Team USA Olympic Skateboarding
Gold medal winner Mariah Duran (courtesy 78 Cryo)
The 2020 Toyko Olympics just got cooler: Skateboarding is now an Olympic sport. This summer the world will soon be introduced to the street style that got its gritty start in Venice Beach during the 1970’s with the Z-Boys with one major change. These skaters are not the stereotyped stoners of skateboarding’s heyday. They are elite athletes focused on health and wellness, and many incorporate cryotherapy into their recovery.
Recovery Is a Must
When most people think of the Olympics they think of gymnastics: watching an ultrafit athlete use explosive large muscle movements with precise body placement to land a complex maneuver. Not anymore. Skateboarding as an Olympic sport will feature both street and ramp events for men and women. This is new for the Olympics because skateboarding is unique in that it is inherently dangerous. Anyone attempting to jump a skateboard down 15 concrete steps is in danger of broken bones, bruising, and potentially death. What is often underappreciated is the brute athleticism of each attempt. Athletes must use huge amounts of energy to propel themselves--and their boards--into the air and then perform complex tricks using their feet and legs. Nearly every form of athletic injury is fair game for skateboarders: feet, ankle, and knee problems are suffered as well as elbow, shoulder, and wrist injuries.
Cryotherapy and Skateboarding
Recovery is serious business in professional sports. If an athlete is injured and cannot compete then his career and his potential lifetime income is at risk. For skateboarding the career potential can be staggering:
Tony Hawk - Net Worth 100 Million
Rob Dyrdek - Net Worth 50 Million
Tony Alva - Net Worth 15 Million
Danny Way - Net Worth 10 Million
Stacey Peralta - Net Worth of 8 Million
Bob Burnquist - Net Worth of 6 Million
Nyjah Huston - Net Worth of 6 Million
Mike Carroll - Net Worth of 6 Million
Tony Hawk in Money, Inc.’s “20 Richest Skateboarders In History
A single injury could have sidelined these entrepreneurs who turned their love for skateboarding into lucrative businesses, franchises, video games, TV shows, and entire brands. Now that Olympic gold medals are available recovery is all the more important.
Cryotherapy and Elite Athletes
Cryotherapy is not new to athleticism. Entire professional teams, such as the Detroit Pistons, Los Angeles Lakers, and the Dallas Cowboys have incorporated cryo chambers into their training centers to help players recover after a game. The science is simple: sub zero cold air chills the body’s surface. The surface blood vessels constrict, pushing the blood to the body’s core where it is kept warm. But after 90 seconds the human body begins to do something fascinating: it interprets the cold temperature as a threat and enriches the entire bloodstream with inflammation fighting enzymes. In a 3 minute cryotherapy session the bloodstream is naturally hyperoxygenated and enriched with nutrients. Once the session is over the oxygen rich and nutrient dense blood returns to the extremities and inflammation is reduced.
Olympics and Cryotherapy
The Olympics are like no other event in history. Athletes report that they push themselves harder during an Olympic event than ever before. Because of this their methods of recovery are always the most scientifically advanced. Olympians from numerous countries have incorporated a quick 3-minute whole body cryotherapy session to replace 20 minute ice baths. Skateboarding took notice: at the Team USA 2019 Toyota National Championships the skaters were provided with whole body cryotherapy from Cryo Innovations after each run, improving their recovery and chances of a win. Each skater in the XR Cryo Chamber experienced the safest, most reliable cryotherapy available.
Team USA and Toyko 2020 Olympian Maurio McCoy (courtesy 78 Cryo)
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