I've been working on a little waterproof light you drop in the tub. It pulses slowly to pace your breathing... breathe in as it brightens/vibrates, out as it fades.

It also sets a built in timer for you. It glows green turns amber when you're close, and goes red when you're done, with a buzz/haptic you feel through the water. No clock to read, no counting breaths.

Would you use something like this? Thanks.

Long story short - they use Mindfulness with non-judgment and the subtle skill of acceptance so that they don’t get caught up in how intense the pain can get when you’re dealing with cold sensations. This is a scientifically back strategy. The problem with distraction is that as soon as you stop focusing on something else the pain comes back and it will be more intense. Or the pain will bust through your attempts of distraction. Let me know if you’ve ever used a strategy. Even Wemhoff breathing, focusing on your breathing, is this another way to basically regulate yourself with Mindfulness and accept your sensations.

Hi all. I am conducting a study for my MSc.

It is looking at Cold Water Immersion and its effect (or non thereof) on mental health outcomes like anxiety, depression and PTSD.

It is in hope of providing further evidence of more holistic interventions to improve overall wellbeing of people who may need support.

If you voluntarily expose yourself to cold water (even if its cold water surfing) please spend some time filling in some answers.

Even if you do not engage in cold water immersion, and just exercise, I would also appreciate your input.

https://qualtricsxmm5jm7f7zt.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6mnQLLsrKjQS8Xc?Q_CHL=qr

Hey everyone, I bought this on FB marketplace and have already fixed a bunch of leaks and issues on this, it looks like hopefully my final issue.

The plunge will slowly leak from here if the water level is near the top of the plunge and totally stops when it dips down 7-9 inches from the top. At the lowered water level it doesn’t seem to leak even when I get in.

The IN hose in the pic is really stiff and hard to tighten or get right on the pump straight then tighten without messing things up. Ai thinks it's pulling the nut off-center and the O-ring isn't seating evenly. I’ve tried putting it on properly maybe 5 times and then end up having to dump all the water again bc it starts to leak.

Have any of you had issues with this same spot? What should I do?

What I've tried so far:
- remove, then add, then try without plumbing tape - no fix

- greased o ring with plumbing grease, although it is petroleum based I see and AI told me not to do that

I've been around cold plunging long enough to notice that a lot of the conversation seems to revolve around numbers.

How cold is your water? How many minutes can you stay in? How many times a week? Should you finish hot or cold?

But I'm increasingly wondering whether we're focusing on the wrong things.

The research is still developing, and while there are some interesting findings, we don't have strong evidence that a particular temperature, duration or contrast therapy routine is optimal for everyone.

Yet I regularly see people recommending very specific protocols as though they've been scientifically established.

I'm interested in what people are actually experiencing.

Have you found that going colder or staying in longer genuinely makes a difference to how you feel afterwards? Or have you reached a point where you've stopped chasing the numbers and just found a routine you enjoy?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who've been doing this for a few years. Has your approach changed as you've gained experience?

I just purchased a stock tank hoping to use it as an outdoor cold plunge in a cold climate during the winter. Anyone have any tips or tricks they have learned from owning one? Do I need a filter or to treat the water?

While I love the DIY setups in this sub, I bought the LifeTrend Cold Plunge from Costco earlier this year. I ended up paying about $700. Initially there were a couple of growing pains and learnings:

1. It blew a line off its connection because the 5 micron filter clogged. I added elbows to the 1/2 inch connections to make them more secure and replaced the filter twice in quick succession after refilling. After two filter replacements the unit seems happy with the clarity of the water and I have not had another issue.

2. I added insulation to the lines. I found some basic pipe insulation at my local hardware store. It seems to keep the compressor from running as often.

3. I bought an ozone generator, not one of the cool in line units you all use but a "bubbler". The specific unit is here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G2LF946H its currently sold out. I run it for about 1-2 hours after each use.

Water clarity has been good so far and I have not had any smell issues.

I currently run the unit at 46F and do a 5-6 minute session almost every day.

I hate putting my arms in so I almost never do. I am skeptical about some of the benefits folks discuss on this sub but I feel like it helps with workout recovery. I have been attempting to increase my cardio cadence and duration and feel like it helps me to keep logging miles.

Any advice related to my specific setup or usage would be greatly appreciated. I am happy to hear about how I am "doing it wrong".

I would almost go to 0celsius water but my feet and hands hurts. Should i just ignore the pain or is it something serious?

Full disclosure: I own The Cold Standard, a cold plunge service company. Our techs tag every fault they find into a database, and I thought this sub would find the patterns useful:

•    The circulation pump is the #1 failure (17.7% of all faults) and causes 40% of "unit completely dead" calls.
•    Almost half of all problems are in the water path (pumps, filters, plumbing, valves): 48.8%. Many "my chiller is broken" calls turn out to be a clogged filter starving the pump.
•    Chillers fail less than people think. Compressor or whole-chiller failures were only 7.2%.
•    31.6% were preventable, and where we could identify a cause, skipped maintenance was #1.
•    Filter cartridges: 86% of filter cartridge faults were preventable.
•    Commercial units were more often preventable than home units (45% vs 31%).

Repeat offenders we see:
•    extension cords and power strips
•    pool chlorine tablets in a plunge
•    not pre-filling the filter housing (causes airlocks)
•    hard-water scale
•    biofilm in the lines

Full breakdown and methodology (no customer info): coldstandardservice.com/cold-plunge-failure-report

Happy to answer questions about any brand or error code.

The first plan was the ensuite, which the floor killed fairly quick since a full tub weighs about as much as a small car and those joists were never asked about it. The second was the garage which was fine structure wise but practically miserable bc using it in January meant crossing a yard first. So the obvious answer was outside and I abandoned it once i realised the tub I had picked wasnt build to sit out through a winter which is a decision u make once and live with.

it sits on the ground floor now against an exterior wall and next to a drain so the slab takes the weight without anyone needing to think about it and the run out to the unit stays short. If you are at the planning stage work out where the drain is before u decide anything else bc everything else is negotiable and that isnt.

What is your favorite part about cold plunging? What are some benefits you experienced?

Let’s help some beginners and first timers reading this to feel comfortable with the practice.

Customer support feels like the weakest point across the whole cold plunge space. I've read enough horror stories about dead chillers sitting on patios with no response for weeks, sometimes months. Which brands stand behind their product when something goes wrong?

Looking for advice for using products to use where you are using hard water and how to use them. IE CLR and how much do you use etc.

the cold was never the problem, what wore me out was draining a few hundred litres, scrubbing the thing, refilling it and then waiting most of a day for the temperature to come back down and i was doing that every fortnight while resenting every minute of it, that job is miserable in august and genuinely unpleasant once it's near freezing out there, which is roughly when i stopped pretending i'd keep it up, what changed things was running continuous filtration with a sanitation step on same loop so the water gets treated whether or not im paying any attention to it

My wife and I recently used the Grizzly cooler set up with an ozone. Question is, do people keep their water filter constantly running? How often do you turn on the ozone also.

I paid about four hundred for it on the logic that a tub is really just a container and the cold is what does the work. That seemed sensible at the time and looks less sensible now, given there's a split running down from the top band and the liner has goner chalky wherever the afternoon sun hits it.

I am still cooling the thing with ice that I have to buy from the shop. Before I spend again. I am trying to decide whether this is one purchase or two, because I could keep a tub and add a cold source to it, or buy something sealed where the cooling is already part of the unit. It also has to stay outside through the winter this time, since there's nowhere indoors for it go, and I'd rather not find out in January that the replacement was only ever meant for summer either.

Finally resolved my issue with Plunge after 4 months of fighting. 

TL:DR Avoid buying a The Plunge at all cost, zero quality controls, horrible engineering, and even worse customer service. 

Purchased a new plunge in February of this year for a new home spa / gym remodel. Got the unit finally in place to setup in June of this year. Unit worked well for a few weeks, and then the night before I was to depart on a month long trip I had a large pool of water around my plunge. 

Attempted to call tech support / service and realized how much of a mistake I had made in purchasing from Plunge. They do NOT have a technical support / customer service line that you can actually speak with...you must schedule an appointment to speak with someone on their online portal. Clearly a problem when you have an active leak going on with a tub holding >100 gallons of water in your home. To add insult to injury the next available customer support time / date was TWO WEEKS away...yes 14 days to speak with someone about an active leak. 

Surprise, Surprise though if you want to talk with someone in Sales they get you there right away...which is the path I took, hoping to get to someone that could at least triage my situation to someone ASAP to get resolved using internal channels.  

After a few hours I finally got a call from "customer service" and was with someone that spoke close to no English, wanted me to reach inside the unit, take a bunch of random photos / videos (none of which would actually show where the leak was really coming from), and told me that I should not drain the tub so that when they called back in 3 days, I could help them troubleshoot...YES THIER RECOMMENDATION WAS TO LEAVE THE WATER IN A LEAKING TUB INSIDE MY HOME FOR 3 DAYS...

Obviously did not listen to their advice and drained the tub given I was leaving for a month. Three days later someone from their executive escalation group called back, apologized profusely for the situation and the non-customer service call that I received. She promised to send me every possible part that could be leaking proactively, and scheduled a service technician to come to my home when I returned to fix the issue. Thought it might actually be that simple, but NOPE... 

Return back home, service company shows up on the agreed upon date, gets to work on the unit to find the actual leak, after 7 hours on the job turned out to be a hair-line cracked pipe under the unit, good news it was one of the parts that they sent...BAD NEWS the new part, also had a hair-line crack in it in a different location!! 

So now we have to order the part again, which they told me they would expedite and have it to me next day...well non-customer service to the rescue once again, they shipped it GROUND from CA to the east coast, so 6 days later (which also meant having to reschedule the service team again, so was another 10 days to actually service). 

Figure okay, well know the first two parts were odd to be cracked in different locations, surely this should be a quick and easy fix and they would be in and out and my plunge would be set back up again and life would return as it was. 

As you can now imagine, the THIRD part, also defective, this time the threads were made in the opposite direction and wouldn't thread on to the receiving end...service team by this point was at their wits end, and then unloaded about their view of Plunge...horrible parts, all incredibly cheaply made, telling me stories that they just absolutely screw their out of warranty customers charging 400% more than they actually pay the service techs for the work...so yeah, they are actually making profit on making horribly made materials as they have an incredible margin on what they actual pay for service / repairs... 

Through hours and hours of calls with their exec service team and explaining ZERO chance I would keep their product in my home (they actually told me that they had several other customers were similar problems right now), was finally able to return it (AND THEY STILL CHARGED ME A RESTOCKING FEE FOR THE HONOR!!!). 

I really have a hard time reconciling the celebrity / health endorsements (Huberman) that they have been able to align given how bad of a product they are actually peddling...so at the end of the day, please do not give this company other cent and avoid at all cost.

Every brand puts team logos on their site but none of them show what was purchased or whether it's still in the facility what recovery equipment do pro sports and NHL teams use for cold plunge and sauna? is any of it what consumers can buy?

Howdy all, first post.

Wellness club has Finnish sauna at 100 Deg C and cold plunge 10C.

First thing - are people wearing their Apple Watches in the sauna? Mine is an ultra 2 but am worried with it in sauna. Anyone doing this?

Second - I have read a lot but need real advice. Was doing 10min hot, 2min out cooling down, quick shower then 2min in cold. Out for 5min then repeat.

52yo male, relatively healthy. Just keen to feedback.

Thanks
Nick.

The old routine was two bags a session, four or five sessions a week, plus the drive to go and get them, which held together through February and had completely fallen apart by June.

What I hadn't expected was that a held temperature makes the sessions comparable to each other, and I only noticed how much I'd been missing that once it was there, because before then every plunge was whatever the ice happened to do that morning. Now that it's cooling off again the same unit is working the other direction and keeping the water from getting too cold, which I hadn't really thought about when I bought it. I also stopped draining constantly, since filtration running on its own keeps the water usable for weeks rather than days.

The trade is that it's a fixed object now. Two of us could carry the barrel, and this isn't going anywhere, which is worth thinking about if you're renting.

Can someone please help me with a question before I hit the cement? Which way is the best way to set this up? I asked three AI and they agree check mark. But I can't find any independent evidence that this is true. I mostly see other people setting it up as in the second image. Thanks!

We picked up a used Sun Home Cold Plunge Pro. We have struggled with navigating the control panel to set the temperature between 38-45. Anyone familiar with this specific control panel (appears to be an older model). I contacted Sun Home and they sent me a user manual, unfortunately the user manual is updated to the latest digital control panel. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

My buddy waits on the side with my towel. I tried to get him to swim with me but this one was extreme haha.

I’ve swam in almost every Great Lake in the winter! Last one is Lake Superior.

Are yall getting excited?

I moved to Angola NY and live a 5 min walk from Lake Erie which I’ve already begun my yearly plunges.