Cycling Only 10 Min After Workouts Promotes Recovery as Effectively, Cheaper and More Conveniently Than Ice Baths

Active recovery in the form of light intensity exercise, such as walking or cycling on a cycle ergometer may be suitable for every exercise modality and is not more or less effective than the much fancier but rareley available cold water immersion therapy

Cold water immersion and active recovery are common post-exercise recovery treatments you've read about before at the SuppVersity. With the publication of the latest study from the Queensland University of Technology, this is yet the first article to discuss a comparison of both recovery methods in a nine trained male individuals - a study that shows "that cold water immersion is no more effective than active recovery for minimizing the inflammatory and stress responses in muscle after resistance exercise" (Peake. 2016).
But how do Peake et al. know that? Well, the researchers compared the effects of cold water immersion versus active recovery on inflammatory cells, pro-inflammatory cytokines, neurotrophins and heat shock proteins (HSPs) in skeletal muscle after a standardized intense resistance exercise.

"The resistance training sessions for the two experimental trials were identical and involved single-leg exercises such as 45° leg press (six sets of 8–12 repetitions), single-leg squats (three sets of 12 repetitions), knee extensions (six sets of 8–12 repetitions), and walking lunges (three sets of 12 repetitions). The total duration of the session was ~45 min" (Peake. 2016).

Five minutes after the workout, the subjects either jumped into an inflatable (ice-)bath (iCool iBody, iCool, Miami, Australia) for 10 min (both legs immersed in water up to the waist) or they performed 10 min of active recovery at a self-selected low intensity (on average a meager 36.6 ± 13.8 W) on a stationary cycle ergometer (Wattbike, Nottingham, UK).

Figure 1: Post-exercise changes in CD66b+ neutrophil infiltration, CD68+ macrophage infiltration, and MAC1 and CD163 mRNA expression. Data are presented as the change in the median +/- interquartile range for neutrophils and CD163 mRNA, and the geometric mean +/- 95% confidence interval for macrophages and MAC1 mRNA. ACT, active recovery; CWI, cold water immersion. n = 9. * P < 0.05 versus pre-exercise value (Peake. 2016).

Muscle biopsies were collected from the exercised leg before, 2, 24, and 48 h after
exercise in both trial to access the intramuscular neutrophil and macrophage counts, as well as the inflammatory markers MAC1 and CD163 mRNA, IL1, TNF, IL6, CCL2, CCL4, CXCL2, IL8 and LIF mRNA expression (P<0.05); and the analysis of this data, as well as creatine kinase, subjective feelings of hyperalgesia, the expression of NGF and GDNF mRNA and the levels of B-crystallin and HSP70 showed no difference between the two recovery treatments.
I guess, that's, figuratively speaking, an accolade for the simplest recovery technique there is: low(est) intensity exercise, a recovery modality of which previous studies have shown that it will (a) significantly reduce your blood lactate concentration after various activities (Rontoyannis. 1988) and (b) increase your performance after workouts such as the parallel squat workout in a Y2k study by Corder et al. (2000), the HIIT workout in Connolly, et al. (2003), the supra-maximal exercise tests in Spierer, et al (2004 | see Figure 2), the swimming protocols in Toubekis' 2008 study, or the 2007 resistance training study by Anna Mika et al. who concluded that "the most appropriate and effective recovery mode after dynamic muscle fatigue involves light, active exercises, such as cycling with minimal resistance" (Mika. 2007).

Figure 2: The 2004 study by Spierer et al. is also interesting, because it shows that the benefits of active recovery on the performance and perceived fatigue after supra-maximal exercise tests may vary according to the training status of the study subjects; with less trained or simply sedentary subjects benefitting more (Spierer. 2004).

Now, Peake et al. are certainly right, when they point out that their "findings indicate that cold water immersion is no more effective than active recovery for reducing inflammation or cellular stress in muscle after a bout of resistance exercise," there's one thing that will have to be done in the future: a comparison of active vs. ice-tub recovery on the longitudinal adaptational response (VO2max, power, strength, hypertrophy) to various training modalities. After all, any modulation of the post-exercise inflammatory response, be it via cold water immersion or light exercise, could exert detrimental effects on your "gainz" (in the broadest sense of the word) - the only pertinent study by Yamagashi, however, shows that this is not the case and using an active recovery protocol at 40% of V̇O2peak significantly enhances, not impairs, the endurance adaptations to HIT (Yamagashi. 2016).
References:

• Barnett, Anthony. "Using recovery modalities between training sessions in elite athletes." Sports medicine 36.9 (2006): 781-796.
• Connolly, Declan AJ, Kevin M. Brennan, and Christie D. Lauzon. "Effects of active versus passive recovery on power output during repeated bouts of short term, high intensity exercise." J Sports Sci Med 2.2 (2003): 47-51.
• Corder, Keith P., et al. "Effects of Active and Passive Recovery Conditions on Blood Lactate, Rating of Perceived Exertion, and Performance During Resistance Exercise." The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 14.2 (2000): 151-156.
• Marqués-Jiménez, Diego, et al. "Are compression garments effective for the recovery of exercise-induced muscle damage? A systematic review with meta-analysis." Physiology & behavior 153 (2016): 133-148.
• Mika, Anna, et al. "Comparison of recovery strategies on muscle performance after fatiguing exercise." American journal of physical medicine & rehabilitation 86.6 (2007): 474-481.
• Peake, Jonathan M., et al. "The effects of cold water immersion and active recovery on inflammation and cell stress responses in human skeletal muscle after resistance exercise." The Journal of Physiology (2016).
• Rontoyannis, George P. "Lactate elimination from the blood during active recovery." Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness 28.2 (1988): 115-123.
• Spierer, D. K., et al. "Effects of active vs. passive recovery on work performed during serial supramaximal exercise tests." International journal of sports medicine 25.02 (2004): 109-114.
• Toubekis, Argyris G., et al. "Swimming performance after passive and active recovery of various durations." Int J Sports Physiol Perform 3.3 (2008): 375-386.
• Yamagishi, Takaki. "Role of active and passive recovery in adaptations to high intensity training." (2016).