How cryotherapy chamber allowed Wales to come in from the cold

Specifically, I am thinking about the scene in Coronation Street when Anne Malone is accidentally and fatally locked inside the walk-in freezer of Freshco supermarket while trying to implicate Curly Watts in a blackmail plot by sabotaging a box of fish fingers with WD40.

It is, I grant, an unconventional reverie. But although thousands of men and women have passed through the chamber — including, a few months ago, the entire Welsh rugby squad — I still want guarantees. A session in the cold room lasts only three minutes, but at temperatures around minus 30C lower than the coldest ever recorded on Earth, that is quite enough.

“Nobody has ever died in there,” the centre’s doctor, Tadeusz Kilian, assures me. “If you feel uncomfortable, or it’s too cold, then bang on the door, and we will let you out. While you are inside, try not to touch yourself.” I think I know what he means.

My attire – a band around the ears, a mask over the nose and mouth, a baggy pair of jersey shorts, long socks and a pair of quaint wooden clogs — seems recklessly sparse in the circumstances.

But I need to be completely dry. At temperatures as low as these, anything remotely moist or clammy will freeze instantly and painfully. Not two months ago, former Olympic 100 metres champion Justin Gatlin suffered a horrific case of frostbite when he walked into a cryo-chamber in a pair of sweaty socks that fused to his feet.

In the 1920s, the OSC was the country retreat of Polish president Ignacy Moscicki, who liked to hunt deer in the surrounding forest. Little by little, accoutrements were added — an athletics track, playing fields, a swimming pool, a gymnasium — until in the 1970s, the socialist government decided to turn it into a production line for elite, ideologically unimpeachable sportsmen.

The brutalist architecture and beige-tinged decor still retain a charming, Eastern-bloc feel to them. But in every other respect, the centre is at the vanguard of sporting medicine.

The door swings open and three of us step into the ante-chamber, a holding room with a temperature of about minus 76F (-60C). After 30 seconds of acclimatisation, a second door swings open, and we are instantly met by a blast of freezing steam. Liquid nitrogen is used to cool the chamber, and it is impossible to see more than a couple of feet in front.

To get the obvious question out of the way first: yes, it is a bit parky in there. The chamber is around the size of a lift, and we shuffle around it in a clockwise direction, peering through the mist, attempting to avoid walking into the walls. The first 20 seconds are tolerable enough; with the extremities covered, it takes a little while for heat to sap from the body.

But once it does, once the temperature of my skin drops to around 10C, I begin to realise what Wales captain Sam Warburton meant when he described the cryotherapy chamber as an ‘evil sauna’.

The predominant sensation is one of numbness, but inflected with a warbling tremolo of pain. A couple of scabs on my calves begin to sting excruciatingly — later, when I peel off my knee-length socks, I realise that the lint has simply burnt off and they are beginning to weep anew.

This is how cryotherapy works its magic. Essentially, it fools your body into flooding the bloodstream with endorphins by convincing you that you are dying.

Your veins open to around three times their normal diameter and blood rushes to the surface. Among the immediate effects are pain relief, superior healing times and revitalisation of the skin. But it is the long-term benefits that persuaded Wales’ management to take a 58-man party to Poland for two separate training camps in July.