Are Cold Plunges Good for You (and More)
– The MOVEMENT Movement with Steven Sashen Episode 152 with Jordan Abecasis
Desiring to be one of the global leaders in the rehabilitation sector, providing innovative and adaptive solutions to mobility constraints, Jordan Abecasis is the inventor of the ADAM brace.
He earned his Master’s of Science in Bio-Medical Engineering From Florida Atlantic University college of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. He became a master physical fitness specialist with over 5,000 hours documented in nutrition, health and wellness, dynamic neuromuscular stabilization, and muscular development.
He was awarded both Non-provisional and Design Patents for the Multifunctional Therapeutic Workout Enhancement Brace in December, 2018.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Jordan Abecasis about the benefits and the misconceptions of cold plunges.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How some people might constrict their movement because they are afraid of injury.
– How people are getting out of casts quicker and getting into physical therapy sooner than ever before.
– Why our feet are one of the most underutilized systems in modern technology.
– How using an ice bath as a form of recovery and muscle growth will blunt your effects dramatically.
– How both and cold water is beneficial for the body and overall long-term longevity and health.
Connect with Jordan:
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Links Mentioned:
adamrehabilitation.com
Connect with Steven:
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Xeroshoes.com
Jointhemovementmovement.com
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Steven Sashen:
I don’t know about you, but it seems like ice baths are all the rage, whether you’re a Wim Hof person or you don’t know who Wim Hof is, and by the way, I talked to him like 11 years ago. That was a very entertaining conversation. But anyway, point being, maybe an ice bath is a perfect thing for you. Maybe it’s the worst thing you could possibly do. And this is true about a lot of different things that impact training and your goals, whether you’re walking, hiking, or doing whatever else. And that’s what we’re going to explore on today’s episode of The Movement Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body.
Typically, starting feet first, because those are your foundation. But we’re going to talk about some other things today as well. And we break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the straight out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run, or walk, or hike, or play, or do yoga, or do CrossFit, or play Dance Dance Revolution or ECM racing or any of the myriad things that you do with your body. And to do those enjoyably, and effectively, and efficiently. Did I say enjoyably? Quick question. I know I did. Because look, if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep it up anyway. So, find a thing that you like to do that’s enjoyable.
I’m Steven Sashen, your host of The Movement Movement podcast from xeroshoes.com. And we call it The Movement Movement because we, all of us, are creating a movement, more about that in a second, about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do. And the movement part that involves you is really simple.
Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There’s nothing you need to do to join. There’s no cost, there’s no secret handshake. There is a dance step you have to learn. But don’t worry about that. No, there’s not. But what you’ll find there is all the previous episodes, all the ways you can engage with us on social media, et cetera. And basically, all the ways that you can help promote this by giving us a thumbs up, giving us a good review, hitting the like and the bell icon on YouTube. Look, you know the drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
So, let’s get started. Jordan, do me a favor, tell people who you are and what you’re doing here.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah. Well, I’ll start. Thank you, Steven, for having me over here. My name’s Jordan Abecasis. I’m a biomedical engineer, but a strength and conditioning coach for about eight years. Divesting most of my time into mobility, stability and strength trainings, and helping other people move a little bit better, live a little bit easier, helping them get back to things that they want do most.
Steven Sashen:
First of all, thank you. Secondly, you just reminded me, one of my favorite things is the gap between what people know, or hear, or even believe, and what they do. And when we say strength training, it hit me. There’s a lot of people who are involved in what we do, who are runners of varying kinds, and there’s no question at all, the research could not be more clear that some strength training would make them better, would make them healthier, would make them less prone to injury.
There’s actually research from Dr. Isabel Sacco where she had people who ran in regular shoes, half of them, did an eight-week foot strengthening exercise program. And over the course of a year, that group had 250% fewer injuries than the group who didn’t do the exercise program. And it was a simple program, really easy foot strengthening thing. But it’s amazing how few people would do that.
So, before we even get into what I teased at the beginning of this, having to do with ice baths and other training, can we just talk about, as a strength and conditioning professional, what you bump into? Because we’re going to be giving people ideas of things to do, but what do you bump into get people to actually implement, to actually do the things that will be helpful?
Jordan Abecasis:
Most of the restrictions that I see come around a fear of pain, or a limitation in their own personal movements that they’ve almost curated in their minds, or someone had implanted this kind of seed that they need to restrict movement in order to stay healthy, because they may cause some type of further damage, to whether it be a joint or muscle or some type of sort.
And that’s a lot of pain science, which that’s not necessarily my expertise, it’s a whole science on its own to dive into that. But it’s learning how to be comfortable within your own body and then you can progress from there, and to further advanced movements that actually build and facilitate muscle growth, to help overall increase performance throughout daily life.
Steven Sashen:
Would it be incorrect to reframe what you said in one way, that many people are very willing just to argue for their limitations?
Jordan Abecasis:
Absolutely. If you can find some type of excuse to get out of progressing, I’m sure some people will find some type of way to hinder themselves. Self-sabotage is definitely something that we see very common.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not a big fan of the phrase self-sabotage, because if you really dive in, you’ll find that the person had a good reason for doing what they did.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
It’s just not consistent with what they’re saying, but it’s consistent with what they think or believe.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah, it’s definitely in line. And you see individuals holding themselves back for good reasons. Pain is a good reason. Our bodies are in tune. If we’re in pain, the first thing that we’re going to do is we’re going to stop doing whatever we’re doing, right? That’s natural.
And slowly coming out now, the last five years, the research has really been incredible and seeing how we’re progressing the field of physical rehabilitation and getting people moving much faster. I mean, just 20 years ago, if you had a cast on, they would keep the cast on for triple, sometimes quadruple, the lengths of what they’re doing now. So, they’re getting people out of casts very much earlier on, getting them moving much, much quicker because we know that that movement is key here to facilitating health.
Steven Sashen:
It’s funny, we don’t have to dive into feet per se, but what’s so interesting to me is that everyone believes that. That getting into moving as much as possible, as pain-free as possible, is the best thing to do. Except when it comes to feet, everyone’s just ready to have their feet immobilized and not moving no matter what the problem is. Even if it has nothing to do with your feet. It’s like you go in with a broken wrist, it’s like, “Ooh, we’re going to give you orthotics because clearly your posture’s affecting how you’re using your wrist.” And therefore it’s like, “Whoa, slow down.”
In fact, Dr. Irene Davis, that was her kind of wake up moment when she was teaching physical therapists, all about getting people moving as much as possible. But then, what’s going on, well then why are we posting their feet with an orthotic that doesn’t let their foot to move even if they have a foot injury?
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So that was when she, “Huh, I got to look into this.” And now, she’s the number one researcher about natural movement.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah. You said it spot on. Our feet are definitely one of the most underutilized systems in modern technology. And I’m not sure why it took so long to progress towards individuals like yourself who have done such great progress in the field, and have advanced our footwear and our mobility, and helping individuals understand that the structure of the foot is so critical for balance, stability, pain, movement, and just overall bodily health altogether. Posture even, shoulder movements. It’s all connected throughout this kinetic chain that we move. And what are we doing the most? For most people it’s standing or walking.
Steven Sashen:
Well, here I can resolve that conundrum for you really quickly. Where’s the money? The money is not in telling people to use their feet and do a simple exercise program. The money is making someone buy a $500 orthotic every year or more.
It’s a comment I make about modern running shoes. I go, clearly, they don’t really care about you. Because if they did, they would try to undermine the multi-billion dollar market for products that you need to add to your shoes to make them work better. The shoe companies know what a Dr. Scholl’s insole does. They know what a SuperFeet orthotic does. They know all these things. They could make money if they just built that into the shoe in some way, and yet they don’t. That’s an interesting thing.
Jordan Abecasis:
I heard you mention that on a separate podcast. Either they have completely ignored the research altogether, or they haven’t been smart enough to utilize this and to actually curate something correctly.
Steven Sashen:
Well, there’s actually another option. The other option is that they don’t believe those things actually work in the way that people think, which I could make that argument. But more they don’t have another option to make their products work, which would require them to make stuff that looks like what we do. There’s a lot of conflicting goals that if your primary goal is to make your shareholders happy, then that gets in the way for people.
Jordan Abecasis:
Right. No.
Steven Sashen:
Well so, let’s back up to what I teased at the beginning, because I find this really interesting. I’m going to start with just the thing that I mentioned and then I’d love you to paint the bigger context of how we got to from there. And that’s the magic and question of ice baths.
Now, I will confess that we have a little gazebo outside of our house with a hot tub in it and it also has a cold plunge. It’s basically just a rubber tub that’s about 24 inches in diameter and 30 inches high. And it’s used for people who don’t have a bathtub. You put this in the shower, fill it up with water and you get in. I just have it filled with water that, especially now that it’s getting to be in the teens every night, in the morning I have to chip away the ice to use it now, I don’t use it for the reasons that people think you’re supposed to use it. I don’t use it because I have ideas about inflammation or recovery or whatever. I use it because I just get a kick out of how after I’m in there for a little while and I get out, I’m just way more alert and it’s very entertaining. There’s something about, especially now when the water’s 32 degrees, I get in there and I’m just curious, how many seconds is it going to take until I want to get the hell out of here? And then, how many times am I going to resist getting out before I go? And we’re done.
And in fact, sorry, I got to say it this way, I never even have the thought of I’ve got to get out, I have the thought let me see if I can stay. And then, the next thing I know I’m getting out. So, let’s talk ice baths, and the confusion about those, and the bigger context that you framed that in when we were chatting before we started recording this.
Jordan Abecasis:
So, ice baths and there’s so much research now that has come out about cryotherapy and ice bath work and utilizing this as a recovery tool. But there’s definitely a misconception here. If you were to be utilizing an ice bath as a form of recovery in the sense of muscle growth, you will be blunting your effects dramatically. I was just listening to Dr. Huberman the other day about this, and it was actually, and it makes sense, if you were to set your body inside of something very cold, your whole entire system is going to clamp down. Your blood flow’s going to be restricted, the nutrient sources are going to be restricted, the metabolism is going to be restricted. So, you’re blunting a lot of these stress effects that facilitate muscle growth, that’s only if you do it too close to your training sessions though.
So, it’s not necessarily something that if you per se yourself, I love the mental benefits and I love feeling the adrenaline that kicks on when I set myself in ice cold water, because that’s exactly what’s happening. Your body is going to hit into an adrenaline epinephrine fight or flight mode. Holy cow, I’m freezing and you’re battling this game. And then you get out, you feel great.
Absolutely. There’s no doubt about it. It’s just when you want to talk about muscle growth and you want to facilitate actually building or developing as much hypertrophy in the actual muscle cell itself, you want to allow the body to go through these natural cycles and facilitate as much of an anabolic cascade as you can without blunting that effect.
Steven Sashen:
There are a number of things similarly that just get in the way of what we think is helpful, and because they feel good or it’s a good story. Like antioxidants in general, similar story, is that antioxidants get in the way of letting your body do what it’s supposed to do, which is because of the oxidative stress, because of the free radicals that you’re generated from whatever you’ve done that’s initiating the super compensation, the healing response, that is going to make you better. But if you get in the way of that, then you just ruin it. And by the way, for anyone who’s not looking, if you don’t think you’re looking for muscle growth or hypertrophy, you may be mistaken, especially if you’re getting older, because then what you’re doing is combating the fact that you’re just going to be losing muscle mass in general. I just jumped into that. Do you want to add anything to that mix?
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah, I will say that I think that ice baths are great and I think that difference between hot and cold frequencies is definitely beneficial for the body overall for long term longevity and health, mental health. There’s a slew of research that benefits that, but anybody who’s actually done something like this will tell you that firsthand themselves is how great they feel when they go ahead and go through these routines. And in regard to an older athlete, we’ll say 65, 70 plus, if you’re looking to really looking to maintain as much as you have and to increase overall health span at that point. You’re not in this developmental stage in your twenties and thirties like you were, and as a progressive athlete who needs to build to get prepared to gear towards either professional sports or even higher level athletic trainings.
So it’s definitely very subjective and personalized based off of what your true goals are and how you view and what you want to view at least your outcomes to be. And I’ll caveat back to that is that if you aren’t going to necessarily want to stop doing these things that make you feel good, but you should have the understanding that the research shows that you need to delay this time response by some heavy training sets and possibly by about a day before you go ahead and progress into a heavy ice bath cold plunge, because the metabolic cascades already started by that time, you’ve already got the signaling, you’ve got the growth. And for the average individual who’s doing average to even moderate intensity exercise it’s going to be a minimal difference, seeing a minimal effect as long as you’re separating it away from your exercise trainings.
Steven Sashen:
It’s a good idea. And I am flashing back to the times where we’d finish track workout and then jump in Boulder Creek because it felt really good in part because we were all toasty and warm, but we definitely were not helping ourselves in terms of just maximizing the impact of what that workout did to eventually get, again, muscle growth is going to be highly genetically determined as well. If you produce a lot of myostatin, you will not grow muscles no matter how much you work. If you produce none, you will not be able to avoid growing. We had a guy on our gymnastics team in high school who had, I can’t remember the name of the disease where you don’t produce myostatin, and the guy just kept getting bigger every day. Just a little bit of work and he just kept getting bigger. We used to tease him, it’s like, what’d you do for your biceps today? He goes, “Cheerios.”
The most mild stimulus would just make him get bigger. It was amazing and sad because that disease has a lot of other implications and he died in his twenties.
Jordan Abecasis:
Oh, I’m sorry.
Steven Sashen:
But suffice it to say, it’s like anything you’re doing, there’s going to be some growth component to it. And I guess maybe it does make sense if you want to balance it with just your lifestyle, if you don’t care, knock yourself out.
But sorry, and you gave me a flashback when you said hot and cold alternating. We were in Finland 14 years ago ish for the World Masters track and field championships. And we were staying with some friends. Actually this is the year before that maybe, so this is 15 years ago. Staying with some friends who had a house on a lake in Finland and it’s been in their family for like 400 years. And so they had a finished sauna or for those of who’d been to Finland, a Finnish sauna that was in a teepee and it was on the lake that had just unfrozen like four days earlier.
So anyway, I’m getting the sauna jumping in the lake, getting in the sauna, jumping in the lake. And the father of the people we’re staying with came by and said, “How many times you jump in the lake?” I said, “I don’t know. Seven, eight.” He goes, “Oh my god.” Apparently that’s like a big macho thing. I did not know. So I got instant street cred for jumping in the just previously frozen lake seven or eight times.
Jordan Abecasis:
And funny that they mentioned over in Sweden and Finland and those parts of Europe, doing sauna routines is normal custom work, almost like taking a shower over there.
Steven Sashen:
In Finland more saunas than people.
Jordan Abecasis:
That’s awesome. That’s really cool.
Steven Sashen:
Any decent office building has a communal sauna to use. It’s very civilized.
Jordan Abecasis:
Very, very. I want to bring you back a little bit toward when you were track training. When you were younger and you were jumping into Boulder Creek. Were you on a point where you were primarily developing skill or was this more of a growth phase for you?
Steven Sashen:
That’s an interesting question and that’s very kind of you to say younger, it was 15 years ago. And I think I probably still did it until about 12 years ago. I think I was really doing both, because I was definitely trying to get stronger, because there’s a definite correlation between certain kinds of strength and speed, and I was definitely working on form and technique because I never really had any training in that before. And frankly it’s something I’m still working on 15 years later. I’m always trying to improve my form and just getting more efficient. But the magic question of course is why do you ask?
Jordan Abecasis:
Because when you get to that level of training, your skill will be improved by doing these recovery routines. But even though you’re necessarily blunting some muscle growth effects, because you’re recovering at a faster rate and by going through these types of ice bathing or swimming rituals that you were doing in freezing cold water in the creek, you should have seen a benefit. I would’ve imagined you had seen a benefit in your training styles overall.
Steven Sashen:
It’s hard to tell, because I’m an old guy, so I’m 60 now and frankly the hardest lesson for me to learn in the early days when I got back into sprinting when I was 45 is how to do less, is how to have more time to recover in general, and how to, anytime I had the thought, maybe I’ll just do one more hundred meter run, it’s like that’s the time to stop. When there’s that maybe, bad idea. So I don’t know, but because would’ve certainly would’ve been easy for me to wait for a day and do it a day later because I’m not training every day and I found that I really only have two decent speed days in me in a given week. I need that much, or maybe even a little more recovery. Maybe I got three good workouts in every two weeks if I could arrange it that way. But to your point, just working on the skill part, that’s a neurological thing less than a metabolic thing. That makes sense. That’s clever.
Jordan Abecasis:
Right. No, and that’s where a lot of the research shows and you’ll see all the higher level athletes, whether they’re, they’re baseball players who are under tremendous amounts of stress or even the MMA fighters who are going in through these fight or flight stages. But once they get to the professional level, all of their routines are based around recovery solely. They’re not looking, and that’s why they have weight classes for these things. They don’t differentiate, they don’t want to build muscle and put on weight to escalate through the weight class. So for their sports specific training styles an ice bath to help speed up recovery, whether it be after a workout or even day after, is always going to benefit them. So once you’ve reached that level of skill, once you’ve built that foundation.
Steven Sashen:
That’s an interesting irony or an interesting sort of contradiction that since recovery is really important and we know that certain performance enhancing drugs accelerate recovery, but they will also accelerate muscle growth. And if you’re trying to stay in a lower weight class where you have a better strength of weight ratio, that would be, I imagine for those people who are engaged at that level, that would be a challenging thing to balance.
Jordan Abecasis:
And of course they’ve got a slew of teams and coaches and members who are all helping them balance these type of this training style and their recovery sessions. You can still build density. You can build muscular density without necessarily building muscular size. And yeah, you’ll put on some weight, but it’s not going to be anywhere near the point where for say a bodybuilder who’s focusing on hypertrophy and volume will put on if they’re doing a separate type of routine.
Steven Sashen:
Well, again, another interesting point, because if you’re getting bigger, a lot of the weight is going to be just the intracellular water and other fluids that, so if you’re building density, are you doing that? What’s happening at the cellular level that’s allowing you to do that?
Jordan Abecasis:
Well, the process is still similar, but it’s going to be different in the way of the way that the actual metabolic stress is perceived on the system. And of course the ice is going to dampen that overall regardless. So they will have of course some anabolic effect. They’re not going to be like zero. But in regard to actual size facilitation and the way that, because you have different ways that the musculature can grow, it can swell. The muscles can swell and then they can also… But through any type of adaptation training, you’re going to go through those micro tears. It’s just what level are you actually facilitating that type of microtrauma? And is your recovery period allowing you to rebuild on top of that microtrauma as efficiently as possible or are we optimizing more towards getting you back into shape to go back into the next round the following day?
Steven Sashen:
Well this brings us back to what I hinted at before and what we talked about briefly before we started, which was the difference between optimization and adaptation. And so just to make it easier for people to make the jump from where we just were to that part of the conversation, can you use the ice bath situation to highlight the difference between those two and then dive into optimization versus adaptation a little more specifically?
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah, yeah. So optimization is going to be more geared towards, well, we’ll consider it towards the athletes that have already found their niche and have built the foundation of their body almost entirely they’re going to be over the age of at least 25, 26. And just for that primary reason, that’s when you really see the big escalation skill level, right? Because you’ve built a very, very solid, and of course there are very young people. I mean look at LeBron James. He was very young, very skilled and very, very powerful at a young age. But you’ll see as he got older, he didn’t grow much more in size wise, but his skill continued to level and that’s the optimization piece. The adaptation would’ve been from his age of 18 to 25 and then his optimization would’ve been further on. So when we talk about optimization for skill or lifestyle-based trainings, someone may not necessarily want to be sore for two days in a certain muscle group for certain reasons. Maybe it will hinder their lifestyle effects. Maybe they’re a physical labor job and they have to go back to work and they can’t have their legs detrimentally sore. Yeah, it’s going to have some effect on overall growth, but that’s going to be a decision that they’re going to make.
Steven Sashen:
Well, let’s also cut to the chase. You do a leg workout that really kills you that much and you don’t want to be that sore because you want to be able to sit on a toilet. I have, on more than one occasion, had to help myself down or walk downstairs backwards because I overdid leg day.
Jordan Abecasis:
And of course there’s several things that play into this and nutrition and sleep are also incredibly critical in creating a balanced recovery optimization routine as well as an adaptation based formula, really adaptation in a sense of musculature or muscular health is primarily driven or at least regarded with hypertrophy. The hypertrophy is going to be our biggest indication for the muscular adaptation. You could make a claim and to say that performance overall is an adaptation, but performance also leads in through neuromuscular stabilization and our CNS and PNS systems as you mentioned earlier. So there’s a little bit more to performance than there is necessarily to just strictly growth. Growth is a little bit easier to attain than optimization is itself.
Steven Sashen:
My undergraduate research when I was at Duke was on cognitive aspects of motor skill acquisition and people really don’t appreciate how much time it takes to lay down new neural pathways and get something way back in your brain stem so you don’t need to think about it and you can’t do it wrong anymore. And it’s of course different for different people based on neuroplastic events and that’s genetically determined to a significant amount. But suffice it to say they also don’t appreciate that the process of learning those new skills is what we call frustrating. And that’s just the feeling laying down the neuro pathways and it always takes, again, longer than you would like, which, and at the same time, I don’t know if I’ve just reframed it, but I love last night, every night I take my dog out for a little walk to go pee before we go to bed, and then we run home. And I just use that as a time to play with, just for 20 meters, just to play with my form.
And I’m always finding a little something where it’s never going to be locked in or maybe it will at some point. I remember watching, sorry ranting for a sec, remember watching a video of Ben Johnson and he’s about my age and someone just went on the track and just decided to run with him and the guys weighs, geez, 50 pounds more than he did when he was competing. Not nearly as muscular as when he was competing, but my god, his form was perfect. I mean just could not have been better. It was beautiful to watch. I don’t know where I’m going with that.
Jordan Abecasis:
I know. And also, just to revert back to your format and I know you’ve been dealing with some back issues as well that you’ve been mediating as well and of course that’s going to play a role and how you move, especially towards the end of the night. I’m sure you’re a busy guy and running towards the end of the night, you’re going to always find some critiques if you’re not exactly perfect throughout the thing.
Steven Sashen:
Well that’s true but I mean the fun thing about having a dog, so my wife and I had never had a dog before and we got this guy, he’s probably about three, we had him seven months ago, he’s a rescue. And what I learned from having a dog is that I can run all out full speed, no warmup at 6:00 AM because he can. So I decided to see what happened. I haven’t had a problem yet and sometimes I’m just not in the mood, but he’s always in the mood.
Jordan Abecasis:
He’s a great training partner,
Steven Sashen:
He really is. Well he’s great for overspeed because he’s faster than I am so I try to have him keep up with or stay with me for a little while but then I’ll let him go and I’ll just do overspeed training, because I’m just trying to keep up with him and he’s pulling me along. It’s really entertaining and he has so much fun when he’s doing that.
So backing up again in the context of optimization and adaptation to loop back in our cold therapy or our cold plunge or cold water, however you want to do it, our cryotherapy. So do you want to say something a little more concrete about when in those two phases, optimization versus adaptation? And I know we’re being a little redundant when I ask this. Say more about how you would apply that intervention in those two different phases you might be in. And also one other thing if you would, for people who aren’t just trying to get to a high level but they’re continuing to just do what they do, their lawyer athletes, let’s talk about optimization and adaptation as a sort of periodic thing as well. I’m imagining that there’s an application there.
Jordan Abecasis:
And it’s not something as you know, of course straightforward and everyone’s individual training and their personal skill level is definitely going to be somewhat involved in this. But I will caveat to this, when we are gearing towards optimization, we’re not going to necessarily care about blunting blood flow for a certain time period because it will help systemic recovery overall.
Now if we’re going to be gearing towards actual muscular hypertrophy and full adaptation of the musculature system itself, you’re not going to want to go ahead and jump into a cold bath after your workouts and you’ll see a lot of the athletes go ahead and it’s becoming a wave, well, oh let’s all jump in a cold bath, and it’s not necessarily going to be beneficial for everyone’s goals. Now, to the degree that it actually is, it’s going to be on the individual level and what you prefer.
If you are going to accept the fact that the data shows that hey, this is almost like taking Advil and you are basically creating an anti-inflammatory system by jumping in a cold bath, that is going to slow down muscular growth. That inflammatory cascade is what is driving hypertrophy. That is the metabolic cascade that you actually want to go ahead and continue through to build and to adapt the muscles to get larger and stronger over a course of time. So if you are gearing towards adaptation, and you would assume that most individuals who are into the gym are gearing towards adaptation, because they’re still building that foundation for the most part. I believe it’s what 73% of individuals are under exercising in the United States right now according to WHO, and that’s quite a big amount. So even if they were doing two days a week, still going to want to maximize that type of effect for your body.
Not going to necessarily want to be jumping into a cold plunge every single day because you’re not really placing the stress on your body to see the benefits of it. So we want to go ahead and gear towards optimizing or adapting our musculature to get stronger, bigger and allow us to progress in our lifestyle habits without necessarily impeding on this type of growth. And there’s several things that we can do and so we’ve got our nutrition, we have to hit our protein levels, whether it be plant-based or animal based. You have to hit your protein levels, and you want to go ahead and then optimize for sleep and somewhat of a recovery routine where you are not over stiffening yourself where you’re not going to move the following day.
So you’ve got to find this healthy balance as to what works for you when you start getting further into optimization and optimizing for specific motor patterns like a pitcher, hypertrophy is not the game for a pitcher to build. You don’t want hypertrophy of the rotator cuff. You don’t necessarily want large hypertrophy of a muscle that’s going to inhibit mobility. So our goal is to optimize our ability to go ahead and have this more specific movement be greater and more skillful over time. And that’s when we’re going to start implementing more of a recovery based routine rather than an adaptation based routine.
Steven Sashen:
So for people who are not aspiring to master some skill or be a professional athlete, again are, I hate the phrase weekend warriors, not that, but people who are trying to be fit, trying to be healthy, et cetera. What would you recommend, if anything, for them about how to frame what they’re doing in this context?
Jordan Abecasis:
If you have the opportunity to jump into a cold plunge through hot and cold punches, it’s definitely going to be a benefit to separate that into its own individual day. And if you may even consider some low intensity steady state cardio on that type of day, if you are a fitness freak, but you definitely don’t want to do a heavy lift, and you don’t want to try and build volume.
Steven Sashen:
Sorry, what? You cut out for just a sec. I said you don’t want to do a heavy lifting in that same day and then you cut out for a sec.
Jordan Abecasis:
You don’t want to do a heavy lift and do a ton of volume, especially for your legs, which is an incredibly large portion of your muscular group. You’re not going to want to go into the gym and blast your legs and then go straight into a cold plunge bath. It’s not going to be beneficial for you. And actually I would recommend even furthering that out from a day to even two days before to allow that growth to continue to facilitate rather than jumping right in and gearing towards. Because for the most part, while you may feel good in the moment, if you’re restricting blood flow to the area, you’re just dampen your recovery and your overall muscular adaptation and its own so it will be beneficial overall.
Steven Sashen:
No, go ahead. Well that will, here I’ll jump in that rate. And by the way, you’re having some connectivity issues. That raised, the interesting question then is what’s your thought on heat therapy?
Jordan Abecasis:
Heat therapy’s great. So heat therapy and so use is great because we’re going to be facilitating further blood flow and when we talk about adaptation wise, that will increase vasodilation, they will increase blood flow systemically, we’re going to increase that metabolic nutrient cascade that we want towards the muscles and there’s really no evidence showing that it will dampen any of the effects whatsoever compared to cold therapy where you are immediately constricting and restricting blood flow upon submersion.
Steven Sashen:
Do you know if there’s any data on, I’ll do cold then warm, on if you’re going to do cold therapy, what temperature is good, what temperature’s bad? Same idea on the heat part, whether there’s a difference between getting in a hot tub, getting in a regular Finnish sauna or infrared sauna. So just what are the options for hot and cold?
Jordan Abecasis:
So with cold it’s definitely a titration effect, because it’s going to be subjective and somebody who’s never been in a cold plunge might not want to jump into 30 degree Boulder Creek water. Well no.
Steven Sashen:
Boulder Creek, just to be fair, Boulder Creek was… I don’t think I ever got in when it was anything below mid forties. But my little cold plunge where I got to chip away the ice, that’s a whole other story.
Jordan Abecasis:
And you definitely want to ease into this, because you can be very cold and it can be detrimental overall and you definitely don’t want to jump into ice, ice cold water for your first time alone, and you don’t want to prolong that.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, hold on, wait. I’m laughing because I’m also a 17 times member of the Polar Bear Club. So on January 1st, heading onto the Boulder Reservoir where they did just chip away the ice or maybe the water temperatures are somewhere between 32 and 34. And then they would have a thing where you could either just jump in and jump out or jump in and kind of swim from dock to dock, which of course I had to do that. And I’ll never forget, I went with a friend once. There was two funny parts about this. One is they said, “Who wants to jump in naked?” And my friend, she raises her hand and says, “I do.” And then after she kind of commits to this, she looks at me and she goes, “Oh my god, I haven’t shaved my legs.” And I said, ‘Trust me, no one’s going to be looking at your legs.”
But we do the thing where we swim across and this is a person who is a collegiate athlete and just very intense. So we swim across from dock to dock. I jump out and I turn around, she’s right behind me and she gets to the dock and she puts her hands up and then has this look on her face. That’s a combination of confusion and terror as she starts to sink back into the water. And then I grab her and lift her out and I said, “What happened?” She goes, “It’s the first time in my life where my body just wouldn’t do what I was willing it to do.” And so that was the other crazy part. But then the other thing is you do jump into literal ice cold water like that and for the next few hours your body has no idea what to do. It’s trying to change your temperature. I mean hot on the outside, cold on the inside, cold on the inside, hot on the outside. I mean it just can’t figure it out for a few hours. Which is again, if you’re into weird physical experiences, very entertaining. Otherwise it’s annoying and horrifying and you never want to do it again. But after 17 years of it, I think I’m done.
Jordan Abecasis:
Personally never been in water below 50.
Steven Sashen:
What?
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah, no water below 50. I have an extreme cold sensation thing and I’m trying to work down into it.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t think you can work your way down. I think you just need to do it. Small dose. What I can tell you is this. When you’re jumping in or diving into literally 33 water, if you don’t, how do I want to say this? If you try to keep yourself from expecting that it’s going to feel cold. If you just go in a little open-minded and say, “I wonder what this experience is going to be like?” It will be surprising to you because I’ll tell you what happened for me when I do that, if I really pay attention. I jump in or I dive in and my brain basically shuts down for a split second, everything kind of goes white. And it’s like what the hell just happened? The whole nervous system is completely confused. And then you get cold for a moment, but then by the time you’re trying to register whether what’s going on, you’re numb. And in fact, that’s the most challenging part if you’re doing this at a lake or whatever is just getting out, because your feet will get numb really fast and you got to be able to walk, and then you’ll get out and let’s say it’s 10 degrees outside, you just jumped in 32 degree water and you walk out of the water and you feel hot.
Doesn’t matter what the temperature is, it’s like you can walk around practically naked and you feel pretty warm for a little while and then all hell breaks loose. But if you really just pay attention, that initial diving, it’s fascinating, because it’s not what you expect. If you can put your expectations aside.
Jordan Abecasis:
I’ve done some of the cryo therapies and of course the cryo therapies get very cold, but it’s a little bit different than the ice plunge. But we’re going to work towards it. I’ll take a video next time and I’ll get it down to 42 and I’ll go over my buddy’s, he’s an MLB picture and he has one that he sets at 42 and we raise it a little bit for me the first couple of times I dove in.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, you just got to get in, get out. So anyway, so we were talking about of optimal temperatures for cold and optimal applications and temperature for hot.
Jordan Abecasis:
And for the individual, it’s going to be more of a time duration, more so even than the cold because if you can facilitate one minute, great, that’s comfortable for you, awesome. You will see some type of neurological benefit from even the immediate dose, if you can get to two think recommended dosages all the way up to five minutes. I don’t think anybody’s recommending past five minutes of seated full submersion cold plunge. And I know you brought up all the different factors in this, the benefits are not the same by taking a cold shower. Being in ice bath and being fully submerged is a completely different bodily systemic reaction than just turning your water on cold and having it hit your skin when you’re in the shower. And cryotherapy is kind of somewhere in between. Cryotherapy is a little bit better than necessarily doing a cold shower, but not necessarily as systemically, I don’t know great, that’s a bad term, but optimal compared to cold plunging. A full systemic cold plunge inside of an ice bath is going to be your best way to facilitate that. But if you were someone like me who is very temperature sensitive, start off with a couple of cold showers and work your ways up.
Steven Sashen:
Well I know that some people, and I know Huberman is one of them, says that the whole benefit is to get to the point where you’re shivering. But I know that when I was doing baths before I had the cold plunge and I would have the water at about 50 degrees, and at 50 degrees it would take me 15 minutes until I would start to shiver. And it’s like, that’s just way too much effort.
Jordan Abecasis:
No, I said it, I’m shivering. I’ll be the first to say it, I will be dumping some ice in too to lower the temperature a little bit further. And then there was some ice. But I’m working towards it.
Steven Sashen:
The other problem with doing it slowly, I don’t know what the geometric configuration of the cold plunger you’re thinking of is, but with mine you basically stand in it and then just sit right down. So you kind of go past the nuts and nipples layers pretty quickly because that’s where you want to stop it. You just go down and mostly you scream curse words as you do it and then as soon as you’re all the way down that stops. But on the way down you got to say things that embarrass your mother. But then of course the tricky thing is your body temperature is heating up the water right around you. And so if you’re not moving, it’s not as bad if you kind of swirl around, it stays pretty damn cold. And I’m sure you can guess which one I do. Do you know if there’s anything in the research about whether 50 degrees is better or worse than 40 degrees is better or worse than ice cold or anything in between?
Jordan Abecasis:
The further you go down, the further the effect is going to be. The sharper the effect is going to be. And you would see that across all scales. And when I say slowly, I meant more towards temperature dropping slowly, not necessarily leaning in slowly, but I’ve slowly digressed down towards 50, and I will continue to go down towards 40 and escalate towards her. Like I said, my buddy has his own little tub system that you can regulate the temperature itself.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll be curious to see what happens as you do it, how you adapt. And what I’m thinking when I say this is when first started xero shoes and we were just making sandals. I was curious how long I could just stay in sandals throughout the Colorado winter, and the next thing I knew it was March. And then the next year, same thing. And what I’ve noticed is that it seems that my circulation has changed or I’ve developed more calculators or something, because now when I go out my hands and my face and my head can get really cold but my feet rarely get cold. And this has been years, but it definitely seems like there’s been some sort of adaptation and I’ll be curious to see if you have anything similar to that.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah, I would assume that the slow progression towards, and it may not be optimal, I may just be being a baby about this and someone point out be like Jordan, just jump into the cold water. And that may be a faster track to it and maybe. Fine. But this is, at least for me, it felt a little bit more comfortable jumping into that first before I got into some of the lower temperatures.
In regard to heat, we can handle some pretty high heats overall. And if you were to be using a sauna, of course the first thing that you want to do is make sure you’re hydrated. You don’t want to dehydrate in the sauna, and if you need to get out then you need to get out. You shouldn’t be lightheaded. You shouldn’t start feeling dizzy or woozy in any type of capacity. And you should always, I believe in doing things with buddies all the time, whether you’re exercise training or doing any type of different type of event that may have some type of reaction for you, do it in a safe manner in a controlled setting. So that way if something does go wrong and you want to push yourself a little bit further, you’ll have a little bit of help there. But saunas, you can get all the way up. I think Joe Rogan’s famous for this and going all the way up and doing 240 degree sauna temperatures and…
Steven Sashen:
Well I’m pretty sure that’s in a “traditional sauna,” not an infrared. Because the infrared stuff that it’s a very different feeling. You don’t feel like you’re walking into super hot air because you’re not. And so you can have a much lower temperature where you’re feeling the effect of it in a very different way. And I don’t know that I have a preference at this point, and I didn’t know if there was any research about one being better than the other.
Jordan Abecasis:
I’m actually not too familiar with infrared saunas. I mean I’m familiar more so with infrared lighting and companies like Joovv that creates those large full panel infrared lighting systems that you stand in front of. And that’s more of, I’ve actually haven’t seen anything on infrared lighting in regard to physical therapy.
Steven Sashen:
Well it’s not infrared lighting per se because it’s not going to be at a light frequency. I mean you don’t see anything. You’re just basically, you’re kind of microwaving yourself. And the advantage is that there’s way less involved in using an infrared sauna. And mine has, I don’t know, a couple of panels, they don’t feel warm to the very warm the touch a little bit because there’s some fabric on top of it. But you definitely feel like you’re getting toasted and it’s again a very different feeling than being in a Finnish sauna where there’s higher humidity. For example, especially here in Colorado. If you’re in a infrared sauna, there’s no additional humidity. So it’s just the normal Colorado dryness add a bunch of heat. So I don’t think I ever take mine above 140 degrees or maybe 145, but in a traditional sauna in the high hundreds, 200 I’ve done that. And again, just a very different flavor.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah, no it’s definitely really, really hot when you go into those. I don’t have any experience with the infrared sauna. I’d be very curious to try one out and to see what, at least my own personal perception of the experiences. But I know I do a lot of breathing work and a lot of breathing work inside of the saunas tends to be very beneficial for at least my mindset and how I feel leaving after a gym session. It’s very beneficial for me. So I definitely enjoy it.
Steven Sashen:
When I was a kid, I got into competitive diving when I was 10, and I thought that the sauna was the thing you got in after you got out of the pool to dry off. Because that’s what I did. Didn’t realize that people use it for any other reason.
Jordan Abecasis:
Did it dry you off? You didn’t sweat more after?
Steven Sashen:
No, I was 10. You don’t sweat. So I get in, I’d dry off, I’d get out. It’s like that’s nice.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah and just to caveat back to if you are looking for strength in muscular gains, a sauna will not in inhibit that. Or at least there’s no current research that’s going to show any type of strength or even conditioning or endurance loss through a sauna whatsoever. And even through the endurance and skill-based performance, ice baths are still very beneficial. So you just need to titrate it towards your base level and personal skill level and where you are and what you’re actually expecting to receive out of your body. And it’s good to be aware that by cold plunging yourself, you will dampen the overall effect systemically of your blood flow. And if you understand that more blood flow equals greater adaptation, then that leads you to your answer. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing it so often.
Steven Sashen:
Right. Well that seems like a perfect place to wrap it up with some great ideas for people to ponder as they consider, again, whatever level of activity you engage in that. I’m hoping this is really helpful. So Jordan, if people want to find out more, get in touch with you and for anything that you may be doing, how would they do that?
Jordan Abecasis:
So you can go to adamrehabilitation.com, Adam Center for Advanced Dynamics for Adaptive Movements.
Steven Sashen:
So back up and spell things for people, because they’ll need to spell things.
Jordan Abecasis:
Yeah, it’s A-D-A-M just like Adam, rehabilitation.com or you can go on and find me on Instagram @AdamRehabilitation. As well those are going to be where I’m putting out the most of our content for our stability, mobility, and strength work. Teaching individuals on how to stay healthy and get back to doing the things that they develop most.
Steven Sashen:
Brilliant. Well thank you so much. I hope people do take you up on that offer to go check out what you’re doing and get involved with you in some way, because there’s a lot of people in this space who are mostly just kind of regurgitating things that they heard and they never really put them to the test. And one of the things that’s very fun, I could have said this and should have said it earlier, I can just tell from hearing the way you’ve analyzed this, that you are someone who really likes to know what’s for real and not just repeat something that you heard that seemed to work for somebody. And that’s a rare and valuable skill in the strength and conditioning world. So kudos to you for that. And again, I hope people take advantage of that. A pleasure.
And so for everybody else, thanks for being here. A reminder, go to www join the movementmovement.com, to find previous episodes, all the different ways you can find us and engage with us speaking to which if you have anybody that you well, if you have any recommendations, criticism, comments, et cetera that you want to share with me directly, including finding someone who might want to talk to me about how they think my head is completely up my butt, because I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome when it comes to things like natural movement. I’m up for the conversation. I’m happy to be proven wrong, it’ll always lead to something better. I don’t think I will be when it comes to using your feet naturally, but I’m up for the game. You can drop me an email, just send something to move M-O-V-E @jointhemovementmovement.com, but most importantly, go out and have fun and live life feet first.
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