Ice Ice Baby....well a little cold exposure! Wellbeing 19 of flowing through 50

Context

Back when I was competing at a high level in rugby, I got used to ice baths after matches and certain training sessions. It was brutal but as we did it together it didn’t seem so bad as part of a shared experience. There was enough banter to distract from the pain. I’m guessing it looked a bit strange as we were nearly always at a hotel either sitting outside or around the pool, sitting in trash cans full of ice water! The primary focus of this of course was for physical recovery - to help reduce inflammation after intense exercise. Our coach always told us to "win the recovery" as often we were playing matches in tournaments over a week or two.

I’ve recently revisited a slightly more civilized version of this cold exposure. As I don’t really fancy filling up a trash can with ice and water on a regular basis, nor am I necessarily looking to invest in a cold plunge, instead, I’ve started taking cold showers. There are some documented physical benefits to deliberate cold exposure in the forms of recovery, enhanced metabolism and improved blood circulation, albeit that's not my motivation. For me, it's about building mental resilience (GRIT) and clarity of focus.

What's deliberate cold exposure it all about?

Well, I’m in Denver in winter, so I can tell you with confidence that the cold water here is bloody cold! As I was testing out this practice this week, I can say that my head was starting to feel numb in just 30 seconds. I’ve read up a bit on this and listened to a couple of podcasts and in my view the gold standard reference source for any of you keen to explore this similar practice is Andrew Huberman (www.hubermanlab.com). You’ll see a few podcast episodes on this and related topics, and very helpfully some time stamps if you just want to dip your toe in (so to speak). It is very scientific with all the accompanying lingo but he also explains things simply and importantly in practical terms.

For me this practice is about starting the day off with something hard. I’ve just started with turning on the cold tap, building up a little mental courage (again, it's winter here) and standing under the cold water for 30 seconds. The max I’ve done this week is 45 seconds. My intention is to increase to 1 - 1.5 mins over the next few weeks. I then turn the heat up and reward myself with a nice warm comfortable shower, as I would usually. Technically, the potential metabolic benefits to this process would be more effective doing this the other way around (hot to cold) or just doing?the cold part and letting your body warm up naturally. However, again for me, my primary focus is for mental benefits, more than physical.

Why

What I've read and listened to on this (and I’m not going to refer to all the biology and neuroscience - please check out Huberman for that) is that by choosing to do something hard, we experience and benefit from “use stress” vs “distress”. Distress being stress that is imposed upon us that we have to deal with. Importantly, by choosing to do something hard - like taking a cold shower, we release ‘good’ stress chemicals into our bodies along with dopamine (related to motivation). By resisting the desire to get out and focusing our mental state into working through the discomfort, we further strengthen certain parts of our brain which are directly correlated to resilience.

The biology around this is particularly interesting and again I encourage you to dive into it if you’d like all the facts. I’d just say that for me, after doing this I definitely feel invigorated, focused and that I’ve achieved one little win for the day. There is also evidence that this type of process (particularly immersion in cold water upto the neck) improves our working memory - that is the part of memory we need day-to-day, minute-to-minute to disseminate the information in front of us, act upon whatever is helpful and discard whatever is not.

So, there’s some high level reasoning behind this.

How am I doing this?

The way this fits into my plan is 5/7 days per week, as I’m doing with a number of the new habits. I’ll look to play around with timing and temperature (longer & less cold, shorter & colder windows, etc) and will also pay attention to how many times while I’m in the cold experience that I want to exit. Overtime aiming to overcome more of these exit windows (Huberman calls them walls to climb) which is another way to progress the practice.

I have to say, I’m quite excited about enjoying some more heat-exposure which has a ton of benefits too, but I’ll have to nail down a few more clients for this year, before we invest in a sauna….but hey - let’s hope I’m writing about that too, prior to year-end!

Well there you go. Have at it. Go on, you know you want to!