Almost everything that Wim Hof says I want to write on a Post-it note for future reference. Known worldwide as The Iceman, Wim is a Dutch extreme athlete famed for breaking a number of records related to cold exposure. He has accomplished extraordinary feats of human endurance including swimming underneath ice for 66 metres, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts, running a barefoot half marathon above the Arctic Circle, and standing in a container while covered with ice cubes for more than 112 minutes. He has developed The Wim Hof Method which has featured in media across the world and promises to give you more energy, less stress and a stronger immune system. In his new book, The Wim Hof Method: Activate Your Potential, Transcend Your Limits, Wim shares his life story and breaks down the practice into three simple pillars.
BONKERS FROM BIRTH
Like many self-help gurus he has plenty of ‘inspirational quote’ material that could feature in cliched internet memes and until we met (virtually) I had always been a bit dubious about his work. However, as soon as we sit down to chat, everything he says makes sense to me and is totally relatable because I too am a cold-water addict. His book took me on a journey from the bonkers circumstances of his birth to how he came to develop his work today. Page after page I found myself underlining the correlations of his findings, his method and results to my own experience of outdoor swimming.