Cryotherapy, Hydrotherapy and other training recovery modalities: Effects on hormones’ balance and performance

Recovery modalities (RM) are an important aspect of training programmes, providing physiological benefits to athletes and enamelling them a homeostasis balance between training and competitions. Recovery allows the athlete to return to the state of performance readiness by restoring all the physiological parameters back to baseline levels (Barnett 2006, Reilly and Ekblom 2005, Gill et al. 2006). RMs have been largely investigated in regards to their ability to enhance blood lactate removal or to reduce exercise induced delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS) (Barnett 2006). The endogenous hormones influence the body’s adaptation to stress stimulus, therefore, investigating these hormones du…