Ice or Heat?

I have been thinking more on the heat/ice debate. Ice seems to be the answer {even though heat sounds more appealing}. Ice should be used after a good hard workout; your muscles are strained, they've been worked hard. Ice makes your blood vessels smaller which reduced swelling. Heat does the opposite!

I found THIS little article that I found super helpful. A couple points they made are:

*Applying heat to a muscle strain within the first 24 hours will actually increase swelling and pain!!
*Ice for 20 minutes! {This is what we did with my man's back last week and it worked WONDERS!!}

So though a good long soak in a hot tub sounds like HEAVEN; it's best if you hold off for a day!