Why I Stopped Doing Cold Showers After Training

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Cold showers have a great reputation. You hear about them everywhere: recovery, testosterone, mental discipline. And some of that is true. But there is one detail that often gets left out of the conversation: timing matters. A cold shower before training is a completely different thing from a cold shower after training, and for a while I was close to making that mistake without realising it.

What I Was Doing and Why It Made Sense

I never actually used cold showers regularly after training. From the beginning something about it felt wrong, even before I had any science to back that instinct up. If my muscles had just worked hard and were still warm, dousing them in cold water immediately did not sound like a good idea.

Cold water had a different place in my routine. In summer especially, I would take a cold shower in the morning or before training. It refreshed me, improved circulation, and gave me energy before the session. I had also heard that cold water has a positive effect on blood pressure, which mattered to me personally. I had been diagnosed with hypertension by my doctor, and it runs in my family, so I was paying attention to anything that might reasonably help manage it.

Alongside cold water in the mornings, I also started taking WeightWorld Omega 3 (link) and WeightWorld Magnesium Glycinate (link) around this period, partly for the same reason. I cover how that side of things developed in more detail in Sauna After Every Workout.

But that was always morning or pre-training. After training, never.

When I Saw It Confirmed by Research

At some point I came across a post online saying exactly what I had suspected: cold water immediately after strength training works against muscle development. I searched Google Scholar to see if there was actual research behind it. There was.

During strength training, muscles heat up and expand. Blood vessels dilate to deliver more blood, oxygen, and nutrients to the working muscles. This is a natural recovery process that begins during the session itself and continues after it ends.

Cold water does the exact opposite. It causes blood vessels to constrict and muscles to tighten. You can feel the contrast physically, the skin pulls tight, the muscles tense up. In practice, you are interrupting a process that was designed to help you grow.

A 2015 study published in the Journal of Physiology examined exactly this. Twenty-one physically active men strength trained for twelve weeks, with one group using cold water immersion after each session and the other using active recovery. The results were clear: muscle mass and strength increased significantly more in the active recovery group. Type II muscle fibre cross-sectional area grew by seventeen percent in the active recovery group but showed no significant increase in the cold water group. The researchers concluded that regular cold water immersion after strength training blunts the activity of key proteins and satellite cells that drive muscle growth, and that athletes focused on building strength and muscle should reconsider using it as a post-exercise strategy.

Source: Roberts, L.A. et al. (2015). Post-exercise cold water immersion attenuates acute anabolic signalling and long-term adaptations in muscle to strength training. Journal of Physiology, 593(18), 4285–4301. https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1113/JP270570

The Testosterone Side of the Story

The muscle growth angle is the most well-known argument against cold water after training, but there is a second one that gets less attention: testosterone.

A study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology looked specifically at what happens to free testosterone and inflammatory markers after resistance training when cold water immersion is used versus passive recovery. Eleven resistance-trained men performed heavy squat sessions and then either used cold water immersion or rested normally. Blood samples were taken at multiple points after exercise.

The findings were significant. Thirty minutes after training, the normal recovery group showed a testosterone increase of around nine percent. The cold water immersion group showed essentially no increase, just half a percent. Sixty minutes after training, the cold water group’s testosterone had actually dropped below pre-exercise levels by over ten percent, while the normal recovery group stayed close to baseline. The study also found that cold water suppressed the cytokine response, which plays a role in the anabolic signalling that supports muscle adaptation.

In short: cold water after strength training not only interrupts the structural recovery process in the muscle, it also blunts the hormonal response that supports growth in the first place.

Source: European Journal of Applied Physiology (2019). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00421-019-04178-7

This confirmed something I had been observing myself, though I could not fully explain it at the time. I work rotating shifts, and I noticed that on days when I work the afternoon shift and train in the morning, I tend to have less energy and strength in the gym. On days when I work the morning shift and train after work, I perform better, I am more fed, more awake, and I take a cold shower before heading to the gym. The cold shower is one variable among several, so I would not draw firm conclusions from my own experience alone. But it fits the picture. Cold water before training seems to help. Cold water after training works against you.

My Real Morning Routine

I wake up at 3:50 AM for work. Managing sleep quality around rotating shifts is its own challenge that I wrote about separately in Shift Work and Training. One practical addition that made a real difference was a proper sleep mask, I use the Aosun Silk Sleep Mask (link), which blocks light completely when you need to sleep at unusual hours. If I wanted to fit a cold shower into a weekday morning, I would need to wake up even earlier, which simply is not happening. So weekday morning showers dropped out of my routine entirely. On weekends, when I have more time, I occasionally take a cold or at least lukewarm shower in the morning, and I do feel a real difference in energy and alertness for the rest of the day.

After training it is always warm water. Not hot, hot showers are not ideal either and I personally avoid them, but comfortably warm. The body relaxes, the muscles stay in an environment that supports recovery, and you are not working against the session you just finished.

Sauna Instead of Cold Water

This is where the sauna comes in. The combination of sauna followed by a warm shower after training feels noticeably better than any cold shower after a session. The heat from the sauna dilates blood vessels, improves circulation, and helps clear lactic acid from the muscles. A warm shower after the sauna rounds the whole routine off.

I have a personal reason for preferring this approach beyond just the muscle side of things. Alongside the hypertension, I also dealt with excessive sweating. I started using the sauna partly to see whether regular heat exposure would help regulate both. Over time, my blood pressure readings improved, my doctor now describes it as mild hypertension within a manageable range. I cannot say the sauna is responsible, and I would never suggest it as a medical solution. But in my case, the habit seemed to help, and it became something I genuinely look forward to after every session.

The Mental Discipline Argument

I understand it completely. Staying in a cold shower for more than a minute requires real character. It teaches you to push through discomfort, to adapt to conditions you did not choose, to stick to a decision even when it is unpleasant. That kind of repeated exposure to discomfort transfers to other areas of life: work, training, situations where you have to hold your position despite the pressure to give up. If someone takes cold showers specifically for that reason, I respect it entirely.

But if you are doing it after strength training expecting faster recovery and better results, two separate bodies of research now point in the same direction.

When Cold Water Actually Works

Before training or in the morning: absolutely. Refreshing, improves circulation, may support testosterone levels, gives you a mental boost for the rest of the day.

After strength training: better to skip it. Your muscles have just worked hard and need an environment that supports recovery, not something that constricts them, suppresses your hormonal response, and slows the whole process down.

This is one of those things that sounds counterintuitive until you understand the mechanism. Once you do, you do not go back.

The content on this blog is based on my personal experience and does not constitute medical, nutritional, or fitness advice. Always consult a qualified doctor or professional before making changes to your training, nutrition, or lifestyle.