Colorado Springs sits above 6,200 feet, and the Briargate area adds another 300 or so on top of that. The Air Force Academy cadets train here. The Olympic Training Center draws elite athletes from across the country. Weekend warriors run the Kettle Creek Trail and ride out toward Black Forest. Altitude is woven into the training culture in a way that doesn't exist at sea level — and it shapes how recovery works too.
Cold exposure has been part of elite athletic recovery for decades, and that tradition runs strong in Colorado Springs. Cold plunge tubs have found their way into home gyms, CrossFit boxes, and wellness studios all over the area. But at Zivel Briargate, we hear from a lot of athletes who've moved on from the cold plunge. Here's what drives that shift.
Altitude Already Stresses the System
Training at elevation places physiological demands that sea-level athletes simply don't encounter. Reduced oxygen availability means the body works harder to deliver the same output — heart rate runs higher, perceived exertion is elevated, and recovery demands more. Athletes who train here understand that the recovery side of the equation matters more, not less, when altitude is a constant factor.
Both cold water immersion and whole body cryotherapy can support recovery, and both work through similar mechanisms: vasoconstriction, a norepinephrine response, and shifts in inflammatory signaling. Neither is a medical treatment, but both have been studied seriously in the context of athletic recovery. The question isn't which one works — it's which one athletes actually keep doing.
The Problem With Cold Water at Altitude
Cold water immersion has a physical comfort problem that doesn't get solved with training. The experience of sitting in cold water — the full-body shiver response, the involuntary muscle tension, the slow countdown until it's acceptable to get out — doesn't fade with repetition. Most athletes describe getting marginally better at tolerating it; they don't describe starting to enjoy it.
For athletes who are already managing significant training loads, demanding schedules, and the added recovery demands of altitude, cold plunging tends to become one more obligation rather than a genuine recovery tool. The resistance to doing it builds quietly until the tub sits unused.
Whole body cryotherapy runs two to three minutes, in dry air. The cold is intense in the moment — but the exit is immediate, and the post-session experience is distinctly different from cold water. Most guests describe feeling warm and energized within minutes. The absence of submersion, soaking, and slow warming afterward changes how it registers mentally.
Water Quality in a Shared Setting
Cold water disinfects poorly. The chemistry that sanitizes pools and hot tubs works at reduced effectiveness at plunge temperatures, while everything that enters the water — sweat, skin cells, oils — continues to accumulate at normal rates. In a shared studio plunge, that gap widens over the course of a day as more guests cycle through.
Many smaller plunge systems lack the UV or ozone stages that help close that gap. Some operators also under-treat water to protect corrosion-sensitive chiller components, without that being visible to guests. None of this is a concern with cryotherapy, where there's no water medium at all.
Schedule Fit in a Military and Athletic Community
A lot of people training in the Briargate area run structured schedules — early morning PT, academy training blocks, shift-based work schedules, or the kind of packed athletic calendars that elite training produces. Cold plunging doesn't fit cleanly into those structures because it requires drying off, showering, and warming back up before normal activity resumes.
Cryotherapy fits into a 15-minute window without the overhead. You're dry in, dry out, and the warmup is a few minutes of movement. That makes it sustainable in weeks where everything is competing for time.
How Zivel Briargate Fits In
At Zivel Briargate, cryotherapy is the starting point for a broader recovery stack. Compression therapy pairs well after hard efforts or long days on your feet. Red light therapy supports cellular recovery. Infrared sauna on recovery days. The goal is a complete recovery practice that's efficient enough to actually fit into a Colorado Springs training life.
Wellness services are not medical treatments and do not diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent disease.