- Professional Sport
- Italy
- Bolzano
Hockey Club Foxes
The HC Bolzano Foxes is the most successful Italian ice hockey club, and the best known abroad. The Foxes have been playing the Austrian Hockey League (EBEL) since the 2013/14 season. This league features teams from Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary, with the “red & whites” being the only Italian team at present. Over the years, the good reputation of the Bolzano-based team has attracted to the capital city of South Tyrol numerous world hockey stars, such as Kent Nilsson, Ron Chipperfield, Mark Pavelich, Niklas Hjalmarsson and legend Jaromir Jagr, who gave even more prestige to the history of the red & whites during the 1994/95 season.
Psycho-physical well-being as the basis of athletic performance, regeneration and recovery are more and more widespread concepts in the world of sports. The HC Bolzano Foxes relied on Starpool’s experience and on the support of Doctor Christian Thuile for the creation of the new Performance Center. An innovative space where the players of the A team can restore their correct physiological and biological values, recovering and, above all, improving their strength after matches and training.
Performance Center
The Performance Center displays an innovative format, dedicated to athletes’ recovery and to performance enhancement. Wellness traditional benefits – like the ones deriving from the high temperatures of the sauna – combine with the mental and physical regeneration achieved thanks to the Dry Float Therapy on Zerobody Dry Float and with the effects of cryotherapy. The collaboration between doctor Thuile and Starpool resulted in the development of special scientific protocols, specifically to guide athletes in the correct use of the equipment.
Sauna
Sports physicians encourage athletes to spend time in the sauna, possibly every day. As a matter of fact, the sauna stimulates peripheral circulation and has beneficial effects on the central nervous system, but, mostly, it favours a faster sports recovery thanks to the quick drainage of toxins and excessive lactate. Our Combi Sauna inside the Performance Center features both a traditional stove and infrared lamps. An innovative double system that combines the best elements of the two types of sauna in an only cabin: the high temperatures of the traditional Finnish sauna, to experience in the comfort of a gentler environment, and the local heat treatment of the Infrared sauna.
Zerobody Dry Float
Thanks to the therapeutic effect of dry floatation and its user-friendliness, which is especially important in the sports sector, Zerobody Dry Float ensures a complete mental and physical regeneration for athletes, maximising muscle recovery and favouring top sports performance. It is a valuable ally for athletic trainers and physical therapists, who use Zerobody Dry Float to enhance the effects of their work with athletes. And that’s not it. Thanks to the multimedia contents of Mindfulness and breathing techniques provided with Zerobody Dry Float, the Performance Center helps athletes to work on mental focus as well – a key factor to achieve perfect results on ice.
Cryotherapy
Lastly, cryotherapy is a fundamental ally for sports performance, because it restores the body energy while maintaining muscle tone. With a temperature of about -140° and a duration of about two minutes per session, it greatly reduces injury recovery time, as well as having anti-fatigue effects after training.
Christian Thuile
Medical Partner, HCB Foxes
«The protocol that we have designed will be of great help to the mental and physical well-being of athletes. Hockey is a highly energy-consuming sport, and a very dense agenda necessarily results in less recovery time: for this reason, with the combination of systems such as Zerobody Dry Float, cryotherapy and sauna, we’ll be able to monitor the players’ physiological values constantly and participate in their regenerative process. A Performance Center at this level is undoubtedly an excellence for a high end club such as the HCB Alto Adige Alperia: successfulness on ice depends primarily on the players’ health.»