Highlights: What are the main findings? Palmar cooling potentially positively impacts repeated sprinting performance. Palmar cooling potentially reduces post-exercise muscle soreness. What are the implications of the main findings? Using palmar cooling devices could augment activities that involve sprinting. Using palmar cooling could augment recovery following exercise. Abstract: Evidence supports the role of palmar cooling to improve exercise performance, especially with endurance and resistance activities. The aim of this randomized placebo-controlled trial was to explore the effects of palmar cooling on repeated sprinting performance and recovery. Fifteen graduate students were randomly assigned to either a palmar cooling intervention or placebo group (males: n = 8, females: n = 7; Avg. age: 24.06 yrs.) After a ten-minute warm-up, participants completed ten sixty-meter sprints that included two 180-degree changes of direction. Three bouts of two-minute intervention or placebo occurred during the study. Data for sprint times, heart rate, and RPE were collected throughout testing. A muscle soreness rating was collected via survey 48 h post intervention. Statistically and practically significant differences were found between groups for average sprint times, heart rate, and delayed onset muscle soreness. The intervention group utilizing palmar cooling demonstrated less degradation in sprint times, lower heart rate upon completion, and a lower soreness rate 48 h after testing. More research is needed with a larger sample size to determine if practical and statistically significant differences will be maintained and would allow for a more robust multivariant analysis, resulting in the findings being more generalizable to a larger population.
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