Heating vs. Icing Injuries

Audio Transcript

Coach Jeff: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Runners Connect Run to the Top Extra Kick Podcast where we answer your questions daily.

Today’s question is from Cara.

Cara: When should you apply heat and when she would apply ice with various scenarios? For example, a sprained ankle or a knot in your back or a sore muscle etc.

Jeff: Thank you so much for this question. It is a good question because it is something that a lot of runners have questions on.

We get this a lot in our forums and in our coaching stream and it is also something that has changed in the last probably 10 years.

I think a lot of us grew up with this idea of, when we should be heating and when we should be icing and what the benefits were. Based on recent research and finding, that’s changed in the last ten years.

The reason that things have changed in the last 10 or 15 years is that we had this outdated idea of what inflammation was and that particularly we needed to get it out of the body as soon as possible.

That inflammation was very bad and the sooner that we could get it out or the more that we could reduce inflammation, the faster the healing process was going to go.

What we now understand is that inflammation can be a good thing because it is the body’s natural response to healing itself.

Inflammation is basically when the body is sending blood and nutrients to that injured area to help heal it.

The distinction here is that there can at times be too much or excessive inflammation. It is too much that the body isn’t being helped by that much and that’s when we want to potentially get a little bit of the inflammation out of there.

One of our primary methods of reducing or eliminating inflammation was through icing or the application of some type of cold compress ice bath.

The way we should think about applying cold is that if there immediately after an injury happens, that’s when there’s the most chance for excessive inflammation.

If you have a sprained ankle or something where there’s an immediate injury, then ice is okay to apply because we’re trying to prevent the body from excessively producing inflammation and sending too much to that area.

It’s also a good idea for injuries that are acute for example, a sprained ankle, a rolled ankle, etc. The other time it’s good to potentially apply ice is after you create your own damage to an injury.

For example, if we’re looking at healing an I.T. band, you would start out by heating the area, then, you would do some foam rolling of the hip, some foam rolling of your quads, hamstrings, e.t.c.

Foam rolling, stretching, and any strength exercises, which we also recommend, are going to be creating some additional inflammation. We want to eliminate that additional inflammation.

After you do that routine then you would ice. That way you’re eliminating that excessive inflammation that you produced, with your therapy on the injury.

That’s when you should be applying ice. Any time the injury is acute, right after it happens, and then any time that you add inflammation through your own means of therapy.

To get things better, we need to not necessarily do damage, but aggravate the area so that the body will send the signal to produce inflammation for that area.

Heating is almost the exact opposite. You don’t want to be heating in the immediate aftermath of an injury or especially an acute injury.

If you sprain your ankle, you should not be applying heat. That’s only going to send more blood and the body’s going to increase the inflammation in that area, so we don’t want to do that.

Any time that we are about to go on a run, when we need to make the muscles looser or more pliable, when we need to bring blood flow to an area, that’s when we want to apply heat.

For example, times when we want to bring blood flow to an area or where heat would be a potentially good thing like the I T. band injury scenario, we would heat the area first.

That’s because we want to make sure that the muscles in that area are warm.

Warmer muscles are more pliable, they’re easier to move around, there’s more blood flow so you’re going to get less potential inflammation there or irritation in the area because you’re adding the heat.

There are also injuries where the body has a difficult time getting blood flow to the area and blood is how the body heals itself.

For example, like an Achilles injury or perennial tendonitis, those types of injuries are in areas where the blood flow is difficult.

Heating those areas is very good because it contributes to the body’s ability to get blood to that area.

The blood is what contains the nutrients that are going to help heal the area. Those are the times when heating is good.

I hope that answered your question. I think that’s a good way to look at when we should be icing and when we should be heating, and give you some good general guidelines about that.

Hopefully, you are able to apply it to your particular injuries or particular question that you had about whether you should or should not ice.

That said I want to thank you guys all again for listening to this daily podcast. I’ll be back with you tomorrow with another question and I hope you have a fantastic run today. Thank you so much for listening.