Post‐exercise cold water immersion attenuates acute anabolic signalling and long‐term adaptations in muscle to strength training
L. Roberts, T. Raastad, J. Markworth, V. Figueiredo, I. Egner, A. Shield, D. Cameron-Smith, J. Coombes, J. Peake · 2015 · Journal of Physiology
This randomised parallel-group trial in 24 physically active young men reported that cold water immersion after each strength training session attenuated acute anabolic signalling and blunted long-term muscle adaptation relative to active recovery. The extracted evidence confirms matched-pair randomisation but provides no detail on allocation concealment, blinding of outcome assessors, attrition, or pre-specification of the reported outcomes, so most RoB 2 domains cannot be resolved. Participants necessarily knew which recovery they received, which is relevant to the performance and self-reported outcomes but is not documented here.
What was extracted
| Design | Not reported |
| Participants | not reported |
| Population | Not reported |
| Outcome measured | Not reported |
| Funding | Not reported |
| Read from | full-text |
| DOI | 10.1113/JP270570 |
Risk of bias
Assessed with RoB 2, the instrument for this design, from the full-text. Overall: Some concerns.
| Domain | Judgment | Reason given |
|---|---|---|
| Randomisation process | Some concerns | Participants were matched for strength and lean body mass and one of each pair randomly assigned to cold water immersion or active recovery, but the method of sequence generation and whether allocation was concealed are not described in the extracted evidence. |
| Deviations from interventions | No information | The extracted methods say nothing about blinding of participants or trainers, adherence to the assigned recovery modality, or the analysis population (intention-to-treat vs per-protocol). |
| Missing data | No information | No data on dropouts, completion rates, or availability of outcome data for the 24 randomised participants were extracted. |
| Measurement of outcomes | No information | Nothing was extracted about who assessed the strength, body composition and molecular outcomes or whether assessors were blind to group allocation, and the inherent impossibility of blinding participants to immersion is not addressed. |
| Selection of the reported result | No information | No trial registration, pre-specified analysis plan, or protocol information was extracted, so it cannot be judged whether the reported anabolic-signalling and adaptation results were selected from multiple measures or time points. |
Assessed by claude-opus-5 · self-reported confidence 0.66 · standard v2. Not verified by a human reviewer.