Does Cold Pack Application to Calf Muscles affect Performance of 100 Meters Sprinter?-An Experimental Study

Ice application is a commonly used treatment modality in sports injuries. But immediately following the ice application there is a reduction in the muscle strength which may reduce the athletic performance. There is no data on how long an athlete should refrain from participating in an event, after the application of ice.

Pre test-Post test experimental study design.

To find out the effect of Cold pack application on the Calf muscles in the performance of 100 meters Sprinter.

100 meters track, Sports ground, Vels University, Chennai.

Cold pack was applied for 20 minutes on bilateral calf muscles, of 15 athletes after written consent. The performance was recorded in terms of time taken for a 100 meters sprint before ice application, immediately after ice application, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes after ice application on consecutive days.

Performance of 100 meters sprint measured in seconds.

The data was analyzed by ‘Repeated measures analysis of variance’ by STATA 10.0 software and found to be highly significant (p value <0.001). The mean value of pre cold performance was 15.056 seconds. The mean scores after the cold pack application measured as 5 subtests were, 15.523, 15.36, 15.391, 14.873 and 14.645 seconds respectively.

The results suggest that immediately after cold pack application there is a decrease in performance level of an athlete. The performance improves better than pre icing levels significantly at 45 minutes after the cold pack application and the best performance was at 60 minutes. Hence it can be concluded that an athlete should have at least a 45 minutes rest following cold pack application to achieve an optimal performance.