WODmastery contrast shower programming and instructions

Goal of this program is to introduce you to the contrast shower by progressively increasing the exposure and usage of the cold and hot shower to create and facilitate physical and mental adaptation.

Why? To give you the ability to use contrast showers every day, for recovery, breath awareness and control, enhanced focus and a myriad of health benefits.

How? All you have to do is to follow the instructions set in every session. Shower frequency varies from person to person so we programmed 5 sessions per week. If you shower more often than 5 times per week reuse session number 5. If you shower less than 5 times per week try to end the week with the 5th session we programmed that week.

Although there are many different cold/hot ratio's theories we are going to use the most popular one: 1/3 so for example 1 minute cold and 3 minutes hot.

Cold: that means cold, so basically as far as the shower knob can go towards cold

Hot: that means hot but not so hot you're burning yourself! Be careful.

There are 2 very important instructions that need to be followed to increase your succes rate:

  1. when you transition from hot to cold and back do so gradually! We recommend a 2-step method where you move the shower knob to halfway first and let your body and mind adapt to the stimulus for a 2-count before going all the way to the opposite side
  2. when your body feels the "fight of flight" response from the cold water when it hits you, use your breathing to calm your mind and body. In this program we are going to use the Tactical Breathing technique. Explanation and instructions on this breathing pattern in the next chapter. We recommend practicing this pattern when you wake up every day during this program so you can use it more skillfully during the shower sessions

If you do not know how to breathe properly using abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing we recommend our Bulletproof Breathing program. This video explains a bit more on dysfunctional breathing technique (how most people breathe) and tips to fix it:

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