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From iced towels to air fans, how Emma Raducanu’s cooling strategies can help your workouts too

Emma Raducanu uses an ice towel and cold air blower to cool down between games - Getty
Emma Raducanu uses an ice towel and cold air blower to cool down between games - Getty

Amid the forensic analysis of Emma Raducanu’s shock US Open triumph, many observers spotted her use of ice towels and air fans to cool down during rest breaks.

Athletes deploying mid-exercise cooling strategies – known to sports scientists as “per cooling” – is increasingly common. At the sweltering Tokyo Olympics, athletes used cooling wrist wraps, ice vests, ice socks and UV parasols. Some elite runners pre-spray their vests with cold water to enhance their body’s sweat evaporation response and Tour de France cyclists fill women’s tights with ice cubes and stuff them down the backs of their jerseys.

And with good reason. A recent review of body-cooling strategies, published in the health journal Temperature, found that mid-exercise cooling strategies typically deliver a 9.3 per cent performance improvement.

According to Professor Mike Tipton of Portsmouth University’s Extreme Environments Research Group, who helped Team GB athletes to prepare for the Tokyo Games, keeping cool during exercise can boost performance. “We know that if the body temperature goes up too high it impairs both your physical and mental performance,” he explains.

Overheating will negatively affect the performance of your muscles, lungs, heart and circulatory system, play havoc with your motivation, concentration and focus, and impair your energy levels. “When people overheat, their fine motor skills and complex cognitive abilities get impaired so they make poor decisions,” adds Tipton. “Any athlete will be negatively impacted by discomfort and that combination of physiological and psychophysiological impairment is important. So there are some really good reasons for people to keep their body temperature under control when they exercise.”

Heather Watson of Team GB attempts to keep cool by putting an ice pack on her head during the Tokyo Olympics - Getty
Heather Watson of Team GB attempts to keep cool by putting an ice pack on her head during the Tokyo Olympics - Getty

Tipton says that heat acclimatisation, good hydration protocols and loose clothing remain the most effective ways for athletes to keep cool when exercising in hot conditions, such as on muggy days or in hot gym classes. But mid-exercise cooling strategies like those used by Raducanu also offer two invaluable strategies. “One is for body cooling, where you try to keep your body temperature within the normal range, and the other is more for comfort in the heat,” explains Tipton. “Which body parts you cool, and how you cool them, will vary depending on which one of those two you’re going for.”

To achieve the first goal – cooling the entire body – Raducanu would have ideally stood in front of a powerful floor fan or immersed herself in cool water. Tipton’s research has shown that cooling your torso, arms and legs in front of a basic fan is even more effective than wearing an expensive liquid-cooled vest. But using whole-body fans or cold water immersion would be impossible mid-match. Instead, Raducanu made use of the cool air blower provided to all players at the US Open – an IcyBreeze portable air conditioner which can produce cooling air currents at speeds of up to 25mph.

A much simpler alternative for amateur athletes is to immerse their hands in cool water during workouts. Tipton says that hand cooling strategies have been deployed by Team GB athletes at the last four Olympic Games. “Hand immersion is very good for whole body cooling because your hands have a lot of blood flow going to them, and you deliver a lot of heat to the hands when you get hot,” he says. “So if you put your hands into cold water you can lose as much heat through your hands as you would by wearing an ice vest. You could also just carry a cold drink to hold in your hand, or take some ice water to dip your hands into.”

The second goal of cooling – to improve your comfort in the heat – is also important. Raducanu was seen wrapping an ice towel (a simple bag of ice sealed inside a towel) around her neck. Other people use wearable neck fans or cooling wraps, which are readily available online. “Cooling of the neck tends to be about comfort,” says Tipton. “Neck fans and ice towels have a lower cooling capability but they will still make you feel cooler.”

Your face, in particular, has multiple sensitive thermo-receptors distributed across it, which is why splashing cool water on it feels so refreshing. The neck is also a highly temperature-sensitive region, possibly because of its close proximity to the thermoregulation centre at the base of the brain: research in the Journal of Athletic Training has shown that when runners cool their necks they experience a lower sense of fatigue so they can exercise for longer.

Although some athletes use cooling techniques before they exercise, Tipton does not advise amateur athletes to follow them. “Pre-cooling (is tricky because the body immediately starts to defend against a fall in temperature by raising your body temperature, so it’s not straightforward,” he explains. “Pre-cooling also uses up the energy that you want for exercise.”