It's been a strange 24 hours... (and this is fairly long, so feel free to skip it.)
I had a feeling last night that I'd regret going for such a long ride on the cycle due to the cold. Having to take a hot shower when I returned told me as much, and I was right.
I woke up at 1 in the morning with a bunch of congestion - couldn't breathe at all through the right side of my nose. (Now, I'm used to this after longer cold rides; it's due to a combination of the whole body being stressed out from the chill, and my spine being twisted out of line by cramping, chilled muscles.) Anyway, i woke up and my 1st thought was, I can't be getting sick, it's Friday, I only have one day to go to get to the weekend, and if anyone sees me being all congested, they'll send me home for 2 weeks of self-quarantine! I lay awake for a while, trying to see if how I was lying made a difference, but it didn't. I started to panic a little, as I knew if I didn't get back to sleep I'd probably get sicker, so I took a sleeping pill. Shortly after that I thought, you know, this is a perfect time to find out whether this Wim Hof breathing method would actually do what I believed it could, so that's what I did.
10 rounds of breathing - so, a round consists of breathing fully in, and then just letting the breath out, not forcefully nor fully, just a relaxed release. You do this between 30-60 times, then on the last exhale, you just stop breathing, holding it in a neutral state, lungs neither expanded nor compressed. When you finally feel a strong urge to breath, you inhale fully, then hold the breath for 10-15 seconds. As I've been doing this a while, I've added a 'squeeze' to my hold, (what Wim calls 'squeeze to your head') which is part of the slightly more advanced version. You tighten your core which creates an increase in your blood pressure and helps push blood flow into your brain, theoretically.
1st three rounds were 60 breaths in & out, then hold on exhale, next rounds were 40 in & out breaths and holding (all with the short inhale-hold with pressure after each). This whole process took around an hour to do. (In case you're wondering, my hold times were: [m:s] 1:00, 1:20, 1:40, 1:40, 1:45, 2:00, 1:51, 2:00, 2:06, and 3:00.) I think that last 3 min hold is wrong, because I'm pretty sure I passed out for a few seconds somewhere & lost track of what I was doing. FYI, that's not uncommon, and totally safe, as I was lying in bed at the time. After this, I did a modified 'breath and squeeze' method that's supposed to be good for building up heat in the body. 5 breaths in & out, holding on the last in-breath and squeezing for 10 seconds. I probably did this another 10 times, and then I just lay in corpse pose for a while.
Anyway, back to the breathing; starting at about round 5, I could feel the sinus cavity on my right side start to open up a little, and with each round, it got a little better. By the time I was done, it was maybe 50-75% better, but while lying there, i could feel that things were out of place in my neck & back (neck was most obvious), so i got up & went into the other room to lie on the floor & work a tennis ball along the sides of my spine. The most effective place was right at the base of my neck, right side. I got that tennis ball right into one spot & immediately felt my sinuses open up & I could breath freely through both sides of my nose! I worked on several more spots, all of which helped, then went back to bed.
I did end up sleeping, and even postponed my alarm by an hour to make up for the missing time. Got to work, still tired as hell, but also still able to breath. Did another 5 rounds of breathing sitting in my chair at work, then went about my day, and by the end of it, I felt pretty good.
Now, after a night & day like that, you'd think that my workout tonight would've been for shit, but it was one of the best ones I've had yet. Made solid progress in the log press, and while my bench press was a little weak, everything else felt great! And yes, I can still breath quite well. I think for me, this was a good proof-of-concept to show that this method can be a big benefit to my overall health.
And now I've got a whole weekend free from illness, so i can get to the things I need to get done!
10:45 p.m. - 2020-04-03
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