How to take an ICE Bath - Uncut - Tim Ferriss - The 4 Hour Body

Hey, Caveman Klaus here. Today I'm going to take an ice bath. I know it sounds pretty
crazy, but there's a couple of benefits to ice baths, and I want to talk about that.
Why the hell am I doing it?
I did my 30-day Caveman Cold Shower Challenge, and to celebrate this rite of passage (today
is Day 30) I'm going to take the ice bath. I'm going to step it up a level.
Why take an ice bath?
I first discovered the ice bath from Tim Ferriss's book The 4-Hour Body and—ooh, that's cold.
The benefits are number one, it can accelerate your muscle recovery. If you've had a really
hard workout and you've just been to the gym, typically the following morning you'll wake
up pretty sore. Maybe you've gone for a big, long run. The following day all your muscles
are really tight and sore. That's called the DOMS, which stands for delayed onset muscle
soreness. You can counteract that (or at least reduce it) by taking an ice bath and using
cold water treatments. The cold penetrates deep into your muscles, circulating the blood
around and speeding up your muscle recovery.
The second benefit of the ice bath is weight loss. You have two types of fat: white fat
and brown fat (brown adipose tissue). When you cool down your brown adipose tissue, it
basically acts as a catalyst for burning the white fat. That's another good reason to take
ice baths.
There's a couple of other benefits. It can boost your testosterone. It can help you get
to sleep easier at night if you take it an hour before you go to bed, and it can also
improve your sperm production and your fertility. So, lots of benefits. Anyway, that's enough
talk. Now it's time to get into this.
I've got a thermometer here. Let me just measure how cold this is. The optimal temperature
is less than 10°C for taking an ice bath. I'm just looking at mine. Mine's coming out
a little bit lower than that. It's at 7.2°C. So, maybe I put in a bit too much ice. I put
in 14 kg of ice. You buy these 2 kg bags for a 1£ each down at my local supermarket. I
chucked it in, and there's still a little bit which hasn't melted. But anyway, enough
talk. I'm there. I'm going to get in it. So here we go.
Oh! Hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh! Hah! Okay, that's pretty cold. I can't dick around. I've just
got to get under this. Arggh! Whoa! Oh! Oh! Okay! So. What you're supposed to do is basically
five minutes of your lower half, your lower torso—oh, my God, my legs are numbing—and
then five minutes of your upper torso. Oh, God! This is painful. Ah. Right.
I tried this earlier in the month with 5 kg of ice, and it was nowhere near this bad.
This is significantly worse.
Anyway. So, I'm going to get fully under. Oh! The crown jewels have to go underneath.
Oh! Hoh! Hah! Oh, that's actually—it's quite painful. Oh, God. Hah! Oh! So, I've fully
got my legs under here, and they are seriously cold. Oh, my God. They are going seriously
numb. Oh! Phew! Right! Oh. Man, I'm... Hoh! Right.
I'm going do the upper torso. Here we go. Hoh! Phew! Phew! Hoh! Oh, God! Hoh! Hoh! Oh,
it hurts. Hah! There, she hurts. [Laughing] How am I doing? Oh, God! That's seriously
cold. I don't know if I can make ten minutes under here. Oh! Oh! Aargh! I'm going to set
my timer. Oh, I'm not going to dick around. It's going to be ten minutes on this. Actually,
I'll set it to five minutes, and do five minutes of my lower half and then I'll swap, and I'll
do... Hoh! I'll do five minutes on the upper half. I'm going to have to put some music
on to try and take my brain somewhere else because this is seriously cold. Okay, let
me choose some music. Let me get this cranking.
Okay, guys. Oh! Hah! Hoh! Hoh! Aargh! Oh! This is proper Caveman style. I'm serious.
Two things going on. You can see there's still ice here. It's not fully melted. So, let me
take that temperature again. Hah! Oh! [Whistles] Just to put it in perspective, your normal
water, your tap water is about 21°, and this is coming out at about 7°C, so significantly
colder. Hoh! Phew! Oh! Oh, man! I wonder if this gets easier when you do it more often,
but at the moment, my lower half, my legs are literally numb, and I can barely—I'm
trying to wiggle my toes, but yeah, they're really seizing up. Oh! Phew!
Okay. I've still got another three minutes, three-and-a-half minutes—oh!—of the lower
body. I'll probably trim this video down and just do the start and the end, but, oh! When
I do the upper torso, I'm supposed to put my head under, as well, but just keep my eyes
and my mouth above the water. So, it's going to be interesting when I try that out. So,
anyway...
Oh! I'm just trying to keep myself even sane to kill the time, because this is—this is
quite a new experience. Oh! Phew! Hoh! [Laughing] Oh, Klaus! What are you doing? And why do
you do this? Phew! You've done the thirty days of cold showers. You've got this. You've
got this, Klaus. Just ten minutes of pain. Oh! Some short-term pain, long-term gain.
Phew!
For official athletes—you got your rugby clients and guys who are training for the
Olympic weightlifting team—you guys are really pushing your bodies hard if you're
training every day. These kind of big athletes—they need treatments like this to accelerate their
muscle recovery. If you don't do things like this, you really need to try and take Monday,
Wednesday, Friday—always have a rest day—because it's counterproductive to overtrain every
day if you're not taking rest periods. So, oh!
I'm not sure if I'm going to make this a habit, but you know, I'm giving it a crack differently.
Let me just take a drink. Oh! I tried an Epsom salt hot water bath earlier in the month,
and it was quite a different experience to this. It was much more pleasing. Oh! Epsom
salt bath—that sounds quite dehydrating. Not so much at the moment. Come on. Oh. Right.
So I've been furiously working towards packing up all of my house in London getting ready
for the Ninety Day Challenge. So it's Tuesday. I fly out on Thursday. I'm about to head out
in half an hour after this to my leaving drinks and party. Say goodbye to everybody here in
London, and then I'm off. Then tomorrow, I have got a man coming with a truck.
Oh, there's my five minutes. So I'm going to set this to another five minutes... Then
I'll move with my truck and they're going to take all my stuff to storage tomorrow and
then I fly out on Thursday and I'll be over in San Fran. And here we go. Let's hit this
for another five minutes, and I'm going to put the upper half, the torso and the head,
underneath. Here we go.
Phew! Whoa! Look at those legs. Look how thick those are? I don't know if you can see that
on the camera, but those are some significantly frozen legs. Okay, here we go. Hoh! Phew!
Hoh! Hoh! Phew! Oh, that's cold to put my head, actually. Oh, man. Okay, I'm going to
put the head under. Hoh! Hoh! Brrr! Oh, rats! Oh, fire truck! Phew! Hoh!
Oh! Take the head out. Ah! Oh! My chest. Oh! Oh! Phew! Oh, God. Oh. Because when I stick
my head under, the room is actually starting to sway, and I'm not quite sure what's going
on there, but that's significantly painful. Yeah. I am going to go back under there, but
oh, man. I can really feel that in my chest because of my head. So, right. Come on! You
only live once. Ah! Let's do this.
Hoh! Hoh! Oh! Phew! Hoh! Hoh! Phew! Phew! Hoh! Oh! Oh! Aargh! Phew! Phew! Hoh! Hoh!
Hoh! Oh, God! Phew! Oh, man. Having my head under there—it's a little bit too much.
Phew! I'm going to have to work up to that. For the moment I'll keep the chest and the
arms under. Hoh! Mm! Phew! This gotta be worth it. Hoh! Hoh! This is crazy. This is proper
Caveman styles. Oh, how am I doing there? Oh. So, now another two-and-a-half minutes,
three left. Oh, boy. My alarm clock...
Oh, I've got to keep myself talking here. You better see my little... My little... Little
tomato alarm clock. So what's the deal with this guy? So, I discovered this as a productivity
technique called the Pomodoro Technique. You can Google that. The Pomodoro Technique. It's
about single-tasking. It's kind of a myth that multitasking can make you more productive,
so...
[Laughing] Shit! I'm struggling to talk here. But this idea behind the Pomodoro Technique
is you set it up for a block of twenty-five minutes and let it count down. And you just
single task. You work on a single thing, like maybe writing a blog post or, I don't know,
building your website or something you need to get done around the home. Cleaning your
house. But you put it on for twenty-five minutes, and you don't let anything distract you. I
usually put my phone on airplane mode. Turn off my computer or all my emails and various
social networking accounts so there's zero distractions.
And, uh, oh! I'm starting to shiver here a little bit. Oh! God! So there's zero distractions,
and I just boom! I single task. I just work away almost solid for that twenty-five minutes.
And then after you have a five minute break, then you repeat again on another piece of
work. And it's really hard the very first time you do it. I'll bet you might be thinking,
I just want to get up and stand up and drink something else and do it. The more you do
it... Oh, God! The more you do it, just single tasking and focusing on one thing at a time...
Oh, my God! How much time left? I think I've gone one left. Hoh! Phew! Mm! I am still pretty
sore, actually. I had a big workout, and not yesterday, the day before. I had some heavy
squats and dead lifts. And, oh! Some barbell rows and shoulder press. Overhead press. So,
yeah, definitely my muscles are sore.
I have also been doing some barefoot running and that really tightens up your calves when
you transition over from a heel strike. So they're tight, as well, and hopefully that...
This... Ho! This helps with the recovery. Sorry. Oh! Phew! I hope you appreciate this.
Oh, God. Phew! I hope the pain—oh!—is worth the benefit. So, we shall see. We shall—we
shall see.
Oh! Come on. Five minutes is a lot longer than you think—oh!—when you're in an ice
bath freaking out! Oh! You thought cold showers were hard? Ice bath is significantly harder.
Oh! This ice bath is nothing. I have a nice—oh, sorry. Those cold showers are nothing. Oh!
Phew! This is a whole other story. Oh! Oh, come on, timer. I think my timer has actually
stopped. Is it? Oh, man. My timer has run out of juice. This is like a wind-up operated.
I may have done more than five minutes. Holy crap! Whoa! Oh!
Okay? So this is Caveman Klaus, and uh, oh. I've just completed an ice bath. And, yeah,
that's about all I've got to say. I'm freezing my ass off, so I'm going to turn off the camera
and I'm going to have a warm shower. Oh, God! Okay. You have a great day. Oh! Caveman Klaus
signing out. Phew! Oh! Oh, man! My legs aren't really working too well. Oh! [Shivers] Oh!