It's going to be awful.
Hooo.
Haaa.
Hi, I am Geek Climber.
For some reason, whenever I achieve something athletically, there's always a group of
people trying to undermine my achievement, but I always come back with another more difficult
athletic achievement to respond to.
The noise does not go away completely, but at least it reduces over time as my athletic
achievement becomes more and more significant.
Believe it or not, the same thing is happening to my new venture into cold exposure.
About a month ago, I released a video of myself trying the cold shower for 400 days.
There are so many comments doubting whether the water is actually cold and requesting
me to measure the temperature though the shower knob is clearly turned to the coldest.
There are also plenty of comments saying that California cold water is not actually cold.
Therefore, I have no choice but to take it to the next level by trying out an ice bath.
Additionally, there are two other reasons why I want to try an ice bath.
First, I see ice bathing as an extreme experience that you have to do at least once in your
life before becoming too old, just like skydiving.
Second, I want to see if I can feel any additional benefits that I can't feel from cold showers.
However, I don't feel comfortable jumping into an ice bath on my own.
When I went skydiving, I did it with a coach.
Therefore, logically, I should find a coach to guide me through my first ice bath, too.
The most famous coach in the cold exposure industry is Wim Hof, but he is in the Netherlands,
so there's no chance for me to work with him since I am in California.
Fortunately, there are a lot of certified Wim Hof instructors all over the world, and
I was able to connect with Miles, who is a certified Wim Hof instructor in the same city
as I am, and work with him for my first ice bath.
The first thing we did was put a lot of ice into the tub.
This is cold, haha.
While we were waiting for the water to ice up, Miles gave me some introduction and guided
me through some breath work, but first I had to ask Miles what the theory is behind the
Wim Hof breath work to clear up my doubts.
I remember when I saw one of Wim Hof's viral videos for the first time, as I had no idea
about breath work, the part where he guided a group of people doing breath work looks
really like a cult practice.
So the Wim Hof style stuff, what it does is we raise our anxiety up a bit cause we are
breathing heavy, and then you bring your anxiety back down, and you drop your CO2 to the point
where you can hold your breath for this extended period of time. Now you have this full control of
where you've gone from a high anxiety state to this low, very calm parasympathetic state.
And so when you do that a few times in the morning, you know, you get an email you don't
like, or you are on the road where you normally get road rage, nobody can really mess with
you anymore because you practiced going from this high ANX to bring it down all yourself
just by using a little bit of breath work connecting with the nervous system. And you
can learn it right away, and that once you know it, it's also like a tool in your mental
tool box. We are going to do that today.
Besides doing the Wim Hof breath work, Miles also taught me the HRV breath work, which
is mainly about learning how to control the heart rate.
Miles did an insane demonstration of how he controls his heart rate, so definitely stay
till the end of the video for that.
Miles also taught me the Rickson Gracie breath work, which is mainly about maximizing athletic
performance and is developed by Rickson Gracie, one of the most famous martial artists.
I will only show the Wim Hof breath work I did with Miles in this video.
If you are interested in the HRV breath work and the Rickson Gracie breath work, I encourage
you to reach out to Miles and all his info is in the video description.
You basically have two zones you can breath through, so you can breath into your belly;
you can breath into your chest, so every day you should do a little bit of belly breathing.
What that does is it looses up the fascia, and now you are taking bigger deeper breath
later on in the day.
Just do the belly right now.
Oh, you see how your chest raises a little bit. No, you don't want your chest to raise. Just
breath into the belly. Do shallower breath just in your belly.
Yea, boom. Look at that. That's a belly breath.
That's a very valuable place to be able to breath into because you have the most AVOI
into the lower part of your diaphragms. You get oxygen into your body very efficiently
when you can breath all the way into it.
Now try this. Into the belly first, pause, into the chest, and then let it go.
Into the belly, into the chest. Oh, I think I got a hang of it.
Yea, that's a good breath right there.
Perfect, that was even more effort than what I would want. So what do you think? Do you
think you are ready for a 10-minute round here?
Ya, let's try it.
Let's do it.
Now let's start nice and slow. Take some breath right now nice and slow. Make it feel good.
Now for 30 seconds you really want to get out of the comfort zone with this breathing.
Let's start to pick up the pace again.
If you have never done this before, you might wonder how hard this can be, but trust me,
forcing yourself to inhale and exhale a lot of air fast is difficult when you aren't
gasping for air, running, or playing soccer.
It causes dizziness in the head and cramping in the arms and legs.
I see this as a form of resistance training.
It's just like if you train the pull-up, your back muscles will be sore, but eventually
they will become stronger.
If you study hard at school, your brain will become tired, but eventually it will become
more knowledgeable.
If you train this kind of breath work, you will get dizzy in the head and cramping in
the arms and legs, but eventually somehow you will become more resistant to cold, which
I am not 100% sure yet why, but I think that is the idea.
Let it go nice and slow.
Find that neutral zone and pause with your breath.
Three, two, one.
You made it to the end.
Push it out.
After the breath work, it's time to break up the ice and jump into the ice bath. So
this measures the bottom of the tub, so the water is usually a little colder. Yeah. it said
40. That means the water gotta be about 39, 4 37.
It's going to be perfect.
It's time. It's time.
Time to go in.
Just go ahead and try to submerge your shoulder. Get your shoulders as quickly in as you can.
Nice big long breath right now.
Let me get the ice out behind your back.
Perfect.
Yes, you can lean up against the back if you want to.
I set a target of staying 3 minutes inside the ice bath for myself.
Let me try my best to describe what it felt like to be in it.
The sensation it felt in the ice bath was not cold.
It was pain.
It felt like thousands of needles poking into my body at the same time.
I had never felt my muscles contract that much before to fight the pain.
Even though Miles told me the best approach is to relax instead of fighting it, I found
it impossible to relax.
I had to tense up my whole body and fight through the madness.
Take a nice big breath in, lock it in, and let it go.
Okay, if you want to lean up against the back, you are. How many minutes is that? You are
a minute and a half.
You are half way through.
Amazing job.
At this point, not gonna lie, I really wanted to give up.
I think if Miles had not been next to me, or if I didn't have a YouTube channel, I would've
stood up and called it a day, but I stayed there, and this happened.
Nice full breath in, and let the breath out.
Fully in, and let it out.
Let's take 5 breaths together.
Look at me.
One, two, three, four, five, last one all the way in.
Pause. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Waaa.
Haa.
Yes, sir.
I did it!
Hahaha, amazing.
Wooo!
I did it, guys. Hahaha.
How about that？
Give me some, baby.
Oh my god,
I did it!
You've been waiting for that one.
Even though I was super excited that I was able to beat the target I set for myself,
Hoo, I did it!
I felt a burning sensation on my hands as if my hands were constantly under an oven,
and the burning sensation wouldn't go away.
Ahhh.
I was super worried if I had accidentally injured something because of pursuing this
extreme ice bath experience.
If you've seen Wim Hof's videos, I am sure you will come across him and his students
doing the goofy horse stance thing at some point.
I thought that was funny and eye-catching but maybe unnecessary.
However, believe it or not, when Miles told me to do the horse stance move, I did it.
And breathe out as you go across.
That's it. And to my disbelief, the burning sensation started to go away.
Here you go. Take that ball of heat and yes, make it bigger.
If we are on a snowy mountain, we've just been in an ice-melt waterfall, and we are
in the snow, and we gotta warm up. This is how you warm up. Ha, hoo, ha, yes, hoo, I kept
doing it and soon my hands were back to normal.
I also tried dipping my head into the ice water. Yea, give it a dip, man, Oh, there you go.
That's a good one. Oh my god, that is cold. And I could only last for a few seconds.
After this experience, I have huge respect for people who can do an ice bath with ease.
It's not easy at all.
Let's see what I can do. If I can get into the 70s, I will be pretty excited.
Here we go.
I saw Miles go into the ice bath in a completely relaxed state.
What's even crazier is that he brought his heart rate from the 100s down to the 50s.
It's truly incredible to witness this kind of superpower.
Personally, I haven't felt any new benefits from the ice bath, but to be fair, I only
did it once.
I think I need to learn to relax in the cold shower first before attempting another ice
bath again.
The cold shower is still mildly uncomfortable to me at this point.
It's easy to semi-tense through it but I find it difficult to be completely relaxed
in it.
I think the 50s is the best I can do today.
Crazy, right?
If you are interested in cold exposure and breath work, definitely consider reaching
out to Miles and also check out his YouTube channel.
All the information is in the video description below.
Thanks for watching.
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See you in the next video.