How to incorporate cold plunge around PE routine

I’m fortunate to have both a small home sauna and a modified chest freezer cold plunge that I’ve been happily using for health and well being benefits for a while.

The sauna is easy-I often stretch and pump in the sauna and I know it is at least neutral, if not beneficial, to my PE efforts.

But since starting back on PE I’ve been a little hesitant to get in the cold plunge, which I have been doing daily prior to restarting PE. It is a great way to start the day, does amazing things for mood and energy, probably helps with inflammation and metabolism and might be beneficial for disease prevention via some gene expression as a result of the cold shock. So I really like it.

But now that my current focus is on PE (at least for the next 3-12 months or so) I’ve found myself a bit hesitant to get in the plunge. It’s probably silly, as I use heat before and during PE (and have a therapeutic US machine on the way) but I’m just wondering if anyone else has worked with cold plunge around a PE schedule. Not as part of the PE but as part of a healthy lifestyle, in a way that feels like it isn’t interfering.

I realize that I might be overthinking this, but I’m just wondering if any of the tissue heating/ collagen matrix gurus have any thoughts. Or if anyone has used regular cold plunge while on a program and either seen it as neutral or an interference based on gain curves.

I have wondered the same thing. I’m guessing no one know the answer. Here is my thought. Use something that keeps it from turtling and get in the ice bath. There are so many good things that come from it.

There has been some discussion about it before, but you’d have to tickle it out of the search function.

If I remember correctly, the idea was that it would help "cement" any gains for the session.

I don’t think it went past the discussion point, though. A lot of ideas bubble up, get talked about for a while, and then sink without a trace. (in engineering, it’s called the ‘lava lamp’ cycle)

Thanks for responding.

I don’t imagine it would cause any significant disruption in gains, but I wondered if anyone had encountered anything in their experience that might suggest best timing.

My experience with cold plunge is that there are so many benefits that it is worth it to do it even while on an intense program. I think I’ll just keep it as a first thing in the day routine, as my PE starts later in the day and I always use some kind of heat as a warm up at least.