I’m Doing The Wim Hof Ten Week Course!

I’ve wanted to do this for years now. I’ve come up with reason after reason why it was a bad time. No more! I’ve finally signed up and started the Wim Hof ten week course! Today I’m sharing the first day with you. There will be more to come, but I wanted to share my whole experience right out of the gate!

Wim Hof 10 Week Course – Day 1

Day 1 of the Wim Hof 10 week course involves a few different components. The first part is the breathing exercise. I knew of the breathing exercise, but I didn’t know how to do prior to day 1. Here’s how to do it… Thirty to Forty full inhales followed by a relaxed exhale.

Breathe in as deeply as you can and then just relax and let the air leave your lungs. Don’t pause between the exhale or inhale. Keep your breathing circular. You should get lightheaded and tingly. I found it took many more than forty breaths for me to get to that point. Wim Hof says if it takes more to get to this point, that’s fine. I just went until I felt good and tingly.

After your last EXHALE, you hold your breath. I’m used to holding my breath after an inhale so this was a shift for me. I use the Wim Hof app to track my breath holds. You could use a simple timer and write it down, but the app is much more convenient for me since I’ll be doing this for 10 weeks.

After you run out of breath and take your first breath, hold the inhale for 10-15 seconds. After that, you start another round. I’m supposed to do three to four rounds for week 1. I opted for three rounds. Of the three rounds, my first round was underwhelming. My breath hold was only around 30 or 40 seconds. However, by round three my breath hold topped out over 2 minutes!

I have held my breath for quite a long time previously, but it was always on the inhale and really pushing the boundaries of comfort. I feel like I could have forced myself for a longer breath hold today, but I also don’t want to turn this into a competition with myself. I want to focus on the feeling rather than the timer.

Given how day 1 went, I’m really excited to see how things develop over the 10 weeks!

Time For The Cold Shower

Here’s the part Wim Hof is famous for… it’s time for the cold shower! I was a competitive swimmer for 10 years and spent 2 months in SEAL training so I’m no stranger to cold water. That’s also why I was really not looking forward to this part. I feel like I’ve paid my dues with cold water. I know exactly how unpleasant an icy plunge can be.

For week one you take a normal shower and at the end of the shower, you turn the water cold for the last 30 seconds. I really enjoyed my hot shower! When I turned the water cold, the Colorado winter water was really, really, really cold! However, my reaction to it wasn’t as strong as I expected.

There was still a little bit of the breathlessness that accompanies a chilly dip. However, it wasn’t as dramatic as I expected. Normally, water this cold would have basically made it a fight to breathe for at least several seconds. While there was a forced inhale, it wasn’t overwhelming.

I didn’t use a timer, and I probably should have because I figured I would just go until my body had adjusted and that would be about 30 seconds. The joke was on me! When I was editing the video above, I figured out that I’d subjected myself to an extra minute in the shower. Oh well…

Wim Hof Day 1 Wrap Up

There are stretches included in the first week that you’re supposed to do. However, due to schedule stuff I left them out for day 1. I have done them regularly since and found Wim’s technique a useful addition to my stretching routine.

Overall I’m really excited with how day 1 went! I’m really looking forward to seeing what the coming weeks bring and how I improve over time. The breath holds are really cool, but my reaction to cold is what I’m most curious to explore. I haven’t looked ahead at all so I have no idea what will change in coming weeks.

I’m definitely going to do some follow-up videos over the course of the 10 week course. If you have questions or have a request get a hold of me! You can comment below, email, or shoot me a text! If you have your own Wim Hof experience, I’d love to hear it! Thanks for following along and I’ll see ya soon!

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