Feel the Chill of a New Year
Take the plunge into cold-water immersion
Participants in last year’s
Polar Bear Club swim.
Below: The cold-plunge
pool at The Spa at the
Mandarin Oriental,
Washington, D.C.
each year on Jan. 1, members of the
coney island polar bear club famously
plunge into the atlantic ocean to ring
in the new year.
“it’s just growing in ways i don’t
understand,” says dennis thomas, club
president, citing last year’s event. “We
had 1,200 swimmers and thousands
watching. it’s physically invigorating
and really clears your head and takes
you somewhere else.”
Mark adams, Macfadden’s biogra-
pher (Mr. America), says Macfadden
“was a huge booster of hydropathy, a
water therapy that includes hot and cold
“It’s physically
invigorating and
really clears your
head and takes
you somewhere
else.”
baths. Fdr practiced a form of hydro-
therapy at his Warm springs estate.”
adams can’t confirm that the fitness
guru founded the club, but he says,
“their annual dip is very much in the
spirit of the sorts of high-profile events
he organized.”
dr. andrew Weil, founder and direc-
tor of the arizona center for integrative
Medicine, university of arizona Health
sciences center, says he has long
enjoyed a quick plunge into cold water
after a sauna.
