Polish women emulate sports stars with cryotherapy-fueled workout

At a sports center in Spala, a town 60 miles southwest of Warsaw, a group of women step out from a 10-square-foot sealed chamber amid a cloud of ice-vapor. They are trying cryotherapy, a workout aid used by a growing number of international sports stars that entails standing in temperatures as low as -256 degrees Fahrenheit (-160 degrees Celsius).

According to Welsh rugby star Sam Warburton, cryotherapy is like an 'evil sauna'. The first time he stepped inside one of the oversized fridges in Spala last year, he recalled, one of his teammates freaked out and began banging on the door to get out. 

But the Wales team's unusual training methods seem to have paid off. Since they took up cryotherapy as part of their training regimen, they have powered into the World Cup semi-finals — their best performance since 1987 — and to the top of the standings in the Six Nations championship.

• Watch a video of the Welsh team testing out their new mobile cryotherapy unit

"Cryotherapy reduces inflammation" explains Adam Beard, the team's head of physical performance. "It dampens the nervous system, so it gives you that painless feel, and it allows you to flush toxins away from the working muscles pretty quickly, because obviously you're in extreme temperatures and the blood wants to move away from the limbs to regulate the core temperature," he told Agence France Presse.

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