Why do gymnasts ice bucket

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View all Entertainment Sites. More Food News ». More Dog News ». View all Lifestyle Sites. More FanSided News ». More News Around the Network ». View all Our Sites. Tweet Share Pin. Naomi Osaka, who lit the Olympic cauldron and was a favorite to win gold in her home country at the Tokyo Olympics, lost in the third round to Marketa Vondrousova.

The U. The Russian women, who won silver in the Rio team competition, have developed some extraordinary talent the past few years. They had outscored the Americans in the qualifying phase Sunday. Even with Biles in the U. Silver is not the medal the American women are accustomed to wearing. Biles previously qualified for the all-around final, which will take place Thursday, as well as the final in each of the four apparatus. A day off Wednesday will go a long way toward helping her decide.

Still struggling with some things. Biles won gold on the vault in the Rio Games, part of her five-medal haul. She later upgraded her skills to include a vault called a Yurchenko double pike, which no other female gymnast has landed. Photos: Simone Biles withdraws from team competition; U.

At that point, her voice broke. The world wanted her to perform. So for older athletes at least, it may be worth the effort.

But with younger, fitter people, muscle repair can be slowed down. Something similar might be happening with ice baths, yet in animals the cold seems to work well.

When ice was applied to the muscles of rats under anaesthetic , inflammation decreased without any reduction in the speed of muscle generation. It does reduce swelling and soreness, but in a study where people did a three-month course of strength training when they took ice baths, they made smaller gains in muscle mass and strength.

British tennis champion Andy Murray spends eight minutes after every match in an ice bath Credit: Getty Images. Studies where people are randomised either to sit in an ice bath after exercise or to rest, are few and far between.

But now the same team who did this previous research, based in Australia, Norway and Japan, has just published a study , comparing ice baths not with inactivity, but with a gentle warm down which is what many athletes do in practice. Nine active men took part in a minute session of lunges, squats and other exercises. One week they were instructed to take an ice bath afterwards, spending 10 minutes sitting up to their waists in an inflatable bath with cold water.

Another week their post-exercise regime was much more pleasant — 10 minutes spent cycling slowly on an exercise bike.

Markers of inflammation and stress response in the muscle increased after exercise, as you might expect, but the ice bath made no difference to these levels. So there are two issues here — whether an ice bath does reduce inflammation possibly not and whether you would even want it to, if that might slow down muscle repair.