BEN Hinshelwood is staying cool about his World Cup bid but it's hardly surprising after braving temperatures of -130c.

Worcester Rugby Club's centre jetted off with the rest of the Scottish national squad earlier this month bound for Poland and a pre-World Cup training camp.

However, this camp was no ordinary get-together. In a revolutionary cryo-centre, the Scotland players had to spend three minutes in the cold chamber facing temperatures around -130c.

The thinking behind the deep freeze was to maximise recovery times and enable the squad to fit in three times as much training as would normally be possible inside 10 days.

"You could only spend three minutes inside because any longer would be dangerous," said Hinshelwood. "They said if you spent eight minutes in there, you'd be dead!

"It literally was freezing cold, really uncomfortable. We went in there for three minutes and for the whole time, you never got used to it.

"It almost burnt your skin - it was that cold. That's what it felt like and certainly it wasn't easy to do."

The treatment, however, was a big success for the squad and Hinshelwood believes he's come back to Sixways a fitter player.

"It's worked really well because we did a lot of running, fitness, weights and swimming and the day after, there was no muscle soreness or stiffness," he added.

"I was still fatigued, the energy levels were low but you could certainly tell the difference in the muscles. It was good to train for that length of time after coming back from injury."

Hinshelwood broke his leg and injured ankle ligaments in January and has still to play a competitive game since his comeback. However, he believes he's proved something to himself after the Poland trip.

"I was happy with the way things went," he said.