Grammy award-winning electronic dance trio Rüfüs Du Sol used to throw back preshow whiskey shots. Now, they take ginger shots before going onstage. Rather than waking up in new towns and searching for food on the fly, they eat fresh meals planned by a personal trainer. And instead of staying up partying after each performance, they plunge one by one into a tank full of ice-cold water.

“We were kind of driving ourselves into the ground pretty, pretty hard,” James Hunt, Rüfüs Du Sol’s 32-year-old drummer, said of the group’s previous routine.

Today they’re one of several acts eschewing the “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” stereotype and following rigorous wellness regimens. As popular artists such as Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes and Arlo Parks have paused tours to prioritize their well-being, performers are opting for self-care treatments. Those include oxygen tanks and chambers (Mr. Bieber said in a 2019 Instagram post, and later in a documentary, that sleeping inside a hyperbaric oxygen chamber helped him feel better), ice baths, IV drips and lymphatic drainage massages.

Following a pandemic concert hiatus, live events are booming. A dizzying number of acts are touring, and fans are paying top dollar to see them. For performers, the stakes of staying healthy on the road are high.

Rüfüs Du Sol has a trainer, Ben Smith, who keeps the group on top of their wellness program. He prepares workouts and meals, as well as preshow breathwork routines and the aforementioned ice bath with guided breathwork, which takes place in a 100-gallon Rubbermaid Stock Tank. (It travels easily in the semitrailers that carry their gear.)

“The ice bath is waiting for us as we come offstage,” said Jon George, the group’s 36-year-old keyboardist. “We’ll go in one at a time, choosing a song that will play, and we’ll have Ben leading us through that to help calm us down.” The members take three-minute ice baths after every show.

Chlöe Bailey of Chlöe x Halle taking a cold plunge. The singer uses lymphatic massages to keep her feeling healthy on the road.

Photo: Julian Dakdouk

Ice baths, which Lady Gaga and Harry Styles also take on tour, decrease inflammation and reduce core body temperature. “Athletes have been using these things forever,” said Jonathan Leary, founder and chief executive of Remedy Place, a “social wellness club” in New York and Los Angeles where a 39-degree, six-minute ice bath costs $50. (Rüfüs Du Sol’s members are investors in Remedy Place.) Mr. Leary said that ice baths can help teach the body to maintain balance and in extreme and stressful situations. “These touring artists need self-care and recovery,” he said.

Recording artist Chlöe Bailey, of the five-time Grammy award-nominated R&B duo Chlöe x Halle, said that lymphatic massages, which are meant to eliminate toxins from the body and reduce bloating, keep her feeling happy and healthy on the road. “My body is always inflamed and swollen,” Ms. Bailey, 24, said in an email. “Whenever I get a good lymphatic massage, it gets rid of any fluid or inflammation or anything that my body has added on because of the stresses of traveling so often.”

Sisters Alyson Michalka, 33, and Amanda Joy Michalka, 31, known together as the pop-rock duo Aly & AJ, said they skip caffeine while they’re touring and inject themselves with weekly vitamin B-12 shots. (When they aren’t traveling from city to city, Aly usually opts for tea and AJ drinks coffee.)

“If we’re feeling a little bit down or low energy, we’ll take it before a show,” Aly said. The sisters said they usually feel the effects of an injection within a few hours. 

Sisters and pop-rock duo Aly & AJ skip caffeine and take B-12 injections while on the road.

Photo: Courtesy of Aly and AJ

Unless someone has low B-12 levels, B-12 shots won’t improve performance or energy—but they won’t cause harm either, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Although artists including Aly & AJ often pay for these services out of pocket, performers may include wellness treatments in the riders on their contracts, where they enumerate their backstage requests, according to Marvin Medina, a tour manager at Loud and Live in Miami.

“It depends on the deal,” said Mr. Medina, who has worked on tours with Latin music artists including Daddy Yankee and Ricardo Arjona. “In riders, just for hospitality, I’ve seen low numbers from $2,000 all the way to $20,000.”

The Smoking Gun, a website that posts legal documents of public interest, has shared past riders of numerous A-list acts. A 2008 rider attributed to Taylor Swift includes grape juice, licorice, two different iced Starbucks coffee drinks with Sweet’N Low and a small jar of Dill Pickles. Another document says that in 2004, when she sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl, Beyoncé asked for rose-scented candles and hot tea set up in a new coffee pot. According to other riders published on the site, Van Halen fancied 12 ashtrays while Coldplay required eight stamped local postcards and a bottle of Worcestershire sauce.

While the costs of these items can cut into artists’ bottom line, they’re often paid for by the promoter of the tour. “If you multiply for different cities, it can be a lot of money,” he said.

The Grammy-award winning southern rock group Zac Brown Band used to share a few bottles of Jägermeister between band members before, during and after a show. “This was several years ago when we were young and didn’t realize that we, not only weren’t going to be able to perform to our highest potential, but we also weren’t going to have longevity doing it,” frontman Zac Brown said in an email. 

In 2013, the band started touring with a mobile trailer-tractor gym and this year they added a sauna to it. “It helps me relax my muscles after playing back to back shows and traveling overnight on the tour bus from city to city,” Mr. Brown, 44, said, adding that he and his bandmates try to keep to a clean diet.