There's something refreshing about a fitness professional saying, out loud, "Ice really isn't that great." Jess Conger isn't being contrarian. She's following the evidence — and the evidence on ice baths is genuinely messier than the culture around them suggests.
The core claim here is simple: sauna has a stronger scientific foundation than ice baths, and for most people, the primary benefit of ice baths is mental rather than physiological. That's a nuanced and honest position. And it's one the research increasingly supports.
On the sauna side, the evidence is clear. The Finnish cohort studies — nearly 2,300 participants tracked over two decades — show dose-dependent reductions in cardiovascular mortality, sudden cardiac death, and dementia risk. Eight minutes post-exercise, as Jess mentions, is a reasonable entry point. But the research suggests longer sessions, four to seven times per week, produce the most significant effects. Heat shock proteins, plasma volume expansion, cardiovascular conditioning — the mechanisms are well-understood and the outcomes are measurable.
Ice baths are a different story. The recovery narrative was built largely on athlete anecdote and the intuitive appeal of "reducing inflammation." But reducing inflammation post-exercise isn't always the goal. Inflammation is part of the adaptation signal. Several studies — including work published in the Journal of Physiology — show that ice baths can actually blunt hypertrophy when used immediately after strength training. You're suppressing the very signal your body needs to grow stronger.
This is where the field splits. Andrew Huberman and Rhonda Patrick both use cold exposure — but they're careful about timing. Cold immediately after strength training? Generally avoided. Cold first thing in the morning as a stress inoculation practice? Different conversation entirely. The mechanism you're optimizing for changes everything about the protocol.
What Jess gets exactly right is the breathwork piece. She frames saunas and ice baths as breath control training — and that's not a minor point. The reason protocols like the Wim Hof method work isn't mystical. It's that cyclic breathing changes your blood chemistry, alters your CO2 tolerance, and directly modulates the autonomic nervous system. You can stay in an ice bath longer not because you're "tougher" but because your nervous system has learned to downregulate the panic response.
If you're using sauna, go at least three times per week, fifteen to twenty minutes per session, and finish with contrast if you want the parasympathetic recovery effect. If you don't have sauna access, the hot-then-cold shower protocol Jess describes is legitimate — it activates similar pathways at lower intensity.
On ice baths: separate them from your strength training by at least six hours. Use them for mental practice, for learning to breathe under duress, for the parasympathetic rebound. Don't use them expecting accelerated muscle recovery — the evidence doesn't support it.
Here's what most people miss in conversations like this one: the breath is the variable. Not the temperature. Jess mentions box breathing — four counts in, four hold, four out, four hold — and that protocol works equally well in a 90-degree sauna or a 50-degree plunge. What you're actually training is your relationship to physical discomfort. The heat and cold are just reliable, repeatable ways to generate that discomfort on demand. Once you understand that, every session becomes less about the temperature and more about the awareness you're building inside it.