How to Develop a Bulletproof Cold Shower Habit In Only 23 Steps Over 7 Years

How Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, dating a coach, being pummeled, denial, and strep can help you cold shower.

STEP ONE: Leap up from the couch with an overwhelming need to obtain a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu within one year. Attach all of your self-worth to this ludicrous goal. Go from zero classes to ten classes a week even though the most athletic thing you’ve ever done was high school P.E.

STEP TWO: Injure yourself almost immediately.

STEP THREE: Panic because THE TOTALLY MADE UP CLOCK IS TICKING. Use a credit card to secure the services of a physical therapist at a bougie fitness club you cannot afford. When the therapist tells you to go into the cold plunge, do it even though it feels like being stabbed by one million needles. While highly unpleasant, it is a little miraculous.

STEP FOUR: Quit BJJ after five months because you are always injured and dislike having man sweat all over you. Go to Muay Thai because the super hot coach said she’d wrap your hands if you came to class.

STEP FIVE: Date your Muay Thai coach, have her move in, and listen to her insist cold showers are good for recovery. Even if it is just 30 seconds. Refuse to believe her because you only believe in cold plunges.

STEP SIX: Decide that since you failed to get a blue belt in one year, you can make up for it by becoming a 36-year-old Muay Thai fighter.

STEP SEVEN: Participate in a mock fight camp leading up to a bout with a professional MMA fighter. Cold shower for 30 seconds every day because your coach girlfriend says it is part of the fight camp. She does NOT say that if you don’t do it you are a complete failure, but this is what you tell yourself. Dislike every moment.

STEP EIGHT: “Fight” the professional MMA fighter, who is going at 20% power but manages to hit you exactly 375 times. Cry in front of your best friend who you invited to watch because you make weird decisions. (You could maybe leave out the crying, but do it at your own risk.)

STEP NINE: Feel sorry for yourself.

STEP TEN: Decide you no longer need to be a fighter, and therefore do not need to cold shower ever again.

STEP ELEVEN: Go into an air conditioned room and feel cold. Decide that, since you were born and raised in Hawai’i, you are a tropical baby not meant to ever be cold. Look back on historical evidence like how cold the ice felt when you fell down at the ice skating rink. Like how you almost died trying to get from your van to the inside of the grocery store in Rawlins, Wyoming in JUNE. Like how you sat in the bathroom with your hands under the running hot water in San Francisco because you thought the heater in your room was a fan. You are clearly not built for cold.

STEP TWELVE: Believe cold is the enemy for six years straight. Repeatedly tell your partner you could never live on Mercer Island even though she has never asked you to live on Mercer island. Silently judge your brother for his air conditioned home, doesn’t he know you are not built for the cold?!!

STEP THIRTEEN: Contract strep throat from Aileen, who caught it from Rain, who the doctor accused of having mono (and oh, how you mocked the child) but was wrong. Refuse to see a doctor and insist on getting over it naturally, like Aileen, because 18 years ago you promised yourself you would never take antibiotics again. Suffer for a month, lose the ability to swallow, experience a decrease in your ability to breathe, then decide you need medical attention STAT ten minutes after everything closes. Go to the emergency room. Stay there until 4:00 am next to a woman who keeps screaming. Leave armed with steroids and strong-ass antibiotics, which both upsets and excites you.

STEP FOURTEEN: Spend the year after antibiotics with a shit immune system. Get sick a lot. Feel sad.

STEP FIFTEEN: Start teaching Muay Thai classes and become panicked you are not good enough to teach beside Aileen. Decide that your kicks need to be higher, harder, faster. Decide you must rise to her level RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT and up your training to levels that seem frenzied for a 42-year-old. Injure your left hip. Injure your left hip so much you cannot lift it and you have to hobble around using a mobility stick as a crutch. The kids are laughing at you. Your suffering amuses them.

STEP SIXTEEN: After many, many weeks your hip is finally functioning again. Start to kick again. Feel like you’ve overcome something, like you should be able to write a memoir about straining your hip. Re-injure the hip three weeks later. Feel the burden of your first-world problem and yell “WHY?!!” to the stars. Stomp around, but only in spirit because your hip hurts.

STEP SEVENTEEN: Become sick. Again. You’ve been sick every two months since the strep throat antibiotics. And now you are sick AND injured. Being sick and injured makes it very difficult to show up for a life with a movement-based small business and three teenagers. Your lack of physical wellness enrages you. You decide it is time for something new. Something impossible. Something terrifying, cause this? This is NOT IT.

STEP EIGHTEEN: Declare to yourself “THE TIME FOR COLD SHOWERING IS UPON US” because old-timey English makes it more official.

STEP NINETEEN: Turn the cold on full blast. Step into the water. Scream a little bit while tensing up so violently you get a kink in your neck. Try to find calm. You do not find it. Mutter to yourself about how injury is the opposite of what a cold shower is supposed to do.

STEP TWENTY: Persist. Stop screaming. Stop straining your neck. Get in there every morning. Do your alternating breathing and deep breathing and realize you now cold shower for 5 minutes solid. Rotate around so every body part gets to be cold. Notice the cobwebs in your mind clearing; notice you have more energy; notice you feel lighter; notice you are calmer; notice the resilience required to cold shower leaks (pun definitely intended) out into all of life. Feel really proud that, after a life of repeatedly failing to show up for yourself, you are doing this little-big hard thing. Your strained hip memoir becomes a memoir about cold showers.

STEP TWENTY-ONE: Notice you rarely get sick, even when everyone is sick. Notice that when you do catch something nasty, it is a lot less nasty than it could be. No more being bedridden for you! No more almost dying and going to the emergency room! Worth it.

STEP TWENTY-TWO: Repeat. Every day. Every day until it becomes a habit. The key is to turn the water on and immediately get in. Don’t think about it. Don’t try to talk your way out of it. Don’t sit on the toilet looking at your phone or start cleaning the bathroom ledges hoping the task goes away. It won’t go away. Plus, you do not want it to go away. It is important.

STEP TWENTY-THREE: Realize you are not cold showering to prove anything. You are not cold showering because you are in mock fight camp. You are cold showering because you actually persevered long enough that your body became accustomed to living at a higher level of vibrancy and health, and you cannot go back. You have found intrinsic motivation. You cold shower because starting your day feeling accomplished is amazing. You cold shower because it nourishes your immune system. You cold shower because it feels good to take care of you. You cold shower because it makes you feel good, inside and out, and feeling good makes everything in life better.

ON A SERIOUS NOTE: Cold showering changed my life. We think we need to make giant changes to transform, but it’s the little habits we build that truly alter our trajectory. What little habits are waiting to be built by you?

DISCLAIMER: This is not actual advice. Despite how much you may want to follow these steps to a T, this is just a sharing of what I did. I cannot be held responsible for any consequences resulting from things like dating your coach or attempting to raw dog strep throat.

Love,
Angela

P.S. While cold showers level you up, they do not make you invincible. And if you play it fast and loose you might find yourself sick. And then sick again two weeks after being sick. But that is for the next post.

P.P.S. For our LKE Dojo students, we have made changes to Saturday’s lineup! New times, different classes. Now Saturdays feature Rebel Roots: Muay Thai Foundations at 11am (all levels encouraged, absolute beginners welcome), and Strong AF (where our students become hella strong) at 12:30pm. Check it all out on our website or book your classes here!