Wim Hof — “The Iceman”
World record holder, adventurer, daredevil, inspirer
To some, Wim Hof is a visionary; to others, he’s a dangerous daredevil. Whatever your own opinion of him might be, it’s hard not to hang on this man’s every word as soon as he starts speaking. Who is this 58-year-old Dutchman, also known as ‘The Iceman’?
A man of many records
Wim Hof is a man of many records. Currently, he holds 21 official Guinness World Records, each one of which is beyond the imagination of most of us. To take just one example, in 2007 he scaled Mount Everest in a pair of shorts. Two years later — again clad in shorts — he ran a half-marathon north of the Arctic Circle, with no training, in temperatures of -20°C to -30°C. In 2011, he broke his own endurance record by staying submerged in an ice bath for no fewer than 113 minutes, and the same year, he ran a marathon — a marathon in the Namibian desert, that is, in searing temperatures of 40°C, without drinking a drop of water. These are mind-boggling feats, particularly given the extreme conditions that Wim Hof exposes himself to. What motivates someone to do this kind of thing, and above all, how does he pull it off time and again?
The cold as a boost to the immune system
Hof has taught himself to use exposure to extreme cold to regulate his own heartbeat, respiration and circulation. Normally, all these are controlled by the autonomous nervous system and there’s not much we can do to influence them — unless your name is Wim Hof, that is. The world record in which he spent seven minutes shy of two hours in an ice bath is an unprecedented achievement, the more so since his body temperature remained in the ideal range around 37°C the whole time. Anyone else’s body would have developed life-threatening hypothermia in these conditions.
Hof says regular exposure to cold brings many benefits with it. The cold trains the veins in your cardiovascular system, and the more often you train them, the better they can contract. This gives you a superior circulation, which results in improved blood flow. The effect of that is that your heart doesn’t have to pump as hard; in fact, up to 20 or 30 times less per minute. The great advantage of this is that it eases the strain on your heart. Better circulation of your blood also boosts your immune system. Present across the whole body, the immune system is there to be constantly on the alert for, and to neutralise, foreign bodies that invade you. If you train your immune system by regularly exposing yourself to greatly fluctuating temperatures, you make it stronger and more robust.
To cope with extreme cold, Hof focuses on his breathing. Deep, measured respiration enables the body better to endure low temperatures. In addition, it enriches the body with more oxygen. More oxygen is good news for health, since practically all diseases are linked to low oxygen saturation in the blood. Besides being caused by shallow breathing, oxygen deprivation can also be caused by chronic stress, an unhealthy diet or a lack of exercise. The better the oxygen saturation of your blood, the healthier your body is. As well as stimulating good circulation, having sufficient oxygen in your blood helps heal wounds, regularise the heartbeat, avoid infections, fight cancerous cells, reduce respiratory infections and asthma, and it gives a general sense of contentment because the central nervous system is stabilised. In a word, oxygen is a mighty force.
“Make the cold your friend, and your power will be immense”
How the Wim Hof method works
The approach that Wim Hof takes is based on three basic elements: respiration, mindset and meditation exercises. The breathing techniques are particularly crucial if you, like Hof, want to be an iceman. By ensuring that you breathe well, deeply and powerfully, you are steeling your body for both physical and mental challenges.
Once you’ve done the breathing and mindfulness exercises, your body is all set to face the cold. Going all at once to cover yourself in ice for 113 minutes would be overdoing it, but having a daily cold shower is a good start. This gets your body slowly used to temperature differentials, and you’ll find that you can stay under the cold jets a little longer each morning.
“The cold is my warm friend”
“What I do, anyone can do”
What Wim Hof above all wants to demonstrate, and to have people experience for themselves, is that anyone can do what he does: mindset is so much more powerful a factor than you might think! To accomplish this, Hof has set up the WHM Academy, where he trains people up to become official ‘Wim Hof instructors’. It’s a demanding course: not only does it bring you up to speed on the human body, it also involves going on exhilarating expeditions for yourself to train your body to cope well with very cold conditions. The success of the WHM Academy is evident from the hundreds of Wim Hof workshops that are now being provided by instructors all over the world.
At these workshops, you work on your breathing and experience the power of meditation, and you round it off with an ice bath. This unique experience lets you grasp that your body is a thousand times stronger than you thought it was. After a Wim Hof workshop, many participants tend to feel more stable, healthier and happier. It’s an unforgettable experience.
“For 30 years, they called me crazy, irresponsible and a thousand other things. There was a lot of mockery and cynicism from people who had no real sense of happiness or feeling in themselves. Then I showed myself to science, and now I can see that I’m changing people.”
What does science have to say about it?
It is a mystery to scientists how Wim Hof manages to keep his body temperature up while exposed to extremely low temperatures. Scientists all over the world are trying to get to the bottom of how he does it, because, as Professor M. Hopman of St Radboud University Medical Centre (UMC) in Nijmegen says, “what Wim can do is medically impossible”. Hof has been examined by many other researchers besides Prof. Hopman. One of the other studies carried out has established that practising the Wim Hof method really does influence and alter the autonomous nervous system and the immune system. This means that harnessing Hof’s techniques might be of great value to public health and in tackling chronic diseases, assisting sportspeople, and in many other domains.
You can find out more about Wim Hof and his unique experiences, workshops and achievements on his website, www.wimhofmethod.com.