The most powerful technique on the planet for recovering from injuries, defeating autoimmune conditions, and boosting your overall health and vitality is something called Cold/Heat contrast therapy. When you go into extreme cold water it trains your cardiovascular system by optimizing your blood vessels, it heats up your core body temperature, it increases adrenaline and dopamine and obliterates inflammation – among other benefits. When you train with extreme heat, it activates something called Heat Shock Proteins, increases the performance of your heart, and relaxes your muscles.
When you combine these two training methods together you have a powerhouse effect on your body, which will increase your blood flow, regulate your hormones, increase your immune system, increase energy and most importantly regulate your nervous system. While I teach other techniques in Ice Dragon Training, cold/heat contrast therapy is the most powerful method.
So how do you get started with contrast therapy? For beginners you will want to start with hot and cold showers. It’s very simple.
Beginner method
1) Go into the shower and turn it hot. Warm your body up and relax your muscles. Prepare mentally for the cold by taking deep slow breaths.
2) Turn the water all the way cold. This will always cause a shock and the first 30 seconds will feel very cold and uncomfortable. Continue taking slow, deep breaths and tap into your inner strength. After 30 seconds your body will start to warm up and it will feel pleasant as all your inflammation goes away and you start to feel a rush of adrenaline and dopamine. Stay in for at least 2 minutes (you can go for longer as you build tolerance).
3) Turn the water off and acclimate yourself to neutral temperature for 1 minute seconds. It’s important for your body to train warming up naturally.
4) After slightly warming up, turn the water as hot as you can manage and stay in for as long as you can until it starts to feel uncomfortable.
5) Turn the water off and rest for 1 minute again.
6) Turn the water all the way cold and repeat the same process as in step 2.
7) You can either end now, go for another round of heat and end on hot, you can do another round of heat and cold and end on cold.
Make sure to always take 1 minute rest between extreme hot and extreme cold as going back and forth too fast can overload your sympathetic nervous system and cause lightheadedness.
Advanced method
Advanced cold/heat training uses an ice bath and sauna. The steps are basically the same, but slightly different because of the different equipment.
1) Start off in the sauna for 5 minutes, just to warm up.
2) Rest 2 minute.
3) Go into the ice bath. It’s very important here that you control your breathing as the cold will be very intense and shocking at first. Like with cold showers you will warm up after 30 seconds, but the first 30 seconds will be hard. So you need to take slow, deep breaths and try to remain calm. We are aiming to stay in the ice bath for at least 2 minutes; however if you are a beginner you may not be able to stay in for that long. It’s ok, just try to stay in for at least 30 seconds.
4) Rest 1 minute after the ice and allow your body to warm up a bit naturally.
5) Go in the sauna and stay in there until it feels uncomfortable. That will likely be 10-15 minutes depending on how hot your sauna is; however you will feel an urge to get out at some point after the initial happiness of the warmth following the ice bath. Try to push past that urge and stay in the sauna as long as you are able too.
6) Rest for 3 minute and allow your body to cool back down. It’s important to take a long rest period here as going from extreme heat of the sauna to extreme cold can cause light headedness. So you need the transition period.
7) Go into the ice bath again and repeat step 3.
8) At this point you can either choose to do 1 more round in the sauna, or end the session here after your second ice bath. A good rule to follow is if you are doing this in the morning, or before a gym session, you will want to end after your second ice bath because you want to keep your metabolism and adrenaline high. If you are doing this training closer to bed time you want to go back into the sauna 1 more time as it will lower the core body temperature and not spike your metabolism.
Once you are able to do 2-5 minutes in the ice and 15-20 minutes in the sauna back and forth you will have become proficient at the advanced contrast training.
If you are dealing with some condition – chronic injury, autoimmune condition – you can practice this daily. When you master the advanced method you will be doing it for 45 minutes to an hour a day.
I would recommend not doing this after your last meal of the day as the cold/heat training will cause an increase in metabolism and hunger – so you will want to have a meal some time after the training to bring your body back into rest and digest mode.
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