Strenuous here means lifting your one rep max, running 20 miles, breaking a personal best sprint time, that sort of thing.
I can attest from personal experience that ice bath right after exercise works in these cases. I’ve even tested it by icing just one leg and not the other. There is a marked difference in recovery by next day.
Ideally you ice the muscles right after workout then put them in a compression clothing so they’re extra warm for the next several hours.
Imagine you could perfectly recover with some intervention. Then weight lifting no longer works!
For examples like the ones you listed, peak performances where you’re not concerned about gainz and maybe even have to perform again soon after, it makes a lot of sense to do anything to recover quickly.
- hypertrophy to actually gain strength and muscle (ie. longer recovery time)
- maximum recovery to heal from a strenuous exercise and be ready for more the next day (ie. shortest possible recovery time)
In the second scenario, I don't care about gaining strength at all, and the recovery is the only important aspect.
The stress response is literally the point of working out, you won’t get adaptation without stress.
Sometimes that’s undesirable, ie if you’re in the middle of a competitive league and need to reduce stress post-game. In which case, ice away.
For running specifically I’m not trying to make my legs stronger, I’m improving cardio. I need the legs to be in good shape for tomorrow’s hard run :)
