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now. Welcome back sports fans. Today we're going to be talking about kind of a new topic, I would say, in research and strength conditioning research that's about rapid thermal exchange, I think is the fancy name for it, but basically palm cooling or sole cooling. That's S -O -L -E, so foot cooling. Just so we're clear with that.
Tiana actually brought this to me and it's pretty fascinating and it's made me think a little bit more about how this could be applied and to really have creative solutions, maybe to find wins in the margins, if you will, with this type of topic. It's pretty cutting edge. It's honestly exciting to think about. Tiana, bring us the intro here. Sure. I came across this article through the NSCA and that's kind of what got me started down
this path. And then I've seen that, you know, some of the popular podcasters in the science realm have gone through some of this as well. So I was listening there and it's super interesting. You know, we're always looking for performance advantages at the highest level and especially ones that do not involve anything illegal. So this is a great place to start. And basically what what Zach mentioned here is the the cooling of either the palms or the soles of the feet.
And the theory here is that it can augment resistance training in a couple of different areas. But basically. It allows the CNS, so the central nervous system, to allow for increased excitation and motor unit recruitment in working muscles. So obviously the more motor recruitment you have, the better those lifts are. So this enhanced stimulation can create greater force production and the ability to also perform more repetitions
before reaching that level of fatigue. So basically the theory here is by decreasing body temperature overall, we're allowing for the muscles to do more work. So there's some other ways they go about saying what the reasons may be behind why this works. Some of those were possibly limiting the amount of blood lactate accumulation, but there's also been studies that that indicate
the contrary. So it's back and forth. There's a lot here left to be studied and, you know, we need a lot more research to actually determine the mechanisms behind why it may be working and what areas to best apply it. But it's a pretty interesting subject and something that you could easily test on your own, you know, and with relatively little equipment. So something worth exploring
for sure. Absolutely. So one of the things that I got from this just to give our audience a little more explanation here was why, why the palm, why the foot, because there are like special blood vessels in those areas that are close to the surface and allow the body to release heat.
They're also in the face was another Source that I got a hold of that also said that these these things exist in the face as well So it's like this special areas of the body where we're trying to release heat quickly so we can cool the body
down In town. I already mentioned like special things happening at the cell level There's a special enzyme that can kind of control You know the muscles ability to work at certain temperatures so you would want to cool down quickly in order to let's say be more efficient at the cellular level when you're doing physical activity so i mean there's a lot of different things happening at play here and that's kind of cool that we have technology to go into this and to be able
to try to understand it and utilize it for the profession. Well, and I think even that the palm and soul cooling as a mechanism to lower internal body temperature quickly is interesting because, you know, on the sidelines of games and things, usually you see people apply the cold pack or something to the back of the neck of the athlete, which I had read in the past, you know, that's not the most effective area is really is the
palms or the soles of the feet. But, you know, it's just been it's something that's always been done that way, I guess. And that's why they go to that area right now. But, and the armpits is another one you'll see a lot, but generally not face or hands. Well, yeah. I've definitely seen the back of the neck one, you know, when, when it's like really hot stuff outside. I mean, it's interesting to think about, I think if you
were like, I don't know. Throwing hammer right in your outdoors and you're trying to cool down in between throws or something I don't know.
Maybe you're doing multiple throws right and you're cooling down from one event to the next I think it's also fascinating for me to think about if you were to Use an ice bucket, you know and you directly put your hands or your feet in there does that mess with your ability to like grip the same or moved the same, which I thought was fascinating through the article where they had one of the groups like put their foot in an ice bucket, right? And then they did something
lower body related after that. So I also thought that that was fascinating from like a from like an ankle perspective. Like, does that change what you need to do? Right. They're doing this during rest times and now they've submerged in cold water. Have they thrown off the readiness, let's say of the ankle complex or the lower leg, you know, like do they need to warm up a little bit going into that, which is something I don't think was really talked about. It was rest time.
You do this and then you go and do the activity again, which I mean, as the one of the studies showed that they didn't talk about doing that and it didn't really say that it affected them in a negative way. So I also thought that was fascinating because let's say I was. between events and I have warmed up a little bit right and like I only I mean Based on the length of the research that I'm sure we'll get into the
rest times. Like I don't know that I Don't know how I'd go from ice bucket You know for several minutes into like I only have a couple more minutes before I go do this event again You know, like I think maybe there's a belief like there's a placebo mental effect to it or not But that was another thing they talked about We can talk about that in a little bit as well. How like placebo effects, you can't really lie to somebody whether or not they're getting this treatment. So it's
fascinating. Yeah. Hard to control this study in that way. And yeah, that made me think about like, obviously with MMA fighters, you see in between rounds where they would definitely need to cool the body temperature. They're taking
an ice bag and rubbing it on the chest. But I wonder how that would affect them if they already have bare feet if you could stick their foot in an ice bucket and then towel it dry real quick and would that affect their footwork or Any of their striking in any way or would that be like a huge advantage to cool that way? Absolutely.
Yeah, that's That's probably a better Find a better solution would be the vacuum system around the foot, you know Just so maybe there's not any moisture that could cause them to lose their footing or something like that Which is obviously could could be crucial, you know, if you slip an inch you might get you might be getting knocked out You know that punch, you know When you'd have a time protocol issue there because you only get yeah Between the rounds so there's no
way to extend that yeah so it would have to be effective whatever it looks very true very true well let's get into a little bit here about specific temperature wise um what do you what did you come across here you know think of as the best protocol to try and how to achieve that temperature because i know one of the biggest issues they ran across in these studies here was the method of cooling because obviously you could easily take a bucket of ice water in a gym and try this
out. But some of these studies used an actual glove type mechanism that they created that had water flowing through it to keep the palm at a certain temperature all the way throughout. And then like you were saying, that wouldn't actually create any sort of moisture issue. but it would cool the hand the same way. I don't know if that would affect your grip still based on temperature, but I don't know. What did you come across there when it comes to actual degrees
of cooling and the method of cooling? What I got from the degrees was probably about 10 to 15 degrees Celsius was the most effective, I think, in these studies. I personally would think that some type of controlled water flow glove or Boot I guess you would call it for the foot
Would probably be the best. I just think if you if you get an ice bucket and that's all you have that's fine but when I'm thinking about The practicality of it or you know when you're gonna use it like I don't know maybe use it in training and it's okay for you to have to take your sock off and Put your foot in and then have to dry your foot before you put your sock back on and then put your shoe back on You know and then go do the exercise which I think there are a lot for me
There's just a lot of steps there and I think they're gonna be There's gonna be a set amount of steps that happen out have to happen anyway, but if you could If you could cool in a more efficient Fashion where you don't have to dry off. I think that would probably just be better
for everyone, right? The thing that immediately comes to mind is game ready Where that controls water flow temperature I believe you can control pressure on it as well not like the research didn't really say anything about pressure so you wouldn't really need that but just to be able to Control that have you know, the water flow going right over at a consistent temperature, which would I think would be the best Time wise, what I think I saw, what I remember was about
two to three minutes was what their goal was for everybody to be within. So when you're going to actually do the protocol, two to three minutes of of the cooling and then you're you're out of there at that point. I think there were some like less than two minutes and it wasn't very successful. They had some I mean, I think they
had a couple of like back and forth. Articles that went between two three over longer than that, but I think based on the Discussion at the end about two to three minutes was what what they suggested So I think maybe that two and a half mark is probably what you should shoot for right? I mean, that's a pretty safe safe estimation right there in between their guidelines, but That's what I would say, but I think also thinking about sports and doing this It's hard.
That's a hard concept. I think for every sport to achieve, right? I mentioned the Between throwing events, right? Been to some track meets before where I've seen throwers There's a significant amount of time that could happen between each throw if there are a lot of participants But also like in between events, right? You could be You could throw one have a whole nother event go after you and not throw again for like a couple
of hours. So Is it even you know is even beneficial afterwards or you only focused on you know in between attempts in Events, you know, like I mean that's something to think about you're also gonna be if you're doing an outdoor championship That probably plays into trying to cool your body down a little more efficiently What I got from the study though was a lot more work capacity related and not necessarily like high force output related so That was it Aces Nation is a team
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Practicality is a big thing here too, right? So if you're working with a high level elite athlete that you're dedicated to their performance or a handful of them, then that's something too. That's you could get a game ready out by the court fields track, whatever it was, and try this or in the weight room with that athlete.
But when you've got a team full of football guys, you know, at the racks, I don't know how easy it would be to get everyone in a glove or a boot or whatever type of situation like that that involves a setup and, you know, a time commitment there in between on top of just dipping your hand in a bucket of water. So, like we were saying, it might not be the best method, but it sure would be a lot easier to set that up than it would be with all this, you know, expensive equipment.
Yeah, agreed. I mean, like things that that come
to mind. far as conditioning goes and like team setting is that I mean game readies have an adapter setting so you can split off and do two people up in one bucket right obviously you're gonna have to be close to ice and water because you're gonna have to refill that thing at some point and who knows how frequently you need to do that so there's a chance of spilling that might happen hopefully that's not done on a playing surface for the court setting or that scenario Another
thing I'm thinking about is like let's take soccer for instance substitutions don't happen Play is continuous, so you can't really use it in a game. If you're gonna use it in training, like in a practice setting, okay, you can do that because you're gonna have set breaks that you
could take and do that and maybe extend. Some people, you mentioned if you're just working with somebody individually, obviously way easier to do because you don't have to have as many pieces of equipment to do it or as many ice buckets or whatever. If you're doing it in only a training scenario, maybe trying to increase work capacity that will hopefully translate to the field. Let's take the yo -yo intermittent recovery test. Not any time in between for you to do that, right?
So when does that happen or how does that fit into your protocol? If you're doing other repeat sprint ability, layouts, assessments, and things like that. If there's a long break in between, you could be able to do that. The 300 -yard shuttle comes to mind. If you're doing multiple of those, you could do it in the five -minute recovery that you're going to have. Easy to do. If you're doing it outside, it's okay. You could probably, with your team, have a bunch of ice buckets or
one big tub that's to a certain... Hopefully to a certain degree, you know, if you're outside, obviously that's going to change and warm up the longer that you're outside. But if you're doing it, you can have the whole team and in the bucket, whatever. And then you don't have to worry about grip. You don't have to really worry about a mess happening because it's on
the field or whatnot. So I mean, it could work in certain settings, but I think that it's got to be, it's got to be pretty well thought out and it has to like actually make sense for like the layout. Again, for the reasoning, if you're not able to do it in games, then maybe you're only doing it in practice. Is there a benefit to even doing it in competitive scenarios? So
who knows? I think there are definitely a lot of questions to think about and arise from this topic, but maybe in a good way that makes you think towards what would be the best scenario for me to be able to utilize an enhancement like
this. And I do think that starting with, as you were saying, out on a field where you're doing repeat training of some sort, that would be a great way to test this because you have the environmental factor there and they know that, you know, for endurance purposes, cooling the internal temperature is going to allow you the increased work capacity.
So picturing a team out in a field, you know, on a field doing repeat sprints of some sort, and you're using that rest time to have everybody's hands in some ice water and seeing how that affects it, especially in an in an outdoor setting where you're dealing with heat. I think, you know, heat exhaustion is is super common. And I'm thinking about, you know, football, summer workouts or track fall training or where it's still really hot outside, but you're out there for a while.
I could picture there being a pretty good application
there for for that being effective. Yeah. I mean, especially if you're out there running the track, typically you have like a satellite athletic training facility that's nearby you know maybe it's only a tiny building that has water and ice in it right but like you're doing 150 repeat 150s you know like you're gonna have a little bit of time in between you know if you're doing repeats of any distance really for like short sprinters or even long sprinters but you're gonna
have time to do that. And I think the hand would just be such an easy thing to do is like, go sit down, you know, put your hand in the bucket for this amount of time. And then, you know, take the risk, your recovery, come back up, you
know, whatever. So I think definitely it fits in certain scenarios, but I'm sure I mean, like as, as all these research things say, like more research is needed, you know, there are different applications that weren't tested in this review, like we talked about this was mostly resistance training, which I think is good. I think I would use it less in resistance training versus performance training, if you will, or like conditioning, I guess. I would lean towards that, to be fair.
I don't know if you could speak on a little bit. I know that they talked about one of the problems with these different studies so far is the way that they were measuring muscle activation. post this cooling protocol and the fact that it was different across different studies. So do you have kind of an idea or a way that you think measuring the results of this would be best in order to figure out if it's really effective
or not? I mean, I think when you get studies that or systematic narrative or a meta analysis, you're gonna pull in a lot of different studies that meet the main criteria, but also like kind of vary on the protocol and equipment used, even though all of it may be verified in scientific research. I think it's just kind of hard to, you have to take it at a certain value because
it's not all the same. not everyone have the same protocol, the same time of day, the same whatever, different conditions are happening. So you have to manage your expectations, I guess, and think about it like how could this be beneficial to my setting? I think sometimes if you only have topical. EMG stuff, then that's what you have to do. If you have EMG capabilities that
are intramuscular, then even better, right? If you can stick a prong between somebody's muscle there into someone's muscle and actually read some of those electrical outputs, it's even better. But again, I think that I would use this outside of the weight room more often than inside of
the weight room. Mean I Just don't know Not often like I'm thinking about game readies right from my set scenario right now game ready seems to be the best option for us probably not as common or Feasible for me to just move game readies into the weight room and have to worry about going to get ice and water and stuff right typically When you have like a practice there's already water and ice that's already been put into a big cooler right so you could just have another
cooler that's specifically dedicated to those game ratings right so maybe you usually have one cooler with water and ice and it's up on you know whatever so you can get you know fill up your cup or whatever and take a drink well maybe you have another cooler that the spout is i don't know turned upside down or something and you uh have it on the floor or have it a little bit lower so you can scoop ice and water in and out of this thing more readily or something
like that. You know, I think just for the logistics of it, if you will, it doesn't make sense to me to bring that stuff in and out of the weight room. Sure, it's cool in the lab. And I know that the vacuum one, I've seen the version of a vacuum one which looked like a game ready, but had some other stuff on top of it from Stanford from a few years ago. That one like that looks like a lab setting piece of equipment to me,
you know, it's different. There's different like everyday weight room equipment is not the same as laboratory equipment. You know, it's sometimes a little bit different and either takes more time or more knowledge and skills. And you don't necessarily always have the means to do all that stuff all the time. So I would I would personally probably use the information from the study more
for fitness qualities. Yeah. So I think same applies to, as you're saying, like specific equipment for measurement and things inside of a study versus, you know, practical nature of it out in the wild in athletics. And there is something to be said for the fact that this is easy to
try. And if you try it out and it works great and you're getting good results in your training from your kids, uh why not maybe it's not the exact same temperatures as it's supposed to be throughout the entire workout the buckets warming up out in the sun or whatever it is but if it's working um and it's getting you some good results every week why not you know it's not going to hurt anything in this situation agreed agreed um if it's okay i want to i want to lay out my
thoughts of like how i would use this like immediately what I thought of when I read this and how I could use it in sports setting like practically that other people you might be able to use it you know you might be limited on how many people can participate at once but so I get that it's probably more conducive to need rapid thermal exchange or cooling outside rather than inside however Sports that we deal with don't necessarily have the timeframes that match up with what could
be Beneficial based on what I read from the literature, right? So my thought was to use it with basketball Reason being is that the game readies could be? located Really close to where the athletes couldn't would need them Media timeouts happen about every four minutes And they last a couple of minutes, right? I mean, they're not they're not extensive, but I think you could get to two minutes of using of cooling, at least. I don't think it would
take. It wouldn't take much, right? So media time out, you go sit down on the bench, you've got game readies, right? Like behind those seats that maybe they could be under the seat, you know, where it's kind of protected by like where you rest your feet and whatnot, you know, all that jazz. athletes could get hooked up and they could still listen to the coach. They've got one hand free where they could hydrate if they needed to, right? So like there's an opportunity
to do multiple things at once. You could have team managers, assistant coaches, athletic trainer, hook those people up, you know, as they get to the sideline. So once it's, you know, dedicated, immediate timeout, boom, you know that, hey, all right, we're going to get hooked up here.
It probably doesn't take very long to Set them to a certain temperature and you can certain, you know set them So I don't even know if they have Bluetooth Capabilities to like hey I've turned them on and you can program it to do it like from your phone So you don't have to like sit there and do it. I don't know what those capabilities are but I feel like, and you can do that multiple times throughout the game, right?
Like you're going to have multiple media timeouts and you're going to have an opportunity to do it. So they're going to go all out for around four minutes or so with intermittent bouts. And then they have the opportunity to cool. I think that maybe that could increase the work capacity of those players, you know, within those timeframes. And honestly. Having the 10 to 15 degrees Celsius.
Obviously I can convert it if I need to have it's in Fahrenheit the time frame I think the availability as far as like when your players could use it how often could they use it and We could test it right? I think that that's awesome that we would be able to do it I think that for our situation though our sample size would be very small we're gonna be limited to like two
hand coolers and two foot coolers. Now, my thought on the foot may be different and it may not align with any results, but I talked about taking the sock off and then have, you know, so shoe off, sock off, you know, apply thing, get done, sock on, shoe on, probably have to retie your shoe. So like there's some time that comes with it. My thought was just to wrap up with the like ankle strap that Game Ready has, keep the sock on because it's not going to you know, create
any like outside moisture to the sock. And then maybe that would be an easy way to just put the sock on, still get some cooling happening at the, you know, at the sole or at the foot and then be able to put your shoe on more easily and not have to worry about anything else like that. I mean, like, I don't know if your foot's sweaty, you take your sock off and you're going to put the same sock back on. One, it's it's
like unappealing, right? Two, it typically is a little bit harder to put that sock back on because your foot was a little like sweaty. So maybe we can minimize some of that. I don't know some of that situation that where people are uncomfortable, you know, or maybe it's just a little more difficult than it needs to be. That's that's my thought is it could be you're going to scrimmage in practice. Maybe you're going to scrimmage a team, you know, like another team.
and it's just for preseason or something. Easy to test out at that point, right? If you've got game readies, easy to test out of whether or not that person actually did better. Maybe their RPE was a little bit better. If it's a fitness assessment, like we've got a protocol of repeat sprintability, excuse me, right now where I've gotten that from research. We're able to apply it. It's got a long rest time. It's got five minute rest time in between the three bouts of
sprints. And that's a perfect time for us to do it twice and see if the coinciding assessment or reps were affected positively or negatively or not at all. So I mean, I'm definitely planning
to. to do a small very small study with some of my returners you know two randomly are going to use the hand cooling two randomly are going to use the foot cooling and then i'll have four people who won't be doing it again or doing either of them so obviously there's there's going to be potentially placebo effect for the people who are cooling hopefully not Hopefully it's not like drastically, you know, I mean what if it is and maybe I want it to be drastically better
But I don't know that there's just something I'm gonna work through that I think could be beneficial right if it again if it gives us Not necessarily purely leading to a win, but let's say Somehow it could Calculate or equate to one win. I think it's worth it, right? Everyone's trying to get one more win Yeah, any little progress
is progress. Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, so I mean, I think there's some further research as always that could be done to really solidify this method as one that's going to enhance performance and there's always things to consider in standardizing. the protocols and getting larger groups of participants to test with and controlling the cooling and the amount of time we're cooling. But and as
you said, the placebo effect. But, you know, we all can be little scientists when it comes to this and do our own studies and see what works for everyone. So agreed. I mean, I would just say, look, I really am serious about the looking into it and actually Putting forth some research, so I'll be talking to people that are smarter than me in research and try and put together, you know, like a plan to actually get this out to see if it actually works. So somebody beats
me to it. You heard it here first. Yeah, I'm here to get the I'll get credit. Yeah, the patent out for your Bluetooth. game ready if they don't have it that way already? I would assume they have something that can do that already though. Okay. Yeah, that was this awesome article and really really thought -provoking for me in general. It's like how this could really be beneficial and how could I use this? Definitely. Thanks everybody for listening. I hope you found something
out of it. Let us know your thoughts on how you would use it, whether or not you think it's actually beneficial. Tiana did a great vlog. on the article so check that out acesnation .org backslash blog. You can check that out of her thoughts initially on this and here we are again just kind of sharing more thoughts about it on the podcast. So Tiana thank you for bringing that to light and bringing that you know across my desk if you will so that I was able to see it and really kind of run with
the idea. It's awesome. Yeah I love your insights and can't wait to see what you do with the research. Thanks, everybody. We will catch you on the next one.