Episode 136. How to Get The Best Results as a Beginner, Improve Your Focus and Cold Exposure Benefits.
Episode 136. How to Get The Best Results as a Beginner, Improve Your Focus and Cold Exposure Benefits.
In this episode, we delve into strength training, focus and cold exposure. We discuss the age-old question of whether beginners should focus on strength or aesthetics, and provide compelling reasons why increasing strength should be the priority for beginners.
We also talk about the importance of sleep, nutrition, hydration, and social media in our lives, and how they can either help or hinder our ability to focus. We give practical tips on how to optimize these aspects of our lives for better focus and productivity.
Finally, we explore the topic of cold exposure - the when, what, why, and how of exposing ourselves to cold temperatures for various health benefits. We share our personal experiences and tips on how to safely and effectively incorporate cold exposure into our wellness routine.
Tune in to this week's episode to gain insights on strength training, wellness optimization, and the benefits of cold exposure.
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What is up everybody? Welcome back to the Insitu Health and Fitness podcast. this show, we give you everything you need to live a long, healthy and happy life.
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Real quick everybody, before we get into today's show, I just want to thank every single one of you for listening and commenting and supporting this show. This podcast has been growing massively over the last couple of months and I'm blown away from all the comments, support, five star reviews, ratings, all that sort of stuff. So thank you again. If you haven't, I would appreciate it if you could just take 2 seconds to leave us a 5 star review and a positive comment wherever you're listening to this podcast because it really. Help us reach more people to help them live a healthy, long and happy life.
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If you are a beginner and you focus on this one thing, you are going to get some crazy results and generally beginners I would say are between just starting and maybe two years. Yes, even if you've been trained for two years, I'd still probably consider you a beginner. So even if you're at a year and you start focusing on this one thing, you are still going to get crazy results. And I'll even say maybe people that are. In other disciplines, if you start going into this discipline and focusing on it, you're going to. Get even better results than what you're already getting. And what is the discipline strength training? So strength training is probably the number one thing you should be focusing on, especially if you're a beginner. There's a lot of points to go over it with this, but it is going to get you crazy results. So you mean to say like. Strength training, focusing on increasing strength. I do, yeah. So if you focus on increasing your strength, you you're going to get great results. Your body will change. If you're consistent for six months, even three months, depending on the person, you're going to get body composition gold, so your body will change. And you're going to feel better, move better, be in a better mood. Being more confident as well, I feel like that's an underrated thing with strength training. As you get stronger, you do get more confident. Because you're stronger, you're stronger you. I think that focusing on strength is also more motivating, right? Because if you have a good program and you follow your program well, then each week you are bound to see improvements in your strength. Whereas a lot of the time people that start out are focusing on their body composition, but that takes a lot longer to change than what your strength does to change. So it's a lot easier to, I guess, get motivated. From the results, the almost immediate results you're going to get when you're trying to increase your strength. Yeah, 100%. And that's pretty much why I dived into this topic for
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today, because at the moment everybody is starting to struggle with motivation. I called this two months ago and I said once, everybody gets back to work. Kids are back at school, life is back to normal. Day after Christmas, holidays and all that sort of stuff. We're back into our routines. Motivation drops off because you haven't got the time or other stuff to come up so. The number one thing is it's going to be motivating because like Max said, if you're weighing yourself every week, your weights can go up and down and it's very unmotivating to see go up. Then it might drop 2 kilos and you're like, yes. Then it goes back up 2K and it's just all over the place where if you can do strength training, even if you're increasing 1K single week on a certain lift. So let's talk about back squats if you're increasing just one kilo each week, half a kilo. Over 4 weeks you've increased 4 kilos, so the numbers that can go into consistently go up and for beginners. They go up very quick. Because as you practice some moves, as your technique gets better, as you get more comfortable under the barbell on a back squat. You increases jump, not 1K, they can jump 10 kilos, kilos, kilos and they just keep increasing and that just gives you a really good positive. Mindset around training and it makes you look forward to going to the next session because if you do back squats on Mondays, you get to look forward to next Monday because you know you can beat that last score that you just did. And there's just a lot that goes into it. So, yeah, I think when you also like focus on the strength how you said. Like say you left, I don't know, know, kilos and then next week you're going to aim for 62 kilos, I think. With that as your goal, you're a lot more inclined to want to make sure that you get a good night's sleep and eat enough food and all of the things that are going to allow you to lift heavier before Monday. Because you know Monday
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is when you can hit a new target, achieve something so. You're going to actually just want to make sure all of the other things are aligned so that you can actually progress on Monday, right? Yeah, 100%. And that's another reason why, because if you go out for it, we've all done it well, those have been training for a while now that. If you have a big weekend or you don't sleep properly the night before and you've got a workout the next day, you're not as strong, you don't feel as confident. Sometimes a barbell just feels super heavy and you're not going to improve. So yeah, you wanting to increase that strength, you are going to want to do all those other things that are vital for your health and fitness and that all ties into getting better composition goals. So yeah, and another like I did mention. There are other disciplines can go into strength training. So if you're doing cardio, if you're very fit with cardio or you do CrossFit 45 and you're really smashing it and you'll plateau with those sort of workouts, or even if you're a long distance endurance type person. Nothing wrong with that, definitely not. But if you dive straight into, if you dive into strength training and focus on strength training, you can still do your other stuff on the side, but your main focus is strength training. You'll get crazy results as well because it is a new stimulus on the body so you can start. A lot of people will do CrossFit and all that sort of stuff and get pretty good results strength wise and that sort of stuff, but plateau pretty quick because there is so much high intensity in cardio and that sort of stuff, so. If you take a little bit of that out and add more strength training in, you start breaking through those plateaus and keep improving. So it's just another way to just get motivated again and keep going.
06:53
And. Just another thing I sort of wanted to add in was strength training is the only training that actually increases your metabolism. So. This speeds your metabolism. Like, so yeah, yeah. So basically you're going to burn more calories. Yeah, so strength training will build muscle. Not as much as say, bodybuilding, all that sort of stuff, but strength training, you are going to get stronger muscles. I've talked about these in other podcasts. How? Your muscle can be dense, strong, but not bigger. So you've got a lot of muscle fibers in there. And all those muscle fibres require energy to move and operate even when you're not in the gym, which means you need to eat more calories or stay at a calorie. At maintenance, at maintenance, and your body is just going to start naturally burning more body fat because it needs that energy. So a lot of the time you'll see like hit training, like sort of stuff and speed up your metabolism and all that sort of stuff. Your metabolism doesn't actually speed up in the workouts, it's what happens afterwards. So everything you do in the workout speeds up your metabolism outside the gym. So if you're building more muscle, your body requires more calories, so it's. Going to take it from your body or you need to eat more, so it's a win win there as well. Before you wait, before you move on, did you want to clarify? You said strength training and then you said bodybuilding. Do you want to clarify the difference between the two? I feel like everybody listening, most people listening probably won't really see a clear difference. Yeah, good point, good point. So basically that I did have one more point there as well and technique was the last point there. And I would say the difference between bodybuilding and strength training is technique. So let's use the back squat as an example again. So to get better and stronger at a back squat. You need to have perfect technique. Now bodybuilders will sort of
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let technique go a little bit to get more reps out or chase the pump a little bit more. Because they want to build muscle where if you're you know, so a bodybuilder might not squat to full depth. In a back squat and perfect form where a strength athlete or somebody focusing on strength will want to move through a full range of motion with perfect technique, and that only comes from practicing. Critiquing, working on your imbalances, all that sort of stuff. So. It's similar, but different. So the way that I see it is that bodybuilders generally want to build muscles size, whereas strength training, the aim is to get stronger and looking good. And having muscle size is like a byproduct. Yeah. So it's more functional than bodybuilding. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, a lot more functional strength, movement, all that sort of stuff from bodybuilding. Again, for a beginner, it's all going to look the same, and that's quite all right. So it's OK for if a beginner starts a bodybuilding program. With the aim of getting stronger, they're going to get stronger anyway. It doesn't really matter. It's only when you sort of start getting into the intermediate to advanced realm. So you've been trained for at least five years where you at matters where if you want to do bodybuilding or strength training, it matters the program you're following. So if you're a beginner, again, these are beginners people within the first two years of training if you just go and do a strength training program or a bodybuilding program. Doesn't matter. It's going to be about the same. I'd say just make sure it's got some of the bigger compound movements in it. Sometimes bodybuilders steer away from the big compound movements like the back squat, bench press, deadlifts. Pull up sometimes,
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shoulder press, all that sort of stuff. It's more isolation stuff. But the isolation stuff is very handy for beginners anyway. So if you are a beginner and you want to see crazy results, just start lifting weights. In with perfect technique, correct form and increase slowly, I'll have to don't just go I wanna back squat 100 kilos and then just jump in straight in 100 kilos. Start at 50 and work your way up. Cool, good topic.
11:36
Continue, OK. I wanted to talk about a I wanted to talk about how nutrition and exercise and all of the health things that we talk about on the podcast. Can have a direct effect on your ability to focus. I feel like this is a weird topic. We haven't really spoken about this before, but. I don't know. I think it's something that I spend a lot of time consuming other content on how to improve my focus because I want to get the most amount of quality work and study done in the shortest amount of time possible, right? And I was watching a YouTube video the other day on how to improve your focus and how to focus for longer when studying and stuff like that and a lot of the points that. The Youtubers spoke about were directly related to everything that we talk about and then I feel like we, Jack and I have both had a real life experience very recently on when you let all of those nutrition, exercise, sleep habits slip a little bit, how much it negatively affects your focus, right? So we moved 2 Melbourne what, one week ago? And obviously it's an extremely different environment to Country NSW where we are from. So our sleep has changed, the air quality has changed, the light has changed, the sound around us has changed, the food available to us has changed, the exercise facilities have changed, everything, literally every single factor that goes into. Our lifestyle has changed, so it took us a little while to find a routine, I guess, and get everything back on track. And the thing that I struggled with the most was having any kind of focus. I just found myself like going back to social media to scroll when I should have been studying or working or doing something because it was such a good distraction. Familiar, familiar. I don't know. Sometimes I'll just be working, my brain will stop and all of a sudden I'll just be scrolling Instagram. I'm like, how do I even get here? And my focus has just been way off, way off. So I think sleep was the last thing that we got back on track. Like we were pretty good with food straight away and there's a. Our building so we had access to the gym pretty much
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straight away, but sleep. It took us a while to get used to the noise and it took the dogs a while to get used to the space. And like without a solid 8 to 9 hours sleep my brain has been like those two little monkeys that just like clap the symbols together when I sit down to do work. So I just wanted to go over all of the things that you guys should consider if you're struggling to focus because I feel like there's a big movement at the minute as well. Like adult attention deficit disorder and. Like anxiety and depression and all of that kind of stuff when a lot of the time, not always, but a lot of the time. It is all of these external factors that prevent us from being able to concentrate on anything, right. And it does take practice. So yes, a lot of. Concentrating, focusing. We're just trying to do one task and not letting anything else in. You're not going to be able to do that straight away. No, it does take practice somebody, I think it was Cajun Koi is the YouTube channel that I watch a lot that has a lot of great study tips. And they say to think about focusing like going into a workout. So when you're going into a workout like you have a routine of getting to the gym, you have a routine of warming up when you get to the gym before you start lifting, like the big weights. So when you are trying to get focused work done, you should think about it the same. Like what is your routine leading up to when you're going to sit down and work for three hours? Like you shouldn't try and include like a minute warm up time or buffer time like and just. Allow yourself to not really get much work done in the 1st 5 or 10 minutes, but. Think of it as the warp and you need to do it. It still counts towards work, right? So I think the first, what do you think the very first tip is that you would give to people for focus into the routine?
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Or in general, let's just go in general, I'd say sleep. Yeah, that was my number one as well. When you go to sleep, your brain literally clears out and removes toxins. Consolidated memories, rests. Like when you think about it, it's the only time in the day where your brain is actually switched off. And even though it's not really switched off, is it because you're dreaming and stuff like that? Yeah, just think of it like your computer. Like when your computer slows down, it's lagging, nothing's working, you reset your computer and it works fresh again. Yeah, true. So when you go to sleep, it is just like your brain resetting. It cleans everything yet downloads what it needs to, stores all the info that needs to put all the information in the right spot and then reboots and it's fresh red rock'n'roll. So I would say if you are struggling to focus at work or whatever it is that you do. That would be the first place I would start trying to improve your sleep. And I'm sure we've spoken about sleep 101 times the podcast, so you don't need to go too deep into it. I just wanted to give you all of the tools and then you can decide what you need to work on the most first. The second thing I would say is proper nutrition. I did a whole podcast episode by myself on just. Foods that are good for your brain and all of those foods help your brain function well. But that aside, just general good nutrition makes a massive difference. So by that I mean like minimizing processed foods, minimizing alcohol, minimizing take take and sugars, probably the big four I would say to minimize and then if you want to get specific with it like focus on omega-3. Fatty acids. Leafy greens.
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I feel there's something big I'm missing. Creatine is great for one of my what are we talking about? Brain. Brain function. Obviously. I haven't had any yet today, but yeah, that's a super easy place to start as well. I feel like most of our listeners would have a pretty good diet at this point. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, strongly recommend creatine. There's. Very minimal side effects to creatine or downsides or things that can go wrong. Is there any? It might upset your belly, but don't have it on an empty tummy is all I'd say with her. Yeah, make sure like if you have it in a shake or something like that, just make sure you have a little bit of food around drinking it. Ken. Yeah, it can cause just upset tummies and that sort of stuff. Very rarely there's people that have an intolerance to creatine. You do get creatine from meat and fish, but your body can't absorb that much unless you're eating a **** load of it, which most of us aren't. So creatine is just a good way to top up your creatine stores because creatine does create energy within your body, so it helps your cells produce energy. So every time you think about something, look over in One Direction, flex your bicep. What are you doing that requires energy in your muscles, your ligaments, your brain, all that sort of stuff and creatine just on the side there. Very Simply put, it's on the side just helping those cells. With that burst of energy so you can actually function properly? Yeah, very powerful tool, OK. The next, yeah, what were you going to say? Hydration. Yes, is that I didn't. I had caffeine, but I was going to talk about hydration. And caffeine together well. I've found it hard trying to get back into drinking enough water since moving, just getting that routine of just drinking enough water, and that has been. Of noticed. I haven't been dehydrated in a long time and you notice it when you are. If you haven't been dehydrated, like a lot of people are, jets generally dehydrated.
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And if you drink more water, you'll feel 10 times better because it's something your body needs. And I guess I have been hydrated for that long. I forgot what it felt like. And the last week I've just been feeling it. You just describe describe the symptoms that you feel when you're dehydrated. Dry skin. Yeah, first, the first one like if you want better skin, just drink more water. And then just brain fog, yeah, like that. Everybody gets that sort of afternoon brain fog and generally that comes from being dehydrated. So that's the biggest one I've noticed and. I do think it affects my sleep as well because your body needs. All the nutrients and water and everything to do its reboot system overnight. But if you're dehydrated and you go to sleep, it hasn't got enough. Nutrients and fluids and all that sort of stuff to do it. Yeah. I think if I'm dehydrated, when we go to bed, I have like a really hot sleep that makes sense. And I wake up with like a flushed face and kind of a headache and a little bit of pressure in my face. And I think once you get to that dehydrated point, it's you can't just have a glass of water and be hydrated again. Like it's more of a process to get back up to feeling good. So if you just don't let it slip below that dehydration line, then it's a lot. Easy to just maintain almost. And then with coffee. I think we have been almost prioritising coffee over hydration since being here. It's like. We have our morning routine. Go for a walk, whatever, come back, have a coffee. And then I'm just like waiting for the next coffee when I should be just drinking water, eating more food, probably because coffee on empty stomach makes me. Really dizzy woozy but I think. Like you can use coffee to your advantage if you're trying to focus. So if you have a coffee like 30 minutes before you're going to sit down and focus, that's the best
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time for it to actually be put to action in your body. But then also obviously having too much coffee is going to do the opposite and prevent you from being able to focus. So just knowing your limits, if you have 2-3 coffees, make sure you have enough food in your stomach so that you can actually use the coffee. Advantage rather than it just like. I don't know, giving you the jitters like anxiety, and I know we've always got a listener or two that says Ohh. But coffee is liquid, so it's hydrating. And studies have shown that, like drinking caffeinated things. So that is. Everything. So including energy during screen teas, other teas that are caffeinated coffee, all that sort of stuff. It it doesn't hydrate you, but it doesn't dehydrate you. So it's just nothing really, just drinking liquid. So although you have a big coffee, it doesn't mean you're having a lot of liquid hydrating you. OK. I think maybe I'll do. This will be the last point that I really wanted to talk about, which is distractions. And when I say distractions I mean. Phones. So I went on a rant a while ago on the podcast, didn't I, about how bad social media and your phone is for your brain when I read a book about. That, and I haven't really thought about it since then, but like how we said at the start. We've just been checking social media for like, no real apparent reason. And every time you change from a focused task, say you're writing A blog or whatever to check social media, your brain has to manually switch tasks and modes to. Almost. When you're on social media, it's like looking for something, you know? Whereas when you're writing A blog or whatever it is that you're doing, it's producing something. So you're like get a notification and you just quickly check social media and you think nothing of it, put your phone down and go back to
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it. You've probably just delayed your ability to focus for another 5-10 minutes, like when you first started. I would say turn your notifications off if you can. Or even better, get your phone out of the room, because just having it in your site is a distraction for your brain. Like you want to check the notifications, you want to see what's happening, you want to find some dopamine, so just take it out of your sight. Is there anything else that you think drastically helps you focus? No, I think that's good. We covered it. Yep. Cool. OK. I've got a great question this week. Do you have any questions? Do, but go for yours. You got another 15 minutes, everybody. You know, just kidding. Just kidding. OK. Kelly ox the question what are the benefits of ice baths? And we haven't spoken about this on the podcast. I don't think. Maybe we've spoken about cold showers here and there, but. I've done a little bit of research. Yep, great. Here we go. Yeah, go. Go for it. OK. So before I get into the benefits, how cold should it be? Like, because we take cold showers, that's a good. And then I was like, OK, is it cold shower enough or does it have to be like a cold plunge, like in an ice barrel, you know what I mean? So. The answer is it depends. So some people generally can tolerate the cold better than others. Like Jack for example, can tolerate the cold far better than I can. And the key is to aim for a temperature that sort of evokes the thought of like crap. This is really cold. But I can stand it like I can stay, I can safely stay in here even if it's really cold. So you don't want to. Like there is a big safety warning around all the stuff that I found. About cold exposure, because some people can just take it too far, obviously. And it can actually you can die from cold exposure if you don't do it right.
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Yeah, I feel that that is a very. Overlooked thing with this whole cold exposure movement because it is a shock and a stress to your body, right? But people will just go and jump in a ice Cold River river in the middle of the snow somewhere and think, yeah, this is going to be good and I'm going to be healthy afterwards, but you can have a cardiac arrest, right? Yeah, so. It's, yeah. Continue. OK. So the temperatures that I found were like between 15 degrees Celsius and seven degrees Celsius. So we're not even talking minuses. That is enough to have a positive effect on your Physiology, right? So then do we go ice bath or cold shower? Most studies that I found use ice baths or cold water immersion up to the neck, right? Which is the best? Like that's the best option if you can do that, but a cold shower? Does also have positive effects, and it's also more about more than just your Physiology, so. I guess the benefits, the first most major benefit would be to increase your energy and your focus. So this wasn't even in my list of focus things, but this is just another tool that you guys can use. So deliberate code cold exposure causes a significant release of epinephrine or AKA adrenaline and norepinephrine which is also known as noradrenaline in the brain and the body. So these neurochemicals make us feel. Let and they can make us feel agitated, which I definitely get that when you're getting cold water, you're like Get Me Out of this. But you're also very alert, right? So.
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Cold causes the levels of both of these chemicals to stay elevated for some time afterwards, and the effect of the cold exposure is to increase your energy and your level of focus, which can be applied to other mental and physical activities. So. It just makes you feel. Just generally more alert, right? Which I experience this every time I have a cold shower, even if it's not that cold. I sometimes if I'm in a mood and I can't focus or I'm just want to change my mind and state of mood and all that sort of stuff, I'll just jump in the cold shower because it just does flick that switch and you just, yeah, it does change and you. You just feel great. Yeah. Well, the next point that I had was eating enhances your mood. So while not true of every stressor, cold exposure causes the prolonged release of dopamine, which we all know. Dopamine is the feel good hormone. It's like the trendy hormone at the minute. And dopamine is a powerful molecule that's capable of enhancing your mood, enhancing your focus, increasing your attention and improving your ability to focus on goal directed behaviors, which I thought was. Pretty cool, so you can stay concentrated on like the big task for longer. Even short bouts of cold exposure can cause lasting increase in your dopamine and sustain an elevated mood, energy and focus, so it lasts for a while after you have been exposed to the cold as well. The other big thing that I found a lot of evidence for was building resilience and grit. Is that what you wanted? I feel like your face is like yes. Yeah, yeah. That's what I was going to talk about. You continue.
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So I guess by forcing yourself to embrace like the stress of the cold. Exposure as a meaningful self-directed challenge. So you're choosing to fight against yourself in the cold, right? So. I did have a bit of brain related stuff written down, but I might just skip that. So most importantly, it's a skill that carries over into other situations outside of deliberate cold exposure, right? So if you can force yourself to stay uncomfortable in this situation, then you can force yourself maybe to focus even though it feels uncomfortable to be sitting and focusing. Or you can force yourself to stay in the gym for longer and exercise even though it feels uncomfortable to be there at the start. Is that sort of the Ave. You had in mind? Yeah. All I was going to say is you don't need to start with a nice bath, start with the cold shower. A lot of people are like, well. There's a big difference between an ice bath, jumping in a big tub or something full of ice compared to just jumping in the shower. Yeah, there is a big difference, but it's OK to start with the shower. A lot of people won't start doing it because it's like it's not worth it because it's not a big tub of ice. Start with the shower. Until, I think, until a cold shower becomes comfortable, that's enough, yeah? Once you're completely comfortable with being in a cold shower and you don't get the whole like. At the start, then that's when you should like, progress to a nice bath. It's not necessary to only use a nice bath. Yeah, So what I'll do? I'll have a hot shower. So then when I and so half and half and then when I have a cold shower it feels colder because I was used to the hot yeah plus. A lot of people are into the ice bath now because they'll see. It happens all the time with health and fitness staff. They'll see ripped people with big muscles of the six pack doing ice baths, thinking if I do an ice bath I'll look like them. Don't go into cold therapy, ice bars, all that sort of stuff with the goal of changing your body composition. Think of it as a tool to help you get in the right mindset to do those changes. So I think of it as more doing the uncomfortable. So sometimes it's uncomfortable to do workouts or eat the right foods, or it's
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more comfortable to go get take away because it's easier. All that sort of stuff, it's harder to make. The healthier decisions, yeah, so. By having that cold shower just increases that resilience and that decision to do the uncomfortable. It's just another way to train those things to add into it to get those benefits so you can get those body composition goals. It's not going. There are benefits of body composition goals and I'll know a lot of people pick on that, but. There's far better things you can do to change your body composition goals than a nice bath like strength training. So just see it as a way to train your brain to be to become that healthier, fitter, more resilient person. It's just another tool. And yeah, I guess moving on from the brain, the last point that I had was. Increased metabolism, which I guess is like why a lot of people would think that shredded people ice bath because it makes them. Smaller, skinnier, look more ripped or whatever it is, lose body fat, lose body fat. So in the short term, cold exposure does increase your metabolism because the body has to burn calories to increase your core body temperature, right? It's not some magic. Pill that's going to just switch on the speed of your metabolism, right? It's just your body trying to warm back up itself. So just a quick side note, it has been shown that like a frozen face washer. So if you wet a face washer, put it in the freezer and then sit on the back of your neck, so in between your shoulder blades. Has the same effect as a cold bath as in. Calories burnt type thing. So your body. So there's a couple of places on your body where if you just put those underwater, your body got to raise its core body temperature so you don't have to get into an ice bath. So
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you can do it with your feet, hands or on the back of the neck. You're right. And your body's like, well, I'm getting cold, so I'll warm up again, not as extreme, but very close to again, this is like a lot of people go. You know, face washer on the back of the neck or an ice bath, that's a nice bath, is very much more extreme and looks more extreme. Yeah, there's still other things you can do that. Just if that is your goal. Yeah, if that is your goal. So the total calories burned from coal exposure isn't actually that significant, but the conversion of white fat, which is energy storage, to beige or brown fat, which are highly metabolically active. That can be beneficial for people, allowing people to feel more comfortable in the cold. So once you do that conversion, obviously the more you do it, the more comfortable you feel and it triggers further and more sustainable increases in metabolism. So it's like a long term thing, right? So the more you do ice baths, the better your metabolism and your fat to energy ratio will be OK. The last point. I suppose the last point, yeah, day or night. So when do you do it? Because I feel like, do you think it's common sense? Do we think you need, we need to talk about it. So after cold exposure, your body obviously heats up because you've been really cold and your core body temperature is trying to get you back to normal, so. When your body temperature heats up, it tends to make us more alert and more awake. So if you don't know yet, that means you should do cold showers or cold exposure in the morning, right? And then you should obviously have warmer showers or baths or saunas or whatever in the afternoon or evening because then it has the opposite effect and makes you more sleepy. Yeah. OK, so a solid science supported
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protocol. This protocol I took directly from Andrew Huberman, just to tell everyone how, like, what the heck am I supposed to do with all this information? I know it's great for you, but. How often and how long am I supposed to do this? So hubs says consider doing deliberate cold exposure for 11 minutes per week in total. So that's not that long. So not per session per week rather than. So. Did I say that right? Yeah. Two to four sessions lasting between one to five minutes each, distributed across the week. The water temperature should be uncomfortably cold, yet safe to safe enough to stay in for just a few minutes. You can do more than this, but the minimum to achieve the benefits that we just discussed is roughly 11 minutes per week in total. So that's achievable, right? Easy. So even if you just do a minute each day. Yeah. Build up in the cold shower. Like everybody, shelves should be sharing once a day at least. So half of that shower is in the cold water. Then you easily hit that 11 minutes a week. Yeah. Yep. Amazing. OK, that's all of the notes that I have. I hope that that answers Kelly's question well enough. Yeah, just one quick point. Cross paths around workouts? Oh yeah, there's a very big no no. Because. Was actually having a conversation with her previous client that's injured and she was icing her injury and I said don't ice it because it actually stops recovery. It numbs the pain but stops recovery. So when you work out, you. You basically stress in your body you're tearing. Muscle fibers do all that sort of stuff, which is a good thing. So your body has a lot of inflammation within the body trying to repair that muscle. Ligaments, all that sort of stuff and make it stronger. So if you jump in an ice bath after a workout it stops
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that inflammation so it stops your recovery. So. You get less gains. So it sort of makes you work outs. Less productive? Yeah. So don't use cold therapy to recover.
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Yeah, just one. Yeah, I think like a people often see athletes like especially CrossFit athletes doing ice baths in between workouts and stuff. But that is just to numb the pain so they can keep working out, right? Yeah, and they wouldn't be doing that in a training session. They would only do that at a competition or a simulation of a competition. A lot of people don't realize that athletes, especially CrossFit athletes, do simulation of. Competition days or weekends. So they'll add those ice parties in the seed on social media like ohh just ice bath. Normally they don't. They only do it in competition or stimulating competition to numb the pain so they can keep going. So crazy basically. So if they did a hard workout they wanna stop that inflammation so their body can continue working out where if that information comes in, that's when they start to get sore groggy. Their body slows down because it is trying to recover and the body. These parts prioritizing recovery rather than working out, so that's all the ice is doing. Cool. What's your question? I'll leave it for next week. OK? I think it's lunchtime. But thank you to everybody who submitted a question. Maybe we'll just do a big Q&A next week. Thanks again everybody for tuning. And as always, make sure you like subscribe, follow wherever you're listening or watching to. This does help us out a lot and grow this podcast. Thanks again and have a good weekend. Bye.
