Ice baths are my recovery tool for evenings and early mornings

Ice baths and the sauna are my recovery tool on evenings and early mornings...

I thought I would write down some thoughts about something that has become almost absurdly important to me over the past year. Ice baths. Or cold plunges, or whatever you want to call it – my ice bath from Swedish Cold is certainly full of ice. I am still shivering after my last five-minute plunge and my body is flooded with endorphins. This is my account of a routine that actually gets me to sleep at night and out of bed in the morning.

It started as one of those things you try once so you can say you have done it. You know: a friend posts a picture on Instagram with blue lips and the caption “wow, what a rush”, and you think, fine, I can do that too. And the first time was exactly as awful as you would imagine. I stood in the ice bath for 45 seconds, got out, froze for an hour afterwards, and swore never to do it again.

Then I did another ice bath two days later. And that was that.

What I had not counted on was how much it would change what my evenings look like. I work a lot in front of a screen, often late, and for years I lay staring at the ceiling at night with my brain running at 140 per cent. Magnesium, melatonin, blackout curtains, all of it. It helped a little. But what actually got me to sleep was going out onto the balcony at around half nine, standing in cold water for two minutes, and then coming in and drinking tea.

I do not know exactly why ice baths work. People talk about the vagus nerve and dopamine and the body being forced into parasympathetic rest afterwards, and sure, probably. But honestly I think part of it is more mundane than that. It is two minutes where I cannot think about anything except breathing. The phone is indoors, work is indoors, everything is indoors. There is only me and the water and a fairly clear instinct that this is stupid and I should stop.

And that, I think, is where the point of it lies. You practise staying with something uncomfortable without running away. You notice it later, in other parts of life.

Mornings are a completely different story. In the evening the ice bath is a way to wind down. In the morning it is pure fuel. I get up around six, walk straight out in nothing but my underwear (I think the neighbours have stopped reacting), step in, and count slowly to ninety. By the time I come back inside I am awake in a way coffee has never managed. It is not that jittery coffee alertness either, but something calmer. As if someone has turned up the contrast on the world.

What I have learnt is not to overdo it. I nearly went too far in January – five minutes, six minutes, competing with myself. That is not the point. Two minutes in the evening, a minute and a half in the morning. Any more than that and I am simply cold, and then it is no longer recovery, it is just discomfort I can beat. That is a different sport.

One more thing. I do not take an ice bath every day. I know there is a culture around this where people run 365-day streaks and post daily clips, and that is fine for them, but I have noticed the body pushes back when it becomes too much. Some weeks it is four times. Some weeks once. When I have a cold or am genuinely worn out, I skip it. It is not an achievement, it is a tool, and tools should be used when they are needed.

If anyone reading this is thinking of starting ice baths: begin with thirty seconds. Breathe slowly. Get out when it starts to feel genuinely wrong, not merely hard – there is a difference.

I know this sounds like every other piece written about ice baths on the internet, and I have tried to avoid that. But the truth is that it is one of the few things I have tried in the past ten years that has actually made a difference to both my evenings and my mornings, with no side effects and without me having to think of it as a treatment. It is simply part of the day now. Like brushing your teeth, only wetter.

And no, I have no blue lips on Instagram. But I know I feel good and I sleep well when I have taken an ice bath.