Your First Ice Bath Experience – What You Need to Know
By now, the benefits of cold immersion are widely recognized, but many struggle to incorporate this powerful practice into their daily routine.
With the weather warming in many parts of the world, you may have considered taking an ice bath or cold shower. The benefits of this ancient practice are numerous, ranging from strengthening the immune system to increasing metabolism, from improving fat loss to significant effects on mood. Before you dive headlong into the cold, here are a few things you need to know to make the experience enjoyable (and repeatable).
Before you start...
Becoming familiar with cold showers is an essential prerequisite step to establishing a lasting relationship with cold immersion. Regular cold showers will help you understand the basic physiological responses you'll feel during an ice bath or cold water immersion, and you'll get better at handling them. This will allow you to enjoy your ice baths more and stay in the water longer.
How to prepare your ice bath?
When filling your bath, we recommend using enough water to submerge your entire body up to your ears. Exposing the neck and thyroid gland to cold is extremely important for regulating body temperature and helping your body adapt to the cold more quickly.
How to prepare mentally?
Before cold immersion, you can activate the parasympathetic nervous system, and maximize your body's natural production of nitric oxide, a natural compound that relaxes blood vessels and allows for better oxygen distribution. You can achieve this easily by using a few specialized nasal breathing techniques, all of which can be used during the session.
Breathing technique 1
The first technique is to slow your breathing to 6 breaths per minute. This is one of the quickest ways to regulate the nervous system and calm the mind. Set a timer for 3 to 5 minutes. Then, inhale deeply for 5 seconds and exhale completely for 5 seconds, continuously. This improves the oxygenation of your cells by significantly increasing nitric oxide production.
Breathing technique 2
Hold the last breath of your breath for an extended period of time until you want to breathe again. Then, exhale completely as you enter the ice bath or cold water slowly and steadily. Breathe again once you are completely inside the cold water, in a calm and regulated manner, to help the nervous system adjust to the experience.
The most important thing here is to listen to your body, which means getting out as soon as you start to shiver.
How long to stay in cold water?
The target time for cold water immersion depends on the water temperature. You can gradually increase the length of your cold showers to five minutes over the weeks leading up to your soak. Three minutes is also enough time to experience the most desirable benefits of cold water immersion, such as improved blood sugar regulation and fat burning. That said, if the temperature is 10°C or slightly lower, the body can withstand much more than three minutes. In fact, the goal after 4 to 6 weeks would be to maintain immersion for more than ten minutes at this temperature. The most important thing here is to listen to your body.
How to get the most out of your experience?
Immersing your entire body, including your head, when you enter the ice bath will help you get the most out of your experience. This total immersion exposes the entire body, the thyroid and the back of the neck, which helps to elicit the maximum hormonal response. After the first immersion, you can also periodically immerse your face for the duration of the immersion, which continues to significantly stimulate the nervous system to ensure that you obtain the desired benefits. Remember to breathe through your nose throughout the experience and remember that it gets easier after the first minute.
Should you warm up after immersion in cold water?
At events, people often wonder whether to warm up after immersion in cold water. The truth is that not warming up and allowing the body to naturally return to its normal temperature is a very metabolically active process. This will promote fat burning and lead to improvements in metabolic health. However, we advise you to warm up after your cold bath by doing small physical exercises.
Cold water immersion is truly an enjoyable practice, one with which you can develop a very pleasant relationship. At our events, it is an opportunity for laughter, camaraderie and celebration. It doesn't have to be torture and it's important to respect and appreciate it for all the benefits it can bring you, including the immediate benefit of feeling more awake and present. We have never met a person who didn't learn to love it!
