Cold Showers Aren’t Hard Showers. They’re Easy Workouts.
Confusion about their purpose scare people from realizing their value as one of the easiest, cheapest, and effective improvement practices.
I’ve written here many times on the benefits of cold showers. I’ve blogged more about them. You wouldn’t have clicked on the headline if you weren’t curious about them or already doing them.
Inc. is a community of achievers and has covered cold showers many times. Many talk about science behind their benefit, but since double-blind controlled experiments are hard–how do you create a plausible placebo?–I find credence in their effect I see from them for myself.
Having taken hundreds of cold showers (credit to Joel Runyon for starting my habit), I’ve found that they create
- Resilience
- Ability to do what I say
- Discipline
- Integrity
and related motivational and emotional skills–what I call leadership skills. Most people find leadership skills hard to come by. Joel’s community credits them for motivation to turn lives around, lose weight, and so on.
Why people don’t try
Seeing as anyone can experiment to find out if cold showers work for themselves at nearly no cost in time, money, or other resources, and given that so many people extol their benefits, why don’t more people try them?
I think I figured out why. I think the reason may help you try them if you haven’t.
I think most people see cold showers as alternatives to hot showers. Hot showers are supremely comfortable. Cold are the opposite. Who wants to sacrifice comfort for its opposite?
If you’re thinking showers, almost no one would substitute discomfort for comfort.
But look at the benefits listed above–resilience, ability to do what one says, discipline, integrity, and such. They’re incredibly valuable and far from typical shower benefits like cleanliness and smelling nice.
Cold showers aren’t a hot shower alternative
Benefits like those come from training and practicing challenges, like going to the gym, playing sports, exercising, practicing musical instruments, and other active, performance-based activities.
Cold showers are as different from hot showers as dolphins are from fish. Yeah, they’re near each other, but one is a fish and the other a mammal.
They’re more like lifting weights or running marathons, except you get the benefits in five minutes, not two hours.
Cold showers are a gym alternative
To get integrity and such from exercise requires a lot of it. For many people that means
- A gym membership
- Equipment
- A trainer
- Scheduling and travel
and so on. People pay thousands of dollars and countless hours per year for those benefits.
What if you could get all the benefits at zero cost in time, money, and other resources?
Enter cold showers. Yes, they’re difficult, but compare them to going to the gym or other activity that delivers the benefits above. Cold showers
- Cost nothing
- Take no extra time (usually they take less time than hot)
- Require no equipment
- Require no training, trainers, or spotters
- Have no risk of injury
- Require no scheduling
Now compare all this logistical simplicity with gyms, exercise, and other ways to develop resilience, discipline, integrity, and so on.
Yes, cold showers are uncomfortable, but that’s all. In nearly every other way they benefit you deeply at no cost.
A couple cold showers a week can save hours of travel, exercise, coordinating, and planning, as well as thousands of dollars–a much more favorable comparison than against hot showers.
Why not try it?
I’m under no illusion that most people will never try a cold shower. Most people don’t become leaders. I think the aversion to facing and overcoming challenges like these that develop skills like the above is a major reason.
But maybe seeing cold showers as zero cost, zero time, zero injury alternatives to the gym may prompt you to try one, or a month of them to learn and experience the full benefit.
All you have to do is not touch the hot water next time you want to shower. Then you can use the time and money you save elsewhere.