If so what was it like--please school me on it.

I'm thinking about doing it, but I want to know if it's really worth it, or if the people that praise it are just trying to rationalize the c note they just dropped to nearly freeze to death for 2 mins.

so, ask yourself, DO YOU WANT TO STRIVE FOR GREATNESS?

And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

One of my homies from college is WAY into that shit, he put me onto it and I am slowly getting into it. Very slowly. It isn't the in-and-out process of cryotherarpy or a cold dip but it is more multi-faceted with many similar health benefits. It's a two-pronged thing, breathing exercises and exposure to cold. If you get to be a real savage you can hike in freezing temperatures in nothing but boots, maybe a hat and your draws, jump into freezing lakes and shit. It's all about controlling your breathing and internal state. Basically the theory is that we have removed ourselves from nature and the benefits of cold by wearing clothes, controlling the temperature of our surroundings, etc. The guy and some of his practitioners have seen some amazing results, this winter I definitely plan to get more into it.

And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

No way I'm going that route--90 secs of cold may be too much, so hiking through glaciers ain't gonna happen!

But I know all the athletes swear by cryo, hence my interest for the endorphin jolt (and it's quick)--I'm still on the fence tho.

It doesn't have to be as cold as you think...

start with like 55 degrees.. like just a t shirt and shorts in 55 degrees for a bit... get used to it and you can get colder

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you start with the breathing. then you expose yourself to cold gradually, nothing insane to start in terms of temperature or duration. this guy i am talking about is wild, he went to poland and went through sub-freezing temps in a beanie, boots and shorts WITH THE FLU. two hour hike and he planked at the end. it's funny too because he was always just kind of a moody, pouty surfer and then he got into this shit, now he is a savage. i will never reach that level nor does it interest me lol

And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.

til a catastrophic failure at the wastewater treatment plant had them pumping untreated shit into said water for a while. mostly i would Wim Hof breathe and then go in up to my neck while staying core solid and breathing with purpose. would do 20 minutes. often while watching the sun set beyond the olympic mountains. the water was 50-55 degrees F I think. had some intense experiences. found I was better able to get control of the experience and know the cold as my "warm friend" (to quote Wim Hof) with weed in me. very painful. fighting off the shivering is a big part of it and i think you really are training your neural-muscular connection (or w/e, i aint a doctor) in a way that has consequences in other contexts by establishing conscious control over the shiver response (both in the water and after). I'd leave the water put my shoes on and run home at times which I think was a mistake because my joints would be frozen and bloodless and i think I brought on some knee pain doing that.

it makes you feel alive as fuck. and eliminates almost all anxiety. facing the fear and pain of standing still in cold water equips you effectively to put on the backburner the fears that cause needless worry.

that said, my take on cryotherapy (not having done it, because $) is that you probably miss a lot of the more "spiritual discipline" type benefits. but it probably does reduce inflammation and help cycle tired blood out of the extremities. ie aids in the replenishing of the vital bodily fluids. not sure if you get the same neurotransmitter surge. my lay-understanding is that cold immersion similar to my protocol spikes norepeniphrine (adrenaline) levels by like 600%. which i think goes some way to explaining why the next day it makes you a very mellow fellow. adrenaline spikes are also associated with improved memory consolidation. so if you're studying some shit, get cold when you're done studying and who knows you may remember more in the morning.

i'd suggest starting with cold showers.

As you mentioned, I'm looking for the recovery benefits, but I'll be very honest in that I'm not a fan of the cold. Like at all. So while I completely believe the more intense stuff takes you on a complete journey, that's just not something I'm interested in. To try and get those benefits, I've thought about doing hot yoga--for one, I'm curious if I'll find it as painful as others because I've spent quite a lot of time in very hot environments (working and exercising in triple digits). But that said, it may be better that I'm not pegging at the extreme end, so I can really get into the meditation aspect and not just countdown the minutes. I dunno, I'm still looking into all of this.

>As you mentioned, I'm looking for the recovery benefits, but
>I'll be very honest in that I'm not a fan of the cold. Like at
>all. So while I completely believe the more intense stuff
>takes you on a complete journey, that's just not something I'm
>interested in.

Recovery benefits from what kind of exercise? if you're lifting to gain muscle mass you probably don't want to hit the cold immediately post-workout as my understanding is this can reduce gains. so you'd want to wait a couple hours at least (maybe). if you ran 15 miles and want to be fresh for another run tmw, cold immersion is a useful tool.

my philosophy is that encountering the pain or the not-well-tolerated is very useful mentally and physically. running hills to exhaustion for instance. pushing the limits of the boundaries you've set for yourself is where a lot of the good change comes from. so, i'd say sack up and try some real cold if you can get motivated. but actually speaking of sacks, i think one drawback to the cold immersion is that it may have a libido lowering effect. you're basically freezing your balls off and i think it dropped my normally high sex drive some. that's one of the reasons I haven't been doing the super intense cold immersion lately. but yea, it is totally understandable to not do the cold if your masochism levels are normal haha.

>To try and get those benefits, I've thought
>about doing hot yoga--for one, I'm curious if I'll find it as
>painful as others because I've spent quite a lot of time in
>very hot environments (working and exercising in triple
>digits).

when I lived in alabama, I experienced great runner's highs from getting out there and sprinting in the 95 degree full humidity air. i think there's something to the super hot sweatlodge style sweat purge for sure. apparently the heat (whether hot yoga or sauna) and the cold act through some of the same methods. google "heat shock proteins". one of the things they do is release something called i think dynorphin which are opiod peptides that make you feel really bad but getting them into the mix has (possibly) good effects on your metabolism and thermoregulation.

regarding thermoregulation. i think it makes sense that we train ourselves to be good at thermoregulation. my argument is basically the primal one someone mentioned above. humans didn't evolve to be in a perfect climate controlled 70 degrees 365 days a year. we have physiological mechanisms to adapt and be comfortable in a surprisingly wide range of temperatures and it makes sense to me that we should try to tap into this adaptive ability because answer whether it is better to a)only be comfortable at a narrow range of weather conditions or b) have a well-trained thermoregulatory system that allows you to thrive regardless of external factors such as temperature.

similar argument can be made imo persuasively about time-restricted eating (aka intermittent fasting) and fasting in general.

the timing answer is easy--it's not going to be right after any kind of workout simply due to locations and distance of the places and such. But even if I could do it right after a workout, I wouldn't. So this is going to be on an off day.

That said, I do about 75% cardio (mostly distance running) and 25% interval and weight training--in the winter that swings closer to 50-50--but I mostly add in more circuit training, and not weights.

But like I said in the other posts, I'm not big on cold and I don't have any burning urge to "push" myself to explore whatever physical limits I have. I exercise to stay healthy and clear my mind. I realized years and years ago that exercising to a tolerable level of suck and staying there for 20-60 mins accomplishes this for me and keeps me in shape to run decent 5/10ks and stay lean. When I want to run a longer race I do ramp up the distance, but I keep my intensity in check. Just from my observation, I think this is what derails a lot of people, particularly guys, from consistently working out--that is they go way, way too hard. While it feels good to do a super intense workout, for most people these workouts are hard to maintain mentally. The workouts become such a burden that people end up skipping them--it's essentially the same problem with super restrictive diets--there's little room for normal behavior. My approach is to do what I can on any given day--some days I do a 20 min workout at a moderate pace and some days I do an hour or longer at a higher pace--and some days I skip entirely. Again, the idea is not to have a strict schedule or crazy intensity hanging over my head such that it's a mental hurdle to simply showing up.

Anyway I say all this to say that the "sacking up" mentality is not how I exercise. The appeal of cryo (as opposed to ice baths and such) is that it's brief, so there isn't this drawn out torturous aspect to it, and the potential anti-inflammatory and related benefits are attractive (if they are real). And that's what I'm trying to understand in this thread--whether real people (not super athletes, celebrities or people that work for the companies) actually have seen benefit from it, and if so what is it that you got from it.

On thermoregulation--I definitely have noticed that my body adapts to warm temperatures quite quickly (and cold ones not so much)--hence my suggesting the hot yoga, because I think I *may* be able to essentially push past the hot temp and get to the underlying benefits of the class, without feeling like I'm being tortured.

that's all very fair. glad you've found a groove that works for you. i don't know the science well enough and haven't tried it or talked with anyone who has.

fwiw, joe rogan seems to be pretty convinced by cryo. to the point of inviting guests to go with him after the show on some 'you gotta try it'.

if you're interested in speeding recovery is inversion or pressure boots type stuff. also foam rolling. i think a lot of the ultrarunner types pop into pressure boots after long runs. lebron too, i think. i know just putting my legs up with my ass against the wall and my back flat and draining the legs for 5 or 10 minutes does a lot of good.