TRAINING ON ICE
WIM HOF
Claiming abilities science considers beyond human faculty, health maverick Hof reveals the biohacking power of cold therapy
In 2013, scientists at the Radboud University Medical Centre in the Netherlands injected volunteers with a dead strain of e.coli to promote a flu-like immune response. The subjects had been randomly split into two groups; the first comprised healthy individuals and was the control group against which the other was to be measured. The second – the test group – was virtually the same except for one difference: for 10 days they undertook an intense programme of meditation, breathing techniques and cold exposure.
The aim was to discern whether, despite the prevailing science, we might have written into our biological code an almost superhuman ability to control immune responses on demand. In essence, the researchers wanted to know if regular men could fight off pathogens with their minds. Having observed the subjects, it was concluded that, yes, they could.
On hand beside nurses, physiologists and scientists was self- experimenting civilian Wim Hof. It was Hof’s formula of severe cold exposure and modified breathing – the so-called Wim Hof Method – that the test group had learned. And it was Hof, the established poster boy for extremophiles, who first postulated the existence of this innate ability to influence the immune system at will.
The results of the experiment continue to shake our understanding of the human body and its capabilities. They have also given Hof a reputation as a maverick outlier of biology. But should we be giving credence to a self-taught medical radical over decades of established research? And, should you be brave enough to follow Hof’s lead into his boundarypushing blizzard, would you emerge a master of your body and mind? Or will your health simply be left out in the cold?
The Iceman Cometh
You may well have seen Hof featured in any number of television programmes in which he is feted as the chimerical ‘Iceman’. If you’re a follower of extreme endurance feats, you might know him as the caricatured lunatic – icicles matting his tousled hair and shaggy beard – who jogs up mountains half-naked.
Back in 2007 Hof ran past the ‘death zone’ altitude of Mount Everest – 7500m above sea level – wearing nothing but shorts. Then, in 2009, in the northernmost ranges of Finland, he ran a marathon in five hours and 25 minutes, enduring temperatures of -20°C. Again, he was wearing only shorts. It is his name next to the Guinness World Records for both the longest ice bath (one hour 53 minutes) and the furthest under-ice swim (57.5m). And yes, on both occasions he was clad in nothing but his signature pants.
Hof’s collection of world records is impressive. But it is his wilful exposure to ostensibly fatal conditions that has reinforced the man’s legend and his subsequent cult-like following. As the Iceman, Hof is now a global brand and movement figurehead. Beyond the celebrity, he is a scientific anomaly.
It all started with a quick dip. Men’s Health has visited Hof at his modest home, a short drive from Amsterdam. As he limbers up for his daily exercise with a mixture of yoga stretches and calisthenics moves, he recounts the moment his frigid monomania began. “I jumped into cold water when I was young, and that was that,” he says plainly. “It was like finding the thing that you’re looking for without knowing what it is exactly. I jumped in and it brought me to the right here, right now.”
At this time of year the ice has long since receded from the Dutch hinterland
that Hof calls home, but cloud fleece on the horizon threatens rain. In the absence of snow, we’re privy to a lesser-seen side of Hof – the familial, domestic version, far removed from white mountain caps and heart-stopping ice lakes. Even so, it’s still chilly. The outdoor pool in Hof’s garden is anything but inviting. Nevertheless, Hof is looking forward to his daily swim. He wouldn’t be the Iceman if he wasn’t.
The attention Hof has attracted for his exploits might have distracted a lesser man, but in his meditated state any media hype flows over him like a babbling brook around an impervious rock. He is genuinely surprised to learn from our photographer that he has as many Instagram followers as he does (130,000 at the time of publishing). It isn’t that he’s unaware of his popular renown; it’s simply that snappy hashtags and raising Youtube views aren’t all that important to him. Hof’s calling comes from a higher plane.
He claims his motivation is to educate. Across the world, elite athletes, coaches and body hackers part with serious cash to learn from the Dutchman. High-performers like best-selling author Tim Ferris and MMA champ Alistair Overeem chalk up their extra edge to his teachings. But Hof reckons that he can teach anyone to do as he does – which is to master body and mind by controlling the breath and transcending perceived limits. “I want people to find their inner depth,” he says. “With work and life, your true depth can become an alien thing to you. Your gut feelings, your instincts become buried.” Be willing to face the cold, he says, and you too can access that quiescent realm within yourself.
Cold Front
Born in Sittard, Holland, 1959, Hof is one of nine siblings. It was his twin brother’s globe-trotting adventurous spirit that nurtured in Hof an interest in alternative cultures and extreme behaviours. Meanwhile, it was his own curiosity that led him to take that first plunge into an icy lake as a young man. And it was his unyielding obsession with self-experimentation that brought him back to it every day for the rest of his life.
After over a decade spent developing his technique in near exile – jumping into icy water daily, studying everything from zen Buddhism to kung fu, Sikhism to yoga, even Sanskrit – Hof was thrown into the media limelight when a TV crew caught him saving the life of a man who’d fallen through thin ice into a lake. It wasn’t long before the ‘Iceman’ moniker stuck and Hof was performing extreme stunts to the delight of audiences across Europe.
Here was a man who could – due to regular exposure – tolerate extremes that rudimentary science holds should kill a man. At first he was regarded a freak show, the kind of story you’d see on World’s Weirdest People or Don’t Try This at Home. “I was something remote and far away – the Iceman,” he recounts between sets of weights in his home dojo-cum-gym, Michael Jackson’s Thriller providing the soundtrack. “I started teaching people
“I jumped into cold water and it brought me to the right here and now”
only very much later. Before, people used to think I was crazy.”
However, having claimed a string of world records and prompting a media frenzy after his under-ice swim (during which Hof was temporarily blinded and nearly drowned), the right people started paying attention. Scientists wanted to know what was going on under the skin of the man who wasn’t so much giving conventional theories the cold shoulder as leaving them with frostbite. Meanwhile, endurance athletes decided they wanted some of whatever he was having.
Now, aged 57, Hof continues to build on this platform and shows little sign of slowing down. In addition to his cold weather sessions, his routine involves vigorous daily weights and calisthenics exercises. The free-form weightlifting he showcases for MH’S benefit today is performed to keep him limber and strong. But most importantly, he says, he persists because he enjoys it. “I love working out to Michael Jackson,” he enthuses between rhythmic, martial-arts style chants (“Hah, hoo, tsaa. Hah, hoo, tsaa”). “It’s all about the flow for me, man. I just go with the music.”
This lighthearted, pseudo-tantric approach to training is amusing to watch. But it is also a fundamental component in the Wim Hof plan for superhuman endurance. By far the most important aspect of his revolutionary philosophy for body and mind is mastery of one’s breathing. Hof’s training camps in Poland (held during the kind of winters that have stopped armies), his work with elite athletes, and his global workshops, held everywhere from Australia to Edinburgh, all take people on a respiratory journey into themselves.
Perhaps surprisingly, then, the Hof Method is an inherently simple one. To achieve a zen-like mastery of the cold, all you must do is submit yourself to controlled hyperventilation. Not panicky, gasping breaths, but strong, deep inhalations at a rapid pace (one second in) without a deliberate exhalation (allow some air to leave naturally rather than pushing it out). Fill your lungs and repeat this 30 times. Now comes the tricky part: without force, allow all of the air out of your body and then don’t breathe in again until you sense your body really needs oxygen. Complete another round, aiming to extend the period before you inhale. Then go again. On the final round, after expelling all the air from your lungs, Hof encourages participants to complete a round of press-ups. Not as a display of masochism, but rather to demonstrate the improved muscular endurance that comes from your body being engorged by oxygen – the essential fuel for exertion.
Throughout these hyperventilations you are exercising your gasp reflex, prolonging the time it takes for your brain to panic and jolt your body into breathing in again. According to Hof, it teaches you to become more efficient with oxygen, to always be taking in more, to always have a surplus. It also happens to change your body on a biochemical
level and drastically increase your core temperature. Sound too good to be true? Some of the world’s foremost endurance athletes, including Crossfit coach Brian Mackenzie and big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, consider Hof’s training methods among their most important.
Frozen Assets
When Hof performed his ice bath world record attempt on national TV back in 2010, everything from the water temperature to his heart rate to his mental activity was closely monitored. To this day, scientists remain confounded by what turned up on the dials hooked up to the Iceman. After 90 minutes spent emulating Jack Nicholson in the closing scenes of The Shining, his body temperature had actually increased. Submerged in a giant tumbler of ice cubes, Hof had made his body hotter.
“We’re too comfortable,” scoffs Hof as he prepares his single meal of the day in his kitchen (a salad, taken at 3pm). The fundamental principle underpinning his whole ideology is our removal from our ancestral strife. He believes humans have evolved abilities that allow us to face elements like snowstorms or extreme heat, but they lie dormant due to our thermostat-controlled offices and culture of hyperconsumption. “It makes us fat,” he says simply. “It gives us diabetes and inflammation and it makes us depressed.”
It’s a notion that has begun to attract corroboration at the highest level. One of our innate abilities is the body’s potential to use fat for thermal energy when the mercury drops, claims Hof. After the publication of multiple studies giving this idea credence – including a comprehensive paper from Harvard University – Japanese researchers took a dozen men and had them sit in a slightly cooler than normal room for two hours a day for six weeks. Not only did the subjects burn more calories than usual, they became more adept at doing so over time. By week six, they were burning an extra 289 calories per day. The minor exposure had altered their bodily processes at the genetic level.
More of Hof’s theories are now gaining traction. For instance, the cold is viewed as a workout for your circulatory system. “Low temperatures make you tense the small muscles around your blood vessels,” says Hof. Biologists call it vasoconstriction, the process by which your body constricts and then relaxes around your veins and arteries. As it’s cold they flex; hot they relax. Like with Hof’s breathing method, the trick is making oxygen more available for your body to utilise it when it needs it most.
Oh, and your mind benefits, too. Hof and researchers at the Medical School of Hamburg, plus a separate group at Michigan State University, are presently investigating the effects Hof’s method has on our neurology and, consequently, our psychology. Research already exists. A study at Virginia Commonwealth University School Of Medicine, for instance, found that cold exposure can stimulate the brain’s production of noradrenaline, a chemical that could help mitigate depression. These researchers believe Hof’s version could have more powerful impacts still.
This is all well and good. But short of packing your best pair of shorts and booking a one-way ticket to the Arctic Circle, what can you realistically do to channel the same effects? The answer is closer to home than you think: your shower head provides everything you need to become a student of the Wim Hof Method. Turn the dial to blue and simply relax through it, breathing deeply all the while, and do your best to stay calm. This signals your nervous system to trigger the beneficial hormonal changes. You’ll also be subduing, and therefore prolonging, your panic response. Instead of tensing up, you meditate. This counterintuitive suppression allows you to gain control over the way your nervous system reacts to stressors, from work to exercise.
Hof believes that our panic response systems are in a perpetual state of hyperactive malfunction. And that a judiciously employed ice bucket can switch them back on. Superhumans aren’t rare, if you believe what Wim infers. One lies dormant, like prehistoric ice-locked bacteria, inside all of us. Rebirth Of The Cool Back in the labs of the 2013 study at Radboud University, Hof’s method continues to challenge our comprehension of the human immune system. “The trained men produced more of the hormone epinephrine,” explains intensive care researcher Dr Matthijs Kox, who led the study along with professor of experimental intensive care medicine, Peter Pickkers. “This led to an anti-inflammatory change and less flu-like symptoms in the trained subjects compared to the others,” says Kox.
These findings are profound. Prior to the study, the autonomic nervous system and innate immune system were long regarded as functions that cannot be voluntarily activated. “The study demonstrates that, through practising techniques learned in a short-term training programme, the immune system can indeed be voluntarily influenced,” Kox explains. That doesn’t just mean Hof’s method might help you fight off colds. The antiinflammatory response and associated immunity regulation could in fact attenuate your risks of autoimmune diseases and the inflammatory maladies that researchers now believe are at the root cause of life-threatening conditions including cancer and diabetes.
But to Hof, it’s not just about research studies. Just as it isn’t all about world records. Primarily, it’s about the feeling that pushing oneself beyond the comfort zone and into the cold provides. “Men need to laugh more,” he says. “We all live inside our heads. The cold lets you be right here in the moment.” Remember those words next time you have your hand on the shower dial, then consider your reaction. There’s a lot resting on it. Disclaimer: Loss of consciousness is possible during the final stages of hyperventilation. Trying this in water can be fatal. For more information go to wimhofmethod.com