cold showers suck

For a while now cold showers have been this “fix everything” action.

They’re not.

• Cold showers are great at killing gains

• Cold showers are guru marketing

• Cold showers don’t help exercise recovery

• Cold showers are great at making you feel good in the short term

You’re going to be one of two people reading this newsletter.

Person 1 cares if cold showers hurts their muscle growth because of how important that is to them.

Person 2 cares more about losing the “benefits” from cold showers and would take a dip in growth to keep them.

In reality person 1 and 2 are very similar, if they find out the truth behind the benefits, they won’t do it. The muscle growth side just guarantees they won’t.

If you’re Person 1 here’s all you need to know.

People thought cold showers helped recovery because they experienced less DOMS.

This was a placebo.

Cold showers trigger a feel good response, so people thought it was helping that.

Also we don’t even know entirely what DOMS is yet, I’ll talk about this sometime soon but DOMS only has theories.

Cold showers reduce muscle growth heavily.

Hello Person 2 you’re the one I really need to convince…

See similar to Person 1 cold showers have entered your mind as something that is good based on unfounded claims.

It’s really easy to associate emotions and placebo with something positive and then recommend it to others, cold showers are one of these.

Cold showers work by tricking your body into thinking you’re in the middle of a warzone.

• Your cortisol spikes

• You enter a fight or flight state

Then the shower ends and you’re free.

• Your dopamine shoot up

• Your endorphins shoot up

• You’re out of the warzone

This is just messing with chemicals, it’s not long lasting and just results in gaslighting yourself.

There are other things we can use which do this in a much more positive way without relying on placebo and gaslighting

• Breathwork

• Journaling

• A nice warm bath

All the cold resistance, flu resistance, inflammation etc stuff is just made up.

Hi bonus 😁

The only cold resistance is by making cold no longer a stressor.

Environmental conditions we psychologically perceive as stressful are the only ones which cause a stress response.

The same cold/hot under different psychological states ends up making no difference, psychology comes first, than physiology changes happen due on that.

A stressor cannot exist if you view it as something that’s within your control.

This is why repeated cold showers (voluntary) start to psychologically make you think that cold is in your control, and get you used to cold.

THIS CAN HAPPEN WITHOUT COLD SHOWERS!

You can also do this with anything you have a stress response to, it’s just psychology. Anxiety too.

So whether you’re Person 1 or 2, now you know not to have cold showers.

I better not see anyone doing these 😡

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher

P.S. The only way cold showers could work is if they were 72h from the last gym session, this isn’t happening.