Effects of Warm Tub Immersion Versus Cold Tub Immersion to Relieve Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness in Division 2 Collegiate Baseball Players

In our study we looked at the effects of warm tub immersion versus cold tub immersion to relieve delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) in Division II collegiate athletes. We chose to research this topic because we are a group of three senior Athletic Training students and have seen the use of Cold Tub Immersion in everyday modality interventions to treat DOMS. In recent years there has been controversy over if Cold Tub Immersion is best patient care or if possibly implementing Warm Tub Immersion would be more effective in treating DOMS. Although there is a vast amount of literature examining the effect of Cold Tub Immersion to decrease DOMS, there is very little research comparing Warm Tub Immersion and Cold Tub Immersion. Therefore, we pursued this research project in attempt to discover the possible implementation of Warm Tub Immersion as an alternative or even preferred treatment of DOMS. Our methods included reaching out to Cedarville University spring sport athletes who were currently in their off season to ask for volunteers. We received seventeen volunteers, held an informational meeting, volunteers signed a consent form, then we began our study. We randomly split the participants into three groups; warm tub, cold tub, or control group. Before practice they were pretested with a rating 0-10 scale of perceived level of soreness, jump height, and peak hamstring/quadriceps strength. The volunteers next participated in their workout/practice then came back down for their assigned intervention. We did this routine every day for five consecutive days of pretest, practice, then intervention. The results of our study showed that there are no significant differences between cold tub immersion, warm tub immersion, and the control group in trying to relieve DOMS. In other words, we found no evidence suggesting that cold tub immersion or warm tub immersion had any effect on DOMS. With all this being said further research still should be completed to see about the creatine kinase levels in the blood, which is another factor of DOMS, to determine if either intervention has a greater effect on lowering those blood levels