Cooling after exercise with ice cold water is commonplace to help recovery from intense performance in human athletes. This is thought to decrease the pain & swelling associated with trauma after exercise & helps to initiate healing.

Your horse is an athlete too & after intense exercise, cooling legs with CRYOCHAPS is akin to the science of application in humans, which may promote a faster recovery & better performance for the next day, by addressing the heat build up and inflammatory response with cooling and compression. It is already common practice in many equine disciplines to ice or cold wrap the legs after exercise & competitions. Horses undergo specific fitness regimens for competition, application of CRYOCHAPS can become part of this routine to protect against injury. The other benefit is taking the heat out of legs that have been bandaged or booted for exercise. Studies have found that tendons like the superficial digital flexor tendon produce heat on exercise. The tendon is further insulated by boots and bandages, and without airflow, the temperatures could rise to dangerous levels which could lead to tendon cell death. Cryochaps again can be used immediately after exercise to decrease surface leg temperatures and help cool the leg.

Exercise is said to cause micro trauma, or tiny tears in tissues, like muscle, tendons & ligaments. By rapidly bringing tissue temperatures down this:

• constricts blood vessels hence flushing waste products, like lactic acid, out of the affected tissues
• decreases metabolic activity, slowing down the physiological processes that cause inflammation
• reduces swelling & tissue breakdown

Then, with rewarming after removal of CRYOCHAPS, the blood vessels vasodilate, increasing blood flow, speeding circulation, which further flushes out the unwanted waste, accelerating the healing process.

Human evidence suggests a water temperature of less than 10 °C & immersion time of 10-15 mins demonstrated the best results. Not all of us with horses have the ability to quickly put together an ice bath for a 400kg horse! CRYOCHAPS have been designed to recreate this environment to cover all major tendons & ligaments of the lower leg.

So all you have to do to benefit from cold therapy, is apply CRYOCHAPS immediately after exercise for 10-15 mins. See how to apply >