I figure, 'in for a penny, in for a pound' with what I'm doing. If I'm going to go all in, then I may as well go aaaallllll in. And that means putting a little more discomfort in my life. For a while now I've been looking into Wim Hof. The 60 year old wild haired ice man who can literally run ultra marathon distances naked in the snow! And how his breathing techniques and cold shocks to the system can improve my recovery from injury, and help with pain management, stress, and endurance. Well, after doing a little more research, it turns out it may help with fat loss too.
I won't get into too much detail here other than to say the breathing method and cold is shown to increase brown fat activation; (the good fat in your body) increase the number of mitochondria in the cells; and kick start greater fat burning activity in those cells via thermogenesis as your body burns the calories from your white fat (bad fat) to generate its internal heat.
The cold approach also is meant to build better pain resistance when you also do the breathing. And the breathing itself is meant to dramatically oxidise your system helping with endurance, wellbeing, and recovery as well as strengthening the immune system and injury healing. Oxygen is life, after all.
Sounds good to give it a go, even if it does sound a little crazy!
My Approach
It's a simple one for now and this is the first phase:
- Cold shower each morning (1 minute, building up to 5 minutes)
- 11 minutes Wim Hof breathing (great 3 round free beginners video on youtube here) each morning
- 11 minutes Wim Hof breathing before each training session
How it feels
I've performed day one of this today and as follows:
The ice shower, given I jump into a shower the moment I get up in the morning, was a shock and bloody freezing! I barely lasted 60 seconds. Panting like a rabid dog throughout. It'll be a while yet before I go running in the snow without my shirt on at this rate. Afterwards, though, I felt awake, fresh headed, tingly and good.
The breathing (I've done it before but didn't stick with it, so I'm committed this time), was fascinating. rapid deep breathing at a just above comfortable base, breath holds and an extended breath hold (check out the youtube video for specifics linked above), that goes from 30 seconds round 1, to 1 minute 30 seconds round 3. The 90 second breath hold was pretty easy. The strangest thing was the sensations. I felt cold and very tingly all over about halfway through. Strange but quite a good feeling.
After this I feel grounded and alert and will do the same breathing before I train this evening. I'll let you know how that goes...
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