Wales to launches its own deep freeze ahead of the Six Nations Championship

Wales is to build a cryotherapy chamber at its rugby training base near Cardiff in time for next year’s Six Nations Championship.
Wales is to build a cryotherapy chamber at its rugby training base near Cardiff in time for next year’s Six Nations Championship. The players had previously been using cryotherapy in Poland and the recovery technique has helped them become one of the fittest teams in world rugby. The Welsh Rugby Union will fund the chamber which will be big enough to treat four or five players at a time.

The project is expected to cost several hundreds of thousands of pounds. Cryotherapy subjects players to temperatures of around -160°C and speeds up recovery by flushing lactic acid out of the system, thus increasing the amount of training the team can do in any one day. It also prevents inflammation and reduces pain, and is believed to be up to five times more effective than ice baths.

Wales are the only international rugby team to fully exploit cryotherapy as a training tool. The team intends to return to Poland for training purposes.