Body-Cooling Paradigm in Sport: Maximizing Safety and Performance During Competition

Abstract

Context: Although body cooling has both performance and safety benefits, knowledge on optimizing cooling during specific sport competition is limited. Objectives: To identify when, during sport competition, it is optimal for body cooling and to identify optimal body-cooling modalities to enhance safety and maximize sport performance. Evidence Acquisition: A comprehensive literature search was conducted to identify articles with specific context regarding body cooling, sport performance, and cooling modalities used during sport competition. A search of scientific peer-reviewed literature examining the effects of body cooling on exercise performance was done to examine the influence of body cooling on exercise performance. Subsequently, a literature search was done to identify effective cooling modalities that have been shown to improve exercise performance. Evidence Synthesis: The cooling modalities that are most effective in cooling the body during sport competition depend on the sport, timing of cooling, and feasibility based on the constraints of the sports rules and regulations. Factoring in the length of breaks (halftime substitutions, etc), the equipment worn during competition, and the cooling modalities that offer the greatest potential to cool must be considered in each individual sport. Conclusions: Scientific evidence supports using body cooling as a method of improving performance during sport competition. Developing a strategy to use cooling modalities that are scientifically evidence-based to improve performance while maximizing athlete's safety warrants further investigation. Keywords: cooling modality, body temperature, cooling rate, review Athletes competing in competitive sports strive to maximize athletic performance (increased strength, faster completion times in timed aerobic and anaerobic events, increased cognition in sport-specific skills, and increased exercise capacity in competitions of set time duration) to perform at the highest level. During competition, especially in the heat, it is not uncommon for athletes to reach body temperatures in the range of 39°C to 40°C, which could have negative effects on performance and increase the risk of heat illness. 1,2 To combat these potentially deleterious effects, athletes often use various body-cooling techniques to lower or mitigate the rise in body temperature during competition.There are currently 2 hypotheses that account for the negative physiological and performance effects that increasing body temperature has on athletic performance: the critical-temperature hypothesis and the anticipatory hypothesis. The critical-temperature hypothesis centers on the concept that the body will decrease intensity when body temperature reaches a "critical threshold" of 40°C to prevent exertional heat stroke (EHS) from occurring. 1,3,4 The anticipatory model states that the brain will anticipate the increase in body temperature and thus alter intensity during exercise to prevent body temperature from reaching unsafe levels. [5][6][7] In both theories, exe...

Chemically Activated Cooling Vest’s Effect on Cooling Rate Following Exercise-Induced Hyperthermia: A Randomized Counter-Balanced Crossover Study

“…Our findings support prior work investigating the efficacy of cooling vests on body cooling in individuals, in that the cooling rate we observed (0.06 °C·min −1 ) is in line with the cooling rates observed previously (range, 0.03–0.05 °C·min −1 ) [ 9 ]. Cooling vests provide a practical solution for body cooling in athletics due to their portability and ease of preparation [ 6 ]. Other cooling modalities with similar cooling rates include cold (4 °C) intravenous fluid infusion (0.07 ± 0.01 °C·min −1 ) [ 19 ] and rotating ice-wet towels on the head, neck, torso, and extremities (0.06 ± 0.02 °C·min −1 ) [ 20 ]; the former option can be limited by the presence of medical personnel and the latter option requires a continuous supply of ice-wet towels.…”

“…Evidence supporting the use of whole-body cold- water immersion is the 100% survival rate of EHS among 274 runners (age, 13–65 years; initial rectal temperature [T RE ], 40.0–42.8 °C) succumbing to this medical emergency during a summertime road race. [ 5 ] The superiority of whole-body cold-water immersion as the method of EHS treatment is supported by its ability to maximize convective and conductive body heat loss over a large body surface area at once [ 3 , 6 , 7 ].…”

Ethical dilemmas and validity issues related to the use of new cooling technologies and early recognition of exertional heat illness in sport

“…37 Further consideration and caution must be considered, bearing in mind that some of these garments seem to only create a perception of cooling without core temperature decrease. 34 Several companies have created new cooling wearable technologies during the last year, with some of the most novel and promising summarised in table 1. However, their cooling effectiveness in safety/performance is currently unknown.…”

Heat Stress During American Football

“…Furthermore, from a clinical perspective, the treatment of EHS requires immediate, aggressive, whole-body cooling using a cooling modality with a cooling rate >0.155 °C/min to ensure survivability from this medical emergency [9,11,12,48,49]. When considering body cooling options for optimizing performance, Adams et al provide three basic parameters that must be examined: what sport and type of activity (i.e., training or competition) is taking place, when is it most feasible to utilize body cooling (i.e., prior to competition, during competition, or during defined breaks such as half-time in competition), and what is the best cooling modality to use to elicit maximal benefit [50].…”