Fitness expert hell-bent on making celebs’ blood run cold
Forget eating kangaroo testicles on I’m A Celebrity. This year’s reality TV horror will see ice endurance man Wim Hof challenge the stars to freeze themselves fabulous
WIM Hof looms nose first into the screen surrounded by a bushy halo of hair and beard. This is it. My moment with The Iceman. For many years Hof has been a curiosity worldwide for extreme athletic feats of subzero derring-do. Known as a ‘real superhuman’ and a multiple record breaker, in 2007, aged nearly 50, he climbed from Everest’s base camp to 6,700 metres wearing just shorts and sandals. Then he put on some boots and carried on going.
Sixteen times he has broken the record for spending the longest time in contact with ice — like a slab of cod lying on a fishmonger’s counter. In total he has held 26 world records for cold endurance, including swimming the furthest under ice and running the fastest barefoot half marathon on ice and snow.
Now the Dutch 62-year-old and father of six has evolved from ice-packed freak of nature to TV guru, with a new BBC celebrity reality show — Wim Hof’s Superstars Survival — promising to bring the benefits of extreme cold exposure to mainstream TV.
Hof’s claims are simply stated and yet terrifying to put into practice. He says that if ordinary people expose themselves to similar physical stresses as him it will boost energy, bust anxiety and fix pretty much any ailment known to mankind, including diabetes, heart disease and depression. ‘My message is very clear,’ he tells me. ‘You go through my techniques and anyone can bring a deep transformation to their daily life. We can return every person to a sense of feeling good.’
Those techniques — which he calls the Wim Hof Method — include daily immersion in a freezing shower or ice bath, simple breathing exercises and meditation to increase willpower. You can learn them on Hof retreats, through books, YouTube or via an app, which an astonishing 750,000 people have downloaded since the pandemic began.
Hof takes daily ice baths in a chest freezer in his garden, plugged into the mains, plus regular runs on a treadmill in an industrial freezer set to -26c.
‘In the cold you learn to breathe deeply, which oxygenates the body and alkalises the muscle tissues,’ he says. ‘It balances hormone levels, improves sleep quality, and increases the production of endorphins.’
He says youngsters naturally embrace the cold, but parents suffocate this natural hardiness. ‘Overprotecting your child cripples them,’ he bellows. ‘Don’t tell them to put on their coat, tell them to take it off! The cold is bloody painful but the body becomes strong with repeated and controlled exposure. The immune system works harder, the cardiovascular system works harder . . . All the systems in the body will benefit.’
He insists his method is backed up by ‘solid scientific data’, and while he’s been criticised for over-stating the benefits of cold water therapy, there is a broad scientific consensus on the benefits of outdoor swims, brisk cold showers and the like.
Two years ago I went on a Wim Hof retreat and crouched, submerged to my neck in water a degree or two off freezing in North Highland streams while wearing nothing but my Speedo swimsuit and a bobble hat.
The cold was merciless. It bites, burns, panics and punishes. On the first day, when I yelped and screeched entering the chilly waters, the Wim Hof trainer rebuked me firmly: ‘Stop talking. Breathe. Enjoy the view. Enjoy the sunshine.’ Taking control of your mind and your body’s response to the cold is a major part of his method. Of course, Hof has his own body so well trained he can raise his internal temperature at will. An army officer on the retreat said to me later that I was ‘annoying and distracting’, and I remember thinking: ‘I’m really glad this isn’t being filmed for reality TV because I’d be the person everyone hates.’ How prescient I was. Wim Hof’s Superstar Survival will feature trials by ice, snow and extreme cold to make kangaroo testicle-eating on I’m A Celebrity look like a children’s party. Filming starts this month, with hosts comedian Lee Mack and Holly Willoughby. Hof has been given strict orders not to speak about it, alas. It’s hard for him, he says, because he’s friendly, uncensored and ‘loves to communicate’. Indeed, he has taught himself 12 languages and to prove it starts babbling in Arabic, then Polish. But cold showers will be the least of it, I predict. Whoever has agreed to take part should get ready to break ice before a swim or hike through the snow half-naked. Being buried alive with snakes will sound relaxing.
One of The Iceman’s retreat centres — the Wim Hof House — is in Przesieka, in the Polish Carpathian Mountains.
‘Here within four days I can have anyone able to climb mountains in shorts and barefoot in freezing temperatures,’ he says. ‘They can immerse
‘The cold is bloody painful but it makes the body stronger’
themselves in ice water for four minutes,’ he booms.
The point of Wim’s method is to teach you not just to immerse yourself, but to immerse yourself silently, calmly, with steady, controlled nose breathing so you have maximum control over your body’s automatic reactions to the freezing, raw, almost unbearable cold. Anyone can be
like Hof, he insists. But can they really? I am relatively tough, and if I was the shrieky needy one that no one liked on that Scottish retreat, then, I wonder, how will your average pampered celebrity cope?
‘There is no personality type I cannot convert to my method,’ hollers Wim. ‘My oldest participant is 100 years old!’
We might snigger at famous people doing barely bearable things but Wim’s cold therapy has its roots in a profoundly tragic episode. In 1995, just as Hof was establishing himself as an extreme athlete, his Basque wife, Olaya Hof, jumped to her death from an eight-storey window after kissing all of their four children goodbye.
‘The cold was the only release from my great emotional agony,’ he says. ‘It regulated my mood, it gave me peace. I had to take care of my kids.’
He believes his wife’s depression could have been treated with the cold. ‘Trauma is stored in the back of the brain, in the hippocampus and the amygdala. The cold can act like a psychedelic drug in that it allows you to relive and process trauma.’ I experienced a little of this on the second day of my retreat, when after a few minutes in the icy water, I came back and lay on my bed involuntarily squirming and gurgling in uncontrollable physical and mental agony.
Much as it is difficult, painful and — to an extent — scientifically a little controversial, there is no doubt that Wim Hof’s method can shift human beings into another metabolic gear.
Together with cold exposure, Hof’s breathing exercises — basically hyperventilating and breath holding — produce what’s known as ‘hormetic stress’, currently a very fashionable concept within wellbeing and fitness circles.
Hormetic stress is controlled bursts of stress that equip the body and mind to deal with the uncontrolled external pressures of day-to-day life. It’s a wellness trend that will become even more mainstream in 2022 — it’s the reason cold-water swimmers bang on about how good their hobby makes them feel.
On my Scottish retreat, a fellow ice dipper, Rachel, told us her inspiring story. She was suffering severe symptoms of a kidneyrelated, autoimmune disease and the side-effects of drugs given to treat it. She retained so many kilos of water she could not open her eyes.
This gentle California girl spent months reading around her illness and found Wim on YouTube. She started to practise the method, stopped taking huge amounts of medication and says she remains well to this day.
His most recent book, The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Full
Human Potential, contains testimonies from people who claim the WHM helped them control all sorts: Severe depression, multiple sclerosis and breast cancer. And yet Hof has often found himself on the receiving end of sceptics’ barbs, too.
Why, if the WHM works so well, are all sick and unhappy people not ice dipping and breathing their way back to wellness?
‘The ridicule will end with the BBC,’ he says. ‘I don’t make mistakes and this programme will show the world my method is universal.’ On our Zoom call, he even tells me it can solve world hunger. ‘I eat just one meal a day. I just do the breathing and get all the energy I need.
‘People cannot believe it works because it is free. You can’t buy this and we live in a world where everything is sold for money with a big promise. People find comfort in the victim role.
‘People enjoy being dependent on others, on pills and medicines. I hear a lot of lamenting, “Oh, life is so difficult, I’m so stressed, I feel tired, I feel sick”.
‘You do my method you will not get sick any more.’
Hof’s fame continues to spread. A Hollywood biopic starring Joseph Fiennes is in pre-production, and he estimates ‘millions’ have picked up the method to some extent — which is a believable figure if you factor in all those infuriatingly cheerful wild winter swimmers.
He has just shy of a million followers on Twitter and Facebook combined, and another two million on Instagram.
The funny thing is, before I went on the retreat I had been really enjoying my first winter of wild swimming. Bracing and jolly, it had kept my spirits and strength up.
Perhaps wild swimming is just a more relaxed, female-friendly way of enjoying the Hof benefits? I consult female experts, Anna Deacon and Vicky Allan, whose book Taking The Plunge details its spiritual and physical power.
Interestingly all their endorsements are from other women, including Miranda Hart and Jo Whiley. What’s the difference between cold dipping throughout winter and the Wim Hof Method?
Anna says: ‘There’s a Wim Hof Group on my local beach in Edinburgh and it’s all men looking serious with their hands behind their heads. It sounds demandingly hard but really it’s no more hardcore than what we do. It’s just more regimented.’
I ask Wim the same question. ‘My method brings a deeper transformation,’ he assures me. ‘My method repulses women, whereas men are drawn to the idea that cold water requires being tough.
‘The truth is it is for everyone. It can support women through their menopause, through deep breathing during childbirth, supporting the cardiovascular system. It is great for women.’
The Wim Hof Method in the show will undoubtedly be filmed to give lumps slumped on the sofa at home a thrill. Is Hof worried producers or the BBC are using him for cheap telly thrills?
‘Whatever their motives are, we will do great work. There are a lot of self-help gurus out there, but I am sorry...’ he says, as if dismissing them, ‘if I can’t change you in ten minutes then I am no guru.’
‘It can support women through childbirth and menopause’