Along with delivering a multitude of benefits to your body, ice baths can be a wonderful way to build up your mental resilience. Regardless of whether you’re using an ice bath for sports recovery or to support the healing of an injury, your mind is equally as important as your body when you’re withstanding the cold.
There are three key stages to engage your mind when you’re using an ice bath: overcoming the initial discomfort, building discipline to stay in for longer, and building your mind-body connection.
Building Mental Fortitude with Ice Baths
When you’re exposed to extreme cold or heat, your body reacts both physically and physiologically. You’ll notice the sensations on your skin, along with innate instincts that your body triggers you to do automatically. By using an at-home ice bath on a regular basis, you can gradually gain control over some of these processes and instincts.
When you begin your journey of resilience training in an ice bath, you’ll likely start off gently to let your body acclimatise. Generally, most people will start out with a more modest temperature of around 10℃ or a little less and only stay in for a few minutes. As you continue with your ice bath routine, you’ll gradually work towards both a lower temperature and a longer ice bath session.
Mastering this and pushing through, even when the water is colder and you’re in there for longer, takes a lot of mental strength. While the initial feeling is uncomfortable, consistency not only helps you gain better control over your body but can also promote better sleep and a body that can bounce back from stress more quickly.
Overcoming Discomfort
The physical discomfort of the extreme cold is the first thing you notice and is the first step in building your mind-body connection with an ice bath. It takes fortitude to push through this and stay in your ice bath for the full duration, regardless of whether you’re aiming for 5 minutes or 10.
The shock factor when you get into an ice bath is a part of why they’re so effective. When your body is exposed to extreme heat or cold, it sends signals to your brain and triggers responses within your nervous and cardiovascular systems. Building your mind-body connection in an ice bath is a bracing, refreshing and invigorating way to achieve greater control over these systems.
When you step into the ice bath, you’ll likely have a sharp intake of breath. This is a natural instinct you’ll likely have experienced if you’ve ever jumped into the sea on a cold day.
Of course, your brain will be telling your body to get out as quickly as possible. You’ll also notice your first instinct is to breathe more rapidly. This is your body’s natural response to the cold and controlling this is the first step in adjusting to your ice bath. You’ll need to slow your breath down and allow yourself to get used to the cold.
While challenging when you first begin, once you start to acclimate to the cold, you’ll be able to get to the next stage in resilience training in an ice bath.
Discipline and Resilience
The second element in training your mental strength is mastering your physical reactions when using an ice bath. During your first session, the biggest challenge is simply staying in for a few minutes. Over time, you’ll want to make it colder and stay in for longer but this is when the effects begin to really come through. The kind of stress that you experience for a short period of time - like being exposed to extreme cold for several minutes - triggers your body to do a few things.
Within a few minutes, it causes your body to constrict your blood vessels, reducing the volume of blood that’s flowing into the surface of your skin. This helps conserve your body heat and is what contributes to the prickly, tingly feeling you often experience when you’re in an ice tub.
In the same way that you need to push through the strain of a workout - whether that’s lifting weights or running - you’ll become more resilient when you can also push yourself through the full duration of your ice bath.
Mind-Body Connection
The final stage is enhancing your mind’s control over your body’s responses. The mild stress the cold causes your body to experience is the perfect opportunity to work towards disciplining your mind.
When you’re using an ice bath, after you’ve gotten over the initial shock, you need to focus on your breath. Rather than focusing on how your body feels, you want to shift your focus to your breathing. If you’ve ever tried meditation before, focusing on your technique while in an ice bath takes the experience to new heights.
Wim Hof, a Dutchman known as “The Iceman”, created a breathing technique specifically for when you’re in an ice bath. He theorised that the use of his breathing technique, combined with cold exposure, would enhance the existing benefits of ice baths. Not only do techniques like Wim Hof breathing during your ice bath help to enhance the body’s short-term stress response, but they also help you gain more control over your nervous and cardiovascular systems in the long term.
The theory and practice are that stimulating the stress response in a controlled environment will better enable one to handle stress in the outside world. This short-term stress response helps you train your body’s reactions and how your mind responds by controlling your breathing in a challenging environment. After you get out and warm up, you’ll also enjoy your body’s mood-boosting endorphin release.
While many people enjoy taking a cold dip to help enhance their recovery, ice baths are just as wonderful for your mental health and fostering the mind-body connection. If you have more questions about ice baths or would like a personal recommendation for which one is best for you, you can contact our team anytime.