The optimal approach for cold water immersion depends on whether the goal is adaptation or optimization.

“There's a paradigm that I think is important with all of these things to understand, which is, are you pushing for optimization or adaptation? When you're pushing for adaptation, you don't want to block the signal for adaptation. This means less recovery. You're not going to feel as good. And you probably should be hedging towards stress. When you're pushing for optimization, it's the opposite.”