We’re all ready for another season of professional football, and the athletes are geared up for the coming months of serious training, intense play, and dealing with common sports injuries like bruises, sprains and strains. The majority of our HydroWorx football customers, including the Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions, Kansas City Chiefs, New York Jets, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and others, minimize the effects of injuries by taking advantage of their HydroWorx ThermalPlunge and PolarPlunge pools.
It’s long been known that there are intrinsic benefits to hot and cold water against the body and extremities. For football players, those advantages are taken to a new level; after all, these are athletes who work themselves to the max. When you’re giving 110% in training and 115% on the gridiron, you need all the assistance you can get to stay in optimum condition.
What’s your first response when you hurt yourself and want to ease the swelling? After taking some ibuprofen, you probably grab an ice pack. Ice helps reduce the flow of blood to the injured area. As your blood vessels constrict, the swelling goes down.
The same theory operates behind a cold pool. A tough workout can wear on your muscles and tendons, making them achy and sore. A quick plunge into water that’s around 50 degrees enables them to experience a new sensation: coolness. The coolness combats the swelling that might otherwise occur, and provides a sense of relief to overheated areas like arms, legs and the torso. A small amount of time in a cold plunge pool has been shown to reduce the likelihood of long-term pain from tough workouts.
Heat has a different effect on the body than cold does. Not only does it allow for better blood flow, but it also helps to reduce inflammation and stimulate the release of endorphins. A HydroWorx ThermalPlunge pool is typically set at between 94 and 104 degrees and after just a few minutes, the body releases endorphins as a response to the heightened temperature.
In addition, the HydroWorx Plunge pools have a deep tissue massage hose attachment. This gives football players, and all athletes, the opportunity to deeply invigorate and massage particularly sore areas on their bodies.
One of the best methods that football teams use when it comes to warm and cold plunge pools is to play around with different ways of incorporating them into training. For instance, a coach may suggest stepping into their PolarPlunge pool followed by their ThermalPlunge pool, rather than preferring one over the other. Trainers have a variety of methods of utilizing plunge pools to their players’ advantages, and all of our customers take great pride in being able to incorporate HydroWorx technology as part of their training and recovery program.
View this on-demand webinar entitled, “Torn Achilles Tendon: An Aquatic Therapy Case Review” presented by Katherine Lorens, Assistant Athletic Trainer from the University of Utah. Katherine will present a case study of the rehabilitation of a Division I gymnast’s torn Achilles tendon using aquatic therapy. Download this on-demand webinar, today!
This post was last modified on May 12, 2023 3:01 pm
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