Inside the Elite Recovery Centre at the Home of the 2031 Ryder Cup

Come 2031, Europe's and America's best golfers will descend on the exact spot in Catalonia where I now find myself. The sport's prestigious Ryder Cup will be hosted here at Camiral, in an exceptional setting just 20 minutes from Girona. The Pyrenees provide a spectacular backdrop to the fairways and greens, while the Mediterranean sun offers a welcome dose of warmth.

But I'm not much of a golfer. I learned to swing a club as a kid, but I've never played a full round of 18 holes – it just doesn't interest me. Fortunately, Camiral had a solution. Home to a world-class wellness centre featuring the kind of recovery facilities you'd expect to find at the billion-pound training grounds of Premier League clubs, it offered the perfect chance to escape the British heatwave and slow down after an intense period of training.

With a cryotherapy chamber, photobiomodulation unit, oxygen chamber, sauna, steam room, hot-and-cold therapy facilities and a range of massage treatments, I certainly wasn't short of recovery options.

And if you're in any doubt about the quality of the facilities, consider this: the England men's football team trained here in June 2025 ahead of their World Cup qualifier against Andorra. Thomas Tuchel used the camp to assess his squad's fitness ahead of the tournament in the USA, Canada and Mexico. The England men's rugby team also spent time here during the 2025 Six Nations, while, during my own visit, Saudi Pro League side Al-Qadsiah – now managed by Brendan Rodgers – were in the middle of a pre-season training camp.

It really is best in class.

My weekend of recovery started in a not-so-relaxing fashion: stepping into a -110°C cryotherapy chamber for three minutes. It's unlike any cold I've ever experienced. Perhaps it would have helped if I'd kept my top on.

Any slight movement let the cold seep even further into my body, though it made a hugely welcome change from the constant stream of sweat trickling down my back every time I stepped outside in central London. As soon as I returned to a normal-temperature room, I immediately felt calmer and much more aware of the blood flowing around my body.

Research suggests whole-body cryotherapy may help reduce inflammation and muscle soreness following intense exercise. One meta-analysis found that whole-body cryotherapy offers significant recovery benefits for athletes by reducing inflammation.

Exposure to extreme cold causes blood vessels near the skin to constrict before dilating again afterwards. Some researchers believe this may contribute to reduced muscle soreness and improvements in perceived recovery.

If you've ever seen – or tried – one of those LED face masks, you'll already be familiar with photobiomodulation. If you haven't, it's essentially a light-based therapy that uses red and infrared wavelengths to stimulate cells, helping reduce inflammation, relieve pain and support skin regeneration.

At Camiral, though, you aren't just treated to a face mask – there's a full-body therapy unit that you lie inside. Because it's completely non-invasive, you don't really notice anything happening, aside from lying inside what is essentially a large tube while wearing an eye mask to protect your eyes.

It's difficult to notice any immediate difference after stepping back into the real world, though a study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine supports many of the therapy's proposed benefits.

Personally, I found my muscles felt more relaxed over the following few days, while my skin also seemed in better condition. Having never tried this type of therapy before, I'd be interested to see whether repeated sessions produce even more noticeable effects.

From there, I moved on to a personalised 60-minute massage designed to release muscular tension. A range of treatments was available, but I opted for something closer to a sports massage to ease the accumulated fatigue from a particularly intense training block, while also targeting high-tension areas such as my neck and upper back after hours spent sitting at a desk.

It's easy to forget just how effective a good massage can be, and this one certainly didn't disappoint. Hopefully I won't leave it quite so long before booking my next one.

Recovery doesn't always require lying down, but it soon becomes a habit at Camiral. My next stop was the oxygen chamber, where I once again found myself horizontal – this time inside a pressurised, oxygen-rich chamber.

The idea is simple: by breathing pure oxygen under pressure, your body absorbs more oxygen into the bloodstream, potentially supporting recovery. Best of all, it requires absolutely no effort. You simply lie back and relax for an hour.

Aside from my ears constantly popping at the start of the session, it didn't really feel as though anything was happening. It may well have been placebo, but I genuinely felt fresher and fitter on my next run.

When I arrived at Camiral, I was carrying a handful of niggles from increasing my running mileage over recent weeks. By the time I returned home, those aches had all but disappeared. On my first run back, my legs felt noticeably fresher, bouncier and better recovered. I also felt calmer and more relaxed overall – exactly what I'd hoped to get from the experience.

There's certainly plenty of merit to Camiral's recovery facilities, even if the golf courses don't quite tickle your fancy.

Camiral offers rooms from £300 based on two adults sharing a Deluxe Room Double Bed on a B&B basis. Head to camiral.com/en

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Ryan Dabbs

Senior Writer

Ryan is a Senior Writer at Men’s Health UK with a passion for storytelling, health and fitness. Having graduated from Cardiff University in 2020, and later obtaining his NCTJ qualification, Ryan started his career as a Trainee News Writer for sports titles Golf Monthly, Cycling Weekly and Rugby World before progressing to Staff Writer and subsequently Senior Writer with football magazine FourFourTwo.

During his two-and-a-half years there he wrote news stories for the website and features for the magazine, while he also interviewed names such as Les Ferdinand, Ally McCoist, Jamie Redknapp and Antonio Rudiger, among many others. His standout memory, though, came when getting the opportunity to speak to then-Plymouth Argyle manager Steven Schumacher as the club won League One in 2023.

Having grown up a keen footballer and playing for his boyhood side until the age of 16, Ryan got the opportunity to represent Northern Ireland national futsal team eight times, scoring three goals against England, Scotland and Gibraltar. Now past his peak, Ryan prefers to mix weightlifting with running – he achieved a marathon PB of 3:31:49 at Manchester in April 2025, but credits the heat for failing to get below the coveted 3:30 mark…

You can follow Ryan on Instagram @ryan.dabbs or on X @ryandabbs_