Freeze Your Ass Off At Home With These 7 Cold Plunge Tubs
Cold plunge therapy, aka freezing your balls off for health benefits, used to be plain weird. Now, it’s a health craze that all sorts of people—Liver King, Wim Hof, Lebron James, Joe Rogan, and even Oprah—are on board with.
And no, we don’t literally mean freezing off your balls. But the benefits of cold plunge therapy for your whole body have been found to promote blood flow, improve immunity, manage pain, and decrease cortisol levels, among others.
The gateway into this very regimen often involves turning your shower temperature all the way down and standing under a teeth-chatteringly cold stream for up to two minutes. And while a cold shower sounds mildly torturous, we assure you that submerging into an ice bath is actually less so.
The highlights of cold plunging and best cold plunge tubs for the job, below.
What Are the Benefits of a Cold Plunge Tub?
Using a cold plunge tub falls under the catch-all term cold water therapy which encompasses ice bathing, cold plunging, and cold showering. The list of claimed cold water therapy benefits is long, but the science-backed benefits include (1, 2, 3):
- Relieves muscle soreness
- Improves mood
- Supports better sleep
- Boosts immune system
- Reduces inflammation
- Speeds up metabolism
- Increases testosterone
It’s worth noting that of all the cold water therapy options, a cold plunge tub might be your best bet. Cold plunge tubs excel in temperature control and full body immersion—two important factors that are tough to master in a shower or a classic DIY ice bath that can make your cold water therapy session more effective.
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The Best Cold Plunge Tubs
If you’re ready to graduate from an ice shower to a cold plunge tub, we’ve rounded up a handful of options—from bougie to basic—that get the job done.
References
1. Mooventhan, A. et al (2014). Scientific Evidence-Based Effects of Hydrotherapy on Various Systems of the Body.
2. Lee, Yoon-Hyung Society (2021). Effects of Cool-Down Exercise and Cold-Water Immersion Therapy on Basic Fitness and Sport-Specific Skills among Korean College Soccer Players.
3. Xiao, Feiyan et al (2023). Effects of cold water immersion after exercise on fatigue recovery and exercise performance–meta analysis.
