easy. In fact for all my nuances for gear and my Shiny Things, I expect the next few months to be a very Spartan, hardcore living style.
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