Eddie Hall Reveals His Daily Cryotherapy & Red Light Heat Recovery Routine

We all have our own recovery habits that we try to stick to and the best athletes are usually the most consistent in taking care of the little things. 

Eddie Hall is no exception to that. The 2017 World’s Strongest Man winner recently recorded a video with CrossFit athlete Zack George from his training camp ahead of a debut boxing match against Hafthor Bjornsson.

Hall revealed some high tech kit that he uses every day to ensure his body can cope with his rigorous training schedule. 

The 33-year-old says he highly values the mixture of hot and cold treatments, sharing all the details of how he uses both. 

Combining Red Light Therapy With Physio

Hall showed George a red light therapy machine mounted above his physio table that emits both red light and infra-red light. 

Red light waves penetrate the skin to heat deep areas of muscle. It’s used as a recovery tool on its own, with advocates claiming it reduces muscle soreness and speeds up muscle repair. 

But Hall says he combines the red light therapy with treatment from a physio because he believes that by warming muscles up, a therapist’s work becomes easier.

With the muscles more relaxed, deep tissue massage techniques are more effective and the benefits are enhanced, according to Hall.

Cryotherapy Every Day

You might have seen elite athletes shivering their way into futuristic-looking steam machines.

Those are cryotherapy machines that use freezing temperatures to treat damaged tissue and speed up the recovery process.

A lot of world-class boxers use them, and Hall is a big advocate.

“In the morning, I’ll do weight training for two and a half hours, then come in here and do three minutes in this [cryotherapy machine],” he told George.

“And then I’ll have dinner, and afterwards the warming up process makes you sleepy. So after dinner, I’ll go to bed, have an hour and a half nap and then get up and do my boxing.”

Although Hall uses the high-tech machinery himself, he says you can’t beat traditional methods of getting exposure to extreme temperatures. 

“This [cryotherapy] is great because you can do it dry, you can do it quickly. But I still think hot and cold with a sauna and ice bath is the best way.”