Palm Cooling with CryoTherm Palm Improves Sprint Performance in Soccer Athletes
Published:
Authors: Therabody Scientists: Tim Roberts, MSc; Emily E. Munn, PhD, MEd; Rachelle Reed, PhD, MS, ACSM-EP
While competing in high-intensity sports, fatigue is inevitable. But how quickly it sets in can make the difference between solid and strong performance.
Soccer players face repeated bouts of explosive effort throughout a match, so managing fatigue is critical. Palm cooling has emerged as a promising recovery strategy, leveraging the hand's unique vascular anatomy to rapidly dissipate heat and help athletes sustain performance across efforts. [1]
A new study conducted at IMG Academy in partnership with the University of Florida puts Therabody's CryoTherm™ Palm to the test — measuring its impact on sprint performance, thermal perception, and perceived effort in highly trained U19 soccer athletes.
Here's what the study found.
Why test palm cooling for soccer athletes?
To test CryoTherm Palm in a real-world athletic setting, Therabody turned to its partners at IMG Academy — one of the world's premier training institutions for elite youth athletes. IMG Academy's partnership with Therabody gives athletes direct access to the tools and technology to perform and recover at the highest level.
Soccer is the most popular participatory sport in the world, with an estimated 240 to 270 million registered players globally. [2] It's physiologically challenging: the stop-and-go demands of the sport require repeated bursts of high-intensity effort. Previous research shows that palm cooling is particularly effective at enhancing performance during intense, intermittent efforts, making it a well-suited intervention for soccer players. [3]
What was the study objective?
The objective of the study was to evaluate whether cooling the palms between two 6 x 30-meter sets of sprints with the CryoTherm Palm device improved repeat sprint performance and reduced ratings of perceived exertion.
Who were the study participants?
22 highly trained male soccer athletes, all under 19 years old at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL were recruited and consented to the study.
How was the study conducted?
The study was conducted at IMG Academy. This study had a randomized crossover design, and participants were randomly assigned to the condition they would complete first.
Participants completed the assigned condition on their first visit (either palm cooling between sets of sprints or passive rest between sets of sprints). One week later, participants returned and completed the opposite condition.
All participants completed a brief, task-specific warm-up, delivered by the same IMG Academy coach at both sessions. Participants then completed 2 sets of 6 × 30-meter sprints with 20 seconds of passive rest between repetitions and approximately 3.5 minutes of rest between the two sets. The total protocol took about 10 minutes per visit.
During the palm cooling intervention, participants used the Therabody CryoTherm Palm between sets of sprints, set to 12° C (54° F) for 2.5 minutes. During the control condition, the device was placed on the palms but remained off (thermo-neutral).
What did the study measure?
The study included several validated measures of performance, including:
- Wellness and readiness: Hooper Index (sleep, stress, fatigue, muscle soreness) and Total Quality Recovery (TQR) data were collected before each session
- Thermal perception: Thermal sensation and comfort data were collected during and immediately after the intervention, using a validated survey tool
- Sprint performance: Velocity, split time, and total sprint time captured by Vald timing gates
- Physiological load: Heart rate via a chest strap
- Rate of perceived exertion (RPE): RPE was collected immediately after each sprint set — and a higher score indicates a greater perceived effort
What did the study find?
The study found that palm cooling with the CryoTherm Palm device helped improve athletes' repeated sprint performance, with significant results for top speed and sprint velocity. Palm cooling also helped athletes feel cooler and blunted the increase in perceived effort that accompanies sets of repeated sprints.
There were no significant differences in pre-session readiness & recovery
Prior to each session, all athletes completed validated assessments for recovery, sleep, stress, fatigue, and muscle soreness.
No significant differences were found between conditions across any readiness metric, meaning athletes arrived at testing in a comparable physiological and psychological state. This helps rule out day-to-day variation in readiness as a variable that impacts the performance outcomes observed.
Athletes reported feeling cooler after using CryoTherm Palm
Using the AHRAE validated survey tool, athletes rated how hot or cool they felt during and immediately after the intervention, and the comfort of their experience.
Thermal sensation was significantly lower during and after the palm cooling intervention — athletes reported feeling 60% cooler with CryoTherm Palm use.
Comfort scores did not significantly differ between conditions at any time point, suggesting that while athletes felt cooler after palm cooling, they felt comfortable overall.
Top speed and sprint velocity significantly improved when palm cooling was used between sets
Sprint performance was objectively assessed across 12 trials (2 sets of 6 x 30-meter sprints) using Vald timing gates.
Performance during the final 10 meters of a sprint tends to decline across repeated sprints as fatigue accumulates. When athletes used the palm cooling device, velocity declined by 6.9% from the first to the final sprint, compared to an 11.6% decline in the control condition. This equated to a preservation in sprint velocity of 4.7%.
There were no significant differences between the palm cooling and control groups in the acceleration (0–10m) or transition phases (10–20m).
The palm cooling device also preserved top-end speed quality. Athletes' top-end sprint velocity was 2.45% higher in the palm cooling condition, a statistically significant difference. While not statistically significant, athletes' split times trended faster in the final phase of each sprint.
Participants experienced a sharper rise in perceived effort without palm cooling
RPE rose to a greater extent in the control condition than after palm cooling. While not reaching statistical significance, the effect sizes indicate that palm cooling may have helped delay fatigue later in sprint sets.
Sprints felt harder by set 2, which is expected. But the degree to which effort perception increased was different: athletes without palm cooling experienced a sharper rise in perceived exertion as fatigue accumulated, despite completing identical workloads.
In the palm cooling condition, RPE increased by +0.62 from set 1 to set 2, a medium effect size, reflecting a moderate change in effort. In contrast, during the control condition, athletes’ RPE increased by +1.07 over the same period, a large effect size, supporting a notable increase in effort.
No significant differences in heart rate were observed
Heart rate was monitored continuously throughout both sets of sprints. No significant difference was found between conditions, confirming that athletes experienced equivalent physiological demand between the intervention and control conditions.
This shows that cardiovascular strain likely did not explain the performance benefits observed.
Key takeaways:
- Palm cooling with CryoTherm Palm helped preserve sprint velocity across repeated efforts, with a 4.7% advantage over the control condition by the final sprint
- Athletes using CryoTherm Palm maintained a 2.45% higher top-end sprint velocity compared to when they did not use palm cooling — a statistically significant difference
- Athletes felt 60% cooler after using CryoTherm Palm, while comfort scores remained similar between conditions
- Palm cooling slowed the rise in perceived effort between sprint sets
- Heart rate did not differ between conditions, suggesting that differences in cardiovascular load did not drive performance benefits
