Investigating Muscle Repair in Response to Icing Therapy Post Eccentric Muscle Damage Exercise

The objective is to determine whether or not injured muscles that are subject to icing after eccentrically damaging exercise recover their strength quicker and/or have less muscle soreness than those that do not receive any icing treatment after damaging exercise and if any differences in effectiveness between two icing protocols exist. Baseline measures of peak torque of the dominant arm's elbow flexor muscles will be measured by concentric and isometric contractions prior to participants undergoing eccentric muscle damaging exercise. Participants will be randomly assigned into 3 different experimental groups of approximately 15 participants each. The first group will begin "Icing Protocol 1" at time 0 (or as close to). The second group will begin "Icing Protocol 2" six hours after their initial eccentric muscle damaging exercise. The remaining group will not receive any icing treatment; they are the control group. Participants will be brought back into the lab at specific post-exercise times (0h, 24h, 48h, 96h, and 7 days) to complete peak torque measures as they did with baseline measures prior to eccentric muscle damage. Measures of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) will also be taken at baseline and during scheduled follow up times for participants.