5 Benefits of cold showers that will blow your mind

Life is too short not to play at your best, and one sure way is to have a morning routine that sets your day up for success. It is essential that when you rock up at work, everyone is filled with good energy, as energy drives momentum. When your body battery is full (of good energy that is), you make good decisions. Where you are right now in your life is because of an accumulation of decisions you have made up until this point. So starting your day off with good energy is imperative to good decisions and enjoying a good life.?

One of the best things to include in your morning routine to enable you to kickstart your day with good energy is the habit of a cold shower. Just hear me out before you dismiss this as a myth and something ludicrous!

How it works is that you continue to enjoy your regular shower, and then only right at the end, you turn the cold tap on and the hot top off. At first, just start with standing under the cold water for 10 seconds and then gradually increasing it by 10 seconds each week. Around 6 weeks later, you should be able to comfortably do a one-minute cold shower at the end of your morning shower.?

If prefer to shower in the evening, don't end it with a cold shower. You will kickstart your nervous system and will struggle to fall asleep.

For any habit to be a long lasting change in lifestyle it is important to understand YOUR why - the reason you would want to implement the habit in the first place. Here are a minimum of 5 reasons I want to share with you. There are more, and you are welcome to do further research. I have found however that 99% of my clients are implementing this shower habit based on one of these five benefits:

Cold Showers Speed Up Muscle Recovery

If you’re an athlete, then you know that taking an ice bath after intense training is one of the best things you can do to recover faster. I know this from personal experience. After completing the Comrades Marathon, I took an ice bath, and the next day my legs were hardly stiff and sore. And I did not walk as wanky as most of the other runners that completed the race.

However, you don't need to take an ice bath, just a cold shower. It will improve circulation and help remove some lactic acid. Your muscles will thank you.

Increased willpower

This is for real. It is about doing something that your mind and body do not want you to do. Pushing through that barrier of doing something that you don't want to do builds resilience to do things that are uncomfortable. And let’s face it, change is about doing things differently and highly uncomfortable. Nobody likes it. And cold showers are about building your resilience muscle in pushing through and getting the uncomfortable stuff? done. Your goals will thank you for it!

Reduced stress levels

Cold showers lower levels of uric acid, and boost levels of Glutathione in your blood - making you less stressed in general. Refer to this article for additional information - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0891584994900302

More robust immune response

One of the best reasons to take a cold shower is to reduce your medical bills. Studies have shown that taking regular cold showers increases the amount of disease-fighting white blood cells.

Higher level of alertness

Cold showers wake your body up, inducing a higher state of alertness. The cold also stimulates you to take deeper breaths, decreasing the level of CO2 throughout the body, and helping you concentrate. Cold showers thus keep you ready and focused throughout the day.

However, cold showers may not be a good idea if you’re sick. Initially, the cold temperature might be too hard on your immune system, so it’s best to ease into the cooler temperatures.

Some clients have asked me if it has to be a minute, or can you enjoy the benefits of less? I could not find any research indicating a time frame, so do what feels right for you.

Just try it, and from what clients tell me, they start experiencing the benefits in less than a week. What have you got to lose??