Forget cold showers after a workout — according to an exercise scientist, 'the evidence to support that in terms of muscle regeneration is really lacking'

The benefits of heat therapy

01 Mar 2026, 16:30 · TechRadar

Features By Lily Canter published 1 March 2026

(Image credit: Getty)

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Open Instagram and you would think post-workout recovery begins and ends with an ice bath. After you hit 'save' on your Apple Watch, your run zips off to the Strava cloud, plenty of social media influencers advise you go for a cold plunge (if you have access) or a cold shower (if you don't).

But a new human study on muscle healing suggests something different: if you actually want your muscles to repair themselves, you are better off turning the hot tap up than jumping into a tub of freezing water or opting for a cold shower.

Dr Freya Bayne, a sport and exercise scientist at London South Bank University, has just co-authored research in The Journal of Physiology comparing cold and hot water immersion after a simulated muscle injury.

“Cryotherapy, or cold therapy, is used really widely in a lot of sports medicine for muscle injuries, but the evidence to support that in terms of muscle regeneration is really lacking,” she said. “Prior to this study, no human studies on muscle regeneration have been done, so we really wanted to fill that gap.”

How do you “injure” a muscle in a lab?

To properly study regeneration, the team needed real muscle damage, closer to a strain than exercise-induced soreness.

“The electrical stimulation that we use is where you put a probe into one of the nerves to cause damage that would be the equivalent of a strain,” explained Dr Bayne. A sample of 34 healthy men took part in the study which involved having their thighs put through 200 electrically stimulated eccentric contractions. This was not a gentle gym session; this process kills off a chunk of muscle fibres and triggers a full repair response, similar to a serious sports injury.

Over the following days, the researchers tracked strength, soreness, blood markers of muscle damage and, crucially, took muscle biopsies to see what was happening inside the tissue as it tried to heal. After the damage was done, participants were randomly assigned to one of three daily treatments for 10 days:

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