Thanks very much for the replies Angela. You mentioned doing short 10 min warmups a few hours prior to the main session - I have done this before and I feel it usually makes a big difference if I am tight. If I have kept up with flexibility and am not so tight then it seems to have less of an effect. Do you think contrast showers would have a similar effect to this prior to a workout? When you did this would you end on hot?
Finally, some people think that recovery methods lose there value if used too frequently, what are your thoughts on this? If you were doing multiple contrast showers each day, did they still have the same effect at the end of your career as they did at the start?