ABSTRACT
Heat acclimation is highly effective strategy to combat the negative effect of high internal and external temperatures on exercise performance. Alternative strategies that can alleviate the impaired performance are required for situations where time and/or resources are limited and cooling the body is one such strategy. Despite regular media stories reporting athletes cooling themselves before and during exercise and photos of athletes either immersed in cold water, drinking cold drinks, or wearing a range of cooling garments, actual data regarding the use of cooling strategies in elite sport are scarce. Pre- and per-cooling strategies can be combined to try to harness the benefits of each. Combining pre- and per-cooling strategies can improve exercise performance but the size of the benefits reported is similar to pre- or per-cooling alone. Practical torso cooling has been somewhat commonplace in elite sport since the mid-1990s when the Australian Institute of Sport began piloting their use with members of the Australian National road cycling squad.
