Why I ended up taking the coldest of showers at the Elite Sports Performance Expo

Unless you live a very different kind of existence, it’s not every day you find yourself stripping off at the Elite Sports Performance Expo. Fortunately, I’d picked quite early on Thursday morning to do the striptease that nobody asked for, and it’s not the first time I’ve had to get naked in the line of duty. And technically this wasn’t naked. For protection, my extremities are covered, so I was wearing my underwear, some thick protective socks and gloves that looked suspiciously like oven mitts. I’ve never looked more desirable, I can assure you.

These are the preparatory steps you must make before stepping into a cryotherapy chamber. Although the first chamber was built in Japan back in the 1970s to treat arthritis, it’s really catching on now in sport. There were plenty of cryotherapy experts displaying their wares, and this particular demonstration was courtesy of Cryopod, who succeeded in chilling my 80% naked form down with a nippy blast of -122˚C liquid-nitrogen vapour. Amazingly, it’s not as cold as it sounds like it would be – certainly not as unpleasant as a cold shower or walking into a lake to retrieve a wayward drone, say. I did make the mistake of trying to look down at one point, though, only to get a face full – you really shouldn’t do that, which is why you’re supposed to wear a mask if it’s full body treatment you’re getting.

Another of the exhibitors, Cryoniq, tell me that both Arsenal and Leicester City use their cabins, but the really interesting story is across the pond in the United States. The Dallas Mavericks – one of the first basketball teams to embrace the technology – won their first championship in history with an older-than-average squad using a Cryoniq chamber. They subsequently described cryotherapy as their secret weapon, and promptly lost their advantage when everyone else in the league followed suit.  

So, how and why does it work? Think of it as a more advanced and controlled form of the ice bath. As an athlete, your muscles are exhausted and need recovery time before they can perform at their normal peak level. Cryotherapy reduces the amount of time before you’re firing on all cylinders again by reducing inflammation, reducing lactic acid and activating a response from your central nervous system. In other words, it allows the body to heal itself more efficiently, although obviously staying at this kind of temperature for extended periods wouldn’t be advised – generally, cryotherapy sessions last between two and three minutes before you’re returned to room temperature.

Later, when completely defrosted (and dressed, you’ll be pleased to hear), I attended a talk by sports scientist Ben Dixon, who has been working with Watford FC since 2008, and oversaw the introduction of cryotherapy at the club during the 2015/16 season. “In 2014, we had a bit of a disappointing season, and as a result of that we evaluated everything we were doing. It was my job to evaluate the recovery strategies between matches,” he explains.

Reviewing the scientific literature, Dixon and his colleagues decided there was enough out there to trial cryotherapy – in terms of muscle recovery, improved sleep and increased testosterone, among other markers.

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The club decided to use whole-body cryotherapy at the club the following season – where football fans will be aware that they were promoted to the Premier League. Delighted with the results, the club installed a permanent unit at the training ground for their maiden Premiership season, where they finished a respectable 13th place.

Following this, in the 2015/16 season Watford’s stats look promising, although obviously other factors might be involved. They had 26 injuries over the season, compared to a league average of 50.7, and they missed 883 days compared to a league average of over 1,000. On the pitch, high-intensity distance, sprint distance and number of sprints outdid the league average too. As ever in science, of course, correlation isn’t necessarily causation – something Dixon is extremely aware of. “There are a lot of variables that affect these stats – for example, injuries, the number of matches, the age of your squad or injury history – not to mention that, in football, technical and tactical areas of the game have a massive influence.”

I hear other benefits through the expo. The magic of cryotherapy can allegedly help improve everything from skin quality to metabolism – I can’t say I really felt the benefit from my brief session, although that might explain the small crowd that gathered round the chamber while I was inside, I suppose.

As you might imagine, this kind of technology doesn’t come cheap, and I hear quotes of £35,000 plus per chamber. So while that may be pocket change to most Premiership football clubs (Chelsea’s wage bill hit £215.6 million last year, and Watford spend £29 million on top of their cryotherapy running costs), the benefits are likely well beyond the reach of you and me, especially when you consider the regular liquid-nitrogen canister deliveries you need to keep the whole thing running.

But for sports professionals always looking for the micro gains? Well, £35,000 seems like a bargain for something that could prove to be the difference between winning and losing when Saturday comes.