Why is it reccomended to ice your legs even without an injury?

Question

People have been telling me to ice my legs. Is that only when they are sore or are there benefits to doing this otherwise?

This is for someone who is interested in xc and long distance running.

Answer 1

It's helpful to ice both when you're sore and just as "housekeeping". Icing your legs brings new blood to your muscles and improves circulation. You shouldn't ice an hour or so before your run and when you do ice, the most is 10 -12 minutes at a time and then 15 minutes off. Often after a rough running day or 2 days prior to a race, runners take what is called an ice bath. Immersing the legs up to the groin or so in ice cold water (not to the point of painful cold though) for 10 minutes and helps to refresh your legs.

Answer 2

I don't need to ice your legs. If you are not suffering from a injury why do it? If you cool down and stretch easy after running you should be fine. If you are sore it is because the muscles are slightly injured from the exercise, which is normal many times. There is no good reason to ice your legs.

Answer 3

I'm no expert on the subject of ice except as it relates to injury, but I'll go out on a limb here and say this is hocus-pocus. My common sense logic tells me that the purpose of icing is to slow down the flow of blood at an injury. Thus, if you assume that it will slow circulation to an injury then it will slow the flow of blood if there is no injury.

Legs heavy with lactic acid from a workout is not where I'd want to slow the flow of blood, thus slowing down the removal of lactic acid from the legs.

Answer 4

it prevents soreness. a good recommendation is to take rotating showers. first in cold for 15 minutes then hot for 15 minutes [loosens up your muscles], and so on. it relieves the stress that you put on them while running.