The immediate effects of applying the cold spray on postural sway in male college soccer players

Postural control is the base of body movements and is required for most daily and sports activities. Several factors can affect the performance of postural control system and reduce postural stability. According to the previous studies, the cold is one of the factors that can influence the neuromuscular system and thus increase postural sway. Therefore, the present study was conducted to assess the postural sway of college soccer players following a protocol of local cold application by cold spray at ankle joint.
Materials and Method In the present quasi-experimental study, 30 male college soccer players were purposefully selected with a mean age of 23/2 ± 1/29 years, mean weight of 69/5 ± 6/73 kg, and mean height of 177/11 ± 5/92 cm. Postural sway characteristics of the participants were measured by the pressure distribution detecting device and the data was recorded as pre-test scores. Next, the cold spray was simultaneously applied on both medial and lateral aspects of the ankle joint of the dominant leg. Immediately then, the postural sway characteristics were measured again and the data was recorded as post-test scores. T-test was used to compare the means.
The results showed that despite the relative increase in postural sway characteristics of the participants after using the cold spray, there was no significant difference between these characteristics before and after cryotherapy.
It seems that using cold spray for local cooling of ankle joint has no significant effect on the postural sway in college soccer players. Nonetheless, because of the slight increase in postural sway characteristics after cryotherapy, the results of the study should be interpreted with caution.