Recovery time. It’s one of the big components that can make or break a team’s season or even a player’s career. Getting athletes back on their feet and off the bench is crucial. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers organization has realized the importance of this and brought in a pretty cool recovery tool to help maximize recovery and minimize the time it takes.
The Bucs are now using “Cryosaunas” (also known as “cryo chambers” or “cryotubs”), which can replace the need for the 20-25 minutes ice baths and are reportedly much more effective at helping an athlete’s body recover. The sessions in these containers only take a max of two and a half minutes. Each chamber has three seven foot tall metal tubes that use liquid nitrogen tanks to cool down the main chamber that the athletes insert themselves in. The player doesn’t enter the chamber until the temperature drops to a negative 200 degrees, and that’s when they step in to the adjustable platform.
“When you get into the chamber at negative 200-240, it’s too cold for the body to comprehend. The brain sends a signal to the rest of the body to go into survival mode. The reaction constricts the blood flow in all of the limbs, arms and legs, and all that blood goes to the core and into vital organs like the heart. That process enriches the blood with oxygen and nutrients and flushes out toxins. When you get out of the chamber and the blood vessels dilate again, that blood goes back to the limbs and now you have enriched blood that speeds up the recovery process,” said Kevin Luhrs, Buccaneers’ Sports Dietician.
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Some of the players are already completely sold on the process and have noticed immense differences when they wake up the next morning when compared to taking ice baths. Bucs wide receiver Donteea Dye mentioned that this method is “more efficient” and “a lot quicker”.
“Nooooo, KELLY CLARKSON!!!” –@jasonrlicht, probably pic.twitter.com/ZF9kz4FSpb
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@TBBuccaneers) August 1, 2016
While the Bucs are only the third NFL team to start using these cryosaunas (and the first to obtain three of them), this method has been spreading through teams in organizations like the NBA, NHL, MLB, SEC and ACC Division I national collegiate programs. One of the teams being the 2015 World Series Champion Kansas City Royals who received the systems through the company Impact Cryotherapy.
“I’m a big fan of cryotherapy and the benefits it offers athletes including recovering from both daily demands and injury. Winning the World Series was an incredible experience, which means our team will have very high expectations for the 2016 season. With Impact Cryotherapy, the ability to train harder and recover faster in order to help the team prepare for another successful year was extremely attractive to us as an organization,” said the Royals Head Athletic Trainer Nick Kenney.
This technology has been finding its way not just to athletic organizations, but to your local spas and fitness/wellness centers as well. Who knows? Maybe cryosaunas and cryotheorpy all together could become as normal as climbing into an ice bath post-workout at your local gym.