Cold Plunge & Ice Bath: How Often Should You Cold Plunge for Maximum Health Benefits?

If you are wondering how often should you cold plunge, the studies used either a short daily cold exposure, 30 to 90 seconds for 30 days, or two or three sessions a week. A good start is two or three plunges a week, one to three minutes at around 50 to 59°F, building to daily if you enjoy it. Nobody in these studies needed more than one session a day. Avoid a plunge right after strength training if muscle growth is your goal.

What the studies used, session by session

The practical pattern is short and regular: cold water for a few minutes, daily or a few times a week. No study here compared two plunges a day with one.

A weekly plan by goal

When deciding how often should you cold plunge, start with your goal; our cold plunge benefits post explains the wider evidence.

• Recovery: After hard endurance sessions, plunge on those days, right afterward, which is the pattern in the soreness review and the reason people use cold water immersion for muscle recovery.
• Muscle growth: The strength study supports skipping plunges straight after lifting. Choose rest days or hours later.
• Feeling alert: Take a short morning plunge on the days you want the lift. The one-hour study measured that chemistry during the cold itself, not after a short morning routine, and the pooled review found stress scores lower 12 hours after a plunge.
• Fewer sick days: The only trial that measured this used a short cold exposure every day for a month, so daily is the pattern to copy.
• Sleep: The pooled review reports better sleep quality in the studies that measured it, and none of them tested a time of day.

The winter swimmers went two to three times weekly, so two or three sessions per week is a sensible middle setting for anyone.

How long and how cold, each time

The studies here used water from 45 to 59°F. Apart from the one-hour laboratory measurement and the two-hour outliers in the pooled review, the exposures ran from 30 seconds to 10 minutes.

Tipton et al., 2017, Experimental Physiology describes cold shock: gasping, uncontrollably fast breathing, and increased heart rate and blood pressure. It peaks at 50 to 59°F. Colder water is harder to stay in, and the body’s response does not get any bigger, so there is no prize for going colder.

Start at 55 to 59°F. Add time before lowering the water temperature. Beginners should start with one to two minutes at a time and stay in cold water for a few minutes at most, never long enough to shiver hard. Your first cold plunge is about getting used to the cold, not about how long you stay.

The chillers on our tubs go down to 32.5 to 38°F depending on the model, colder than any study here, so check the temperature on the display and set it by the number, not by what the machine can do. A temperature range of 50 to 59°F is cold enough for everything the studies measured. See how long to stay and water temperatures.

When to skip a day

The Tipton review says sudden immersion puts a load on the cardiovascular system, and that some deaths on immersion come from heart rhythm problems set off by the cold water. Anyone with a heart condition, high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat, Raynaud’s, or who is pregnant, should talk to their doctor before cold plunging. Never plunge alone or after alcohol. The same review puts long stays of 30 minutes or more in their own risk class, deep cooling of the body toward hypothermia, which is one more reason a plunge is minutes, not half an hour. The review also says the evidence for many claims made for cold water is still thin.

Enter slowly and submerge to the shoulders with your head out of the water, the way the studies did it. Breathe out slowly through the initial shock of cold in the first 30 seconds. Listen to your body and get out if you shiver hard, go numb or feel faint. Exit the water at the first sign of any of those. Skip days when ill, short on sleep or worn out from training.

The response fades with regular cold exposure, which gives the nervous system time to adapt. The Tipton review cites six five-minute immersions at 54°F that blunted the nervous system’s response, and it reports that repeated immersion also reduces the ACTH and cortisol response to the cold itself. So the first week is the hardest, and once you are used to the cold the shock of cold water is smaller.

Hot and cold together

Many people at home use a sauna first, then take a cold plunge for a minute or two, and that is the Nordic pattern the winter swimmers followed. Browse our saunas, or the hot tub and cold plunge combos that put both in one building. For warm soaks, the SaunaLife S1 and S2 packages heat to 107 or 108°F; the Plunge Supplier tubs reach 104 to 108°F. Read about contrast therapy.

Keeping the habit going at home

A daily or three-times-a-week routine is easier when the water is already cold, and that is the chiller’s job: it is the box that cools the water. Compare our cold plunge tubs:

• Built-in heating and cooling: Our all in one models include the Plunge Supplier GD-002, which you lie flat in: 77 by 35 by 28 inches, 95 gallons, and a range of 35 to 104°F. The GD-007 stands you upright with the water at your shoulders and a ladder to climb in: 63 by 32 by 44 inches, 158 gallons, 36 to 104°F.
• Separate 1-horsepower chillers: The GD-8115 acrylic tub comes in 67- or 75-inch lengths, holding 92 gallons. Among our barrels, the GD-SS02 stainless steel barrel seats you upright: 32 or 40 inches across, 105 gallons. Both heat and cool from 38 to 108°F.
• Wood surrounds: Our SaunaLife packages include Finnmark heating and cooling: the two-person S2NC, 200 gallons, 37 to 107°F; the one-person S1BC, 124 gallons, 32.5 to 108°F.

Every one of them plugs into a regular 120-volt household outlet, with no electrician needed. Each comes with a GFCI cord, the safety plug that cuts the power if it senses a fault. All of them have an ozone sanitizer and a filter cartridge, and thermal or insulated covers keep the water cold between sessions, so the chiller runs less.

The Plunge Supplier tubs are set from a control panel or the Tuya or Smart Life phone app, and the SaunaLife chillers from a touchscreen or a Wi-Fi app. Match chillers to your climate: the SaunaLife AP-1 operates at outdoor air temperatures of 32 to 113°F; the smaller FDC-1A cools only at 59 to 109°F.

Read ice bath versus cold plunge and water maintenance.

Questions people ask

Can you cold plunge every day?

The cold shower trial used short daily exposure for 30 days. Keep each session short and skip days when you are ill or run down. If muscle growth is the goal, skip the plunge straight after hard lifting, which is what the strength study found. The winter swimmers went two to three times a week.

How often should I cold plunge for weight loss?

No study here measured weight loss. One-hour immersion raised energy use 350 percent for that hour. Winter swimmers produced more heat when cooled, a potential way to raise energy use according to the authors. That is as far as the evidence goes, and any change on the scale has not been measured.

Is a cold shower as good as a cold plunge?

The sick-day finding came from 30 to 90 seconds of daily cold showers. Soreness, strength and chemistry findings came from immersion, cooling the whole body at once. A shower is the easier daily habit, and a tub is what the recovery studies used. Many people do both.

Is a longer cold plunge better?

Longer isn’t always better. The cold shower trial found the same sick-day results at 30, 60 and 90 seconds. In the strength training study, 10 minutes in 50-degree water after every lifting session cost men muscle and strength gains. The Tipton review puts stays of 30 minutes or more in the deep-cooling range, where hypothermia starts. Owners say they settle at three to five minutes and go shorter as water gets colder. Pick a short time you can repeat. Add a minute only when the last one felt easy. Get out when you shiver hard, go numb or feel faint.

When considering how often should you cold plunge, choose a manageable routine and talk to your doctor before starting. My Cozy Outdoors is an authorized dealer for The Plunge Supplier and SaunaLife. Our cold plunge collection carries the full manufacturer warranty, free shipping on most brands (exceptions apply), and no sales tax except WY. Tell us indoors or out, sitting or lying down, and we will shortlist tubs that fit.