How Often Should You Do Cryotherapy?

The honest answer is that it depends on what you're using it for.

Just did something brutal, like a race or a hard week of training? Go 2 to 3 times over the next couple of days, then stop. Using cryotherapy as a regular recovery habit? Most people land around 2 to 3 sessions a week. Following a clinical protocol for something specific? Those run much denser, sometimes daily.

Those numbers look like they contradict each other, but they don't. Each one comes from research built to answer a different question, so there's no single "right" frequency that fits everyone. And there's one thing worth knowing no matter which camp you're in: your body gets used to cold faster than you'd expect, which quietly changes how often you should actually go.

Why "How Often" Depends on Your Goal

Whole body cryotherapy puts you in extremely cold, dry air for a few minutes. That sharp drop in skin temperature appears to set off a bodywide response: your blood vessels tighten, your body releases a burst of adrenaline and related stress hormones (catecholamines), and your inflammation signaling shifts.¹ We understand that part reasonably well. What's still up in the air is how much cold any given result actually needs.

The 2021 consensus paper is blunt about it: cryostimulation "should not be a one-size-fits-all approach." Part of why studies disagree, the authors say, is that researchers used wildly different doses on wildly different people.¹ They also make a point worth repeating: too little cold won't do much, and too much can actually be harmful.¹ More is not automatically better here.

So there are really three different questions hiding inside "how often should I do cryotherapy," and each one has its own answer.

Most people want that last row, and it's the one with the least science behind it. Anyone who quotes you a precise weekly number for general wellness is stretching protocols that were built to answer something else.

Recovery Use: a Short, Front-Loaded Cluster

If you ran a race on Saturday or just finished a brutal training block, the evidence says to front-load. The consensus recommendation, 1 to 5 sessions with two in the first day, mirrors how the research protocols were built, and it matches what the muscle-damage trials did.¹

A 2023 trial shows the pattern well. Thirty-one volunteers did a jumping workout designed to trash their legs, then the cryotherapy group took four cryosauna sessions at -110°C for 90 seconds each: one right after the workout, then one at 24, 48, and 72 hours.³ Compared with the control group, they had lower creatine kinase, a blood marker of muscle damage, and less muscle stiffness over the next few days.³ Notice that's a specific dose tied to a specific window.

Nowhere in that research will you find a reason to keep going for two weeks after one hard effort. The recovery window closes, and so should the block.

Regular Use: What Repeated Exposure Looks Like

Going repeatedly over several weeks seems to do something a single session doesn't, and the clearest example is a Lubkowska study the consensus paper summarizes. Researchers tracked inflammatory markers, the chemical signals your body uses to turn inflammation up or down, in 45 healthy men at different session counts. Five days in a row moved one marker about 30%, then it faded within two weeks. Ten sessions shifted several markers, and those faded too. Twenty sessions produced a similar profile to ten, but this time the changes were still measurable two weeks after the sessions ended.¹

Forget the exact numbers for a second and look at the pattern. A few sessions can shift something for a little while. Doing enough of them, close enough together, is what seems to make the change stick. Consistency over a block of weeks beats any single visit, which is true of most things in training and holds here too.

One caution, though. Those were daily sessions in a lab, and they measured blood markers, not how anyone actually felt or performed. Jumping from "20 days in a row moved some blood markers" to "you should go three times a week forever" is a leap the data doesn't make for you.

What the Largest Recent Analysis Found

The biggest study we have is a 2026 analysis that pooled 51 randomized trials and 1,243 people, comparing whole body cryotherapy against cold water immersion, contrast therapy, and local ice.⁴ It's worth reading closely, because it doesn't say what most cryotherapy marketing says.

For muscle damage, whole body cryotherapy came out on top at the later marks, with the biggest drops in creatine kinase at 48 and 72 hours (mean differences of -118.24 and -135.03).⁴ It also improved jump performance at 1, 24, and 48 hours after exercise.⁴

Then it flips on soreness itself. The authors say plainly that whole body cryotherapy "may have limited impact" on delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS), the deep ache that shows up a day or two after a hard workout. At the 48-hour mark it actually ranked last of all the methods for that.⁴ A cold plunge did better for fast pain relief in the first hour.⁴ So their advice is really about timing: if you want quick pain relief, reach for cold water in the first hour; if you want your legs working again over the next 1 to 3 days, cryotherapy is the better fit.⁴ No single cold method wins at everything.⁴

And behind all of it sits an older, more skeptical take that still holds up. A 2015 Cochrane review looked at four trials covering 64 active adults and found there simply wasn't enough evidence to say whether whole body cryotherapy reduces soreness or improves recovery versus plain rest. Every outcome was graded very low quality.² That review is a decade old and the field has grown since, but it's a fair reminder that the confident claims still run ahead of the confident data.

The Habituation Problem

Here's the part almost every "how often" article skips. Your body adapts to cold. The consensus paper calls this out directly: as you keep going, the shock of the cold gets less intense, so it suggests bumping up the dose over time to keep the stimulus meaningful.¹ In plain terms, your fifteenth session at the same temperature and length probably isn't hitting as hard as your first one did.

That flips a common instinct on its head. Going more often to get more out of it can actually work against you, because constant exposure dulls the very thing that drives the response. Spacing and timing start to matter as much as raw session count. Athletes have known this about training load for decades, and cold seems to play by similar rules.

A reasonable way to handle it is to use cryotherapy in blocks tied to something specific: a hard training phase, a race build, a stretch of bad sleep, a period of unusual stress. Run the block, then take a break until there's a reason to come back.

If You Lift, Timing Matters

Here's one that matters if you lift. A good bit of research on cold water immersion suggests that regularly icing down right after resistance training may blunt your long-term gains in strength and muscle size (hypertrophy).¹ The consensus paper reviews that evidence, points to a 2021 meta-analysis backing it up, and says that when you're in a serious muscle-building phase, cold isn't recommended.¹ If you're chasing size right now, take that seriously.

One big caveat: almost all of that research used cold water immersion, not cryotherapy chambers. The authors flag the difference and point to a study of Polish national judo athletes, where daily whole body cryotherapy over a 10-day camp didn't hurt muscle performance, possibly because the cryo happened about two hours after training instead of right after.¹ Their overall read is that whole body cryotherapy doesn't appear to harm strength.¹

So if you're actively training for size or strength, play it safe and don't do cryotherapy right after you lift. Put a few hours between them, or save cryo for days you're not chasing a muscle-building session. It costs you nothing and sidesteps the whole debate.

Building a Schedule That Survives a Real Week

The best frequency is the one you'll actually keep, which is unglamorous but true. A few things that help a schedule stick:

Start with one session before committing to a rhythm

The consensus group recommends an intake conversation and a first mild-dose session precisely so the operator can see how you respond before setting a plan.¹ A single visit tells you whether you can tolerate three and a half minutes in the chamber, which is genuinely useful information, though it won't tell you whether the therapy is doing anything for you.

Anchor it to something already in your calendar

Cryo after your Tuesday and Thursday training, or before Monday's first meeting, tends to survive a busy month better than a vague plan to go "a few times a week."

Give it a real block before judging

If you're testing whether regular cryotherapy does anything for your recovery or your mornings, a month of consistent sessions gives you something to evaluate. Three scattered visits over six weeks won't.

Then be honest about the result

If you can't tell the difference after a month, that's useful information too. There's no rule saying you have to keep going.

Who Should Be Careful

Cryotherapy is generally considered safe when it's done in a controlled setting with trained staff, but it isn't right for everyone. The consensus literature lists unstable angina and advanced heart failure (NYHA class III and IV) as reasons not to do it, and it advises caution for anyone with cardiovascular disease, since studies have seen small rises in blood pressure during a session.¹ The most commonly reported side effects are cold hives (cold urticaria) and cold burns.¹

Uncontrolled hypertension, Raynaud's, peripheral neuropathy, and any history of cold-triggered reactions should be raised before your first session so the team can screen properly. That conversation is what the intake is for.

Cryotherapy at Defiant in Lisle

Defiant runs an Everest CryoBuilt chamber at the Lisle clinic, serving Naperville, Downers Grove, Wheaton, and Chicago's western suburbs. Sessions max out at 3:30, and the air drops to around -200°F, which is roughly -129°C and sits inside the range used across the research above. You step into what basically looks like a walk-in freezer. It's loud enough that conversation isn't happening, but you can bring music.

On the frequency question specifically, the pricing shapes the decision more than most people realize. A single session is $50 and unlimited monthly is $299, so the math tips toward unlimited at six visits a month. That's roughly a session and a half per week, which sits at the low end of what people typically do. If you're testing a block of 2 to 3 sessions per week for a month, unlimited is the version that makes sense. New clients can try a first session for $25 before committing to anything.

Cryotherapy is also included as a Core Wellness credit in all three Defiant membership tiers, and it pairs naturally with the infrared sauna as contrast therapy if you want heat and cold in the same visit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Last updated August 22, 2026.