Lit Method Founder Shares How 4-Minute Cold Plunge Led Him To Make His Own

I was in Asia on a business trip back when LIT was focused on designing precision performance equipment for athletes when I was convinced to try my first cold plunge. Coming from L.A., my colleagues knew how much I hate the cold and stood around laughing at me for the first 30 seconds. The laughs died out much sooner than later because I ended up lasting in there for four minutes. When I emerged, I knew that cold plunge was going to change my entire life.

FROM A MENTAL RESET TO A REBRAND

As a certified trainer coming from an athletically competitive background, I’ve always advocated for and appreciated how mental health shows up in fitness. During my first-ever cold plunge experience, the moment I could feel my body changing, acclimating to the 37-degree water, I started to feel very calm. That was not the norm for me at that time. My wife was pregnant with our first child, we had just moved into a new home, and I had been traveling for work a lot, so a lot was going on at once.

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I had more energy within that day than I probably had within a year. My clarity and focus were sharper, I no longer needed caffeine to function, my stress receded, I felt fantastic. I knew if something could make me feel reinvigorated like this, then our clients would feel the same. From the moment I noticed feeling “Zen-like” until i got out four minutes later, I knew LIT was going to be in the cold plunge business, and I was ready to go all in.

On that plane ride back home, I started to think about the current cold plunge companies on the market and how obvious it was that they are capitalizing on the momentum of this trend but really don’t care whether they’re helping people or not. We decided utilizing our background as fitness trainers would be an immeasurable benefit for consumers to learn about the practice of cold plunging, and we were all for learning about how people could cold plunge and why.

Once I returned home from that trip, we made it official to move forward with LIT as an all-in-one wellness longevity company designing products with built-in support helping empower people to feel and function at their very best.

MAKING COLD PLUNGES COOL AND SAUNAS HOT

We recently moved to Utah – and it’s a lot different than Los Angeles weather. It snows, rains, and the winds here are out of a movie. Our goal was to make a cold plunge durable enough to survive in our backyard. We added marine-grade steel to the interiors and exteriors and built insulation between those 3-inch-thick walls so that the water temperature stays right where you set it. When it’s -10 degrees out here, we want to keep our plunge water temperature between 45-55 degrees. However, the built-in heater obviously must kick on and do some work because we designed this on our personal experience. The insulated walls are there for a reason and that’s to be very conscious about not having to use/waste excess electricity.

Cold plunges have also never been cleaner. LIT’s cold plunges are the only on the market that are chemical-free. Unique to our plunges, we incorporated UVC light to kill bacteria in the water, meaning no need for harsh, chemically treated water and no need to have to drain the tub regularly. The UVC light cleans and filters the entire cold plunge in under an hour. So, it’s safe to use for the next person in less than 10 minutes; a great feature for a multi-person household.

How, when, and what temperature you should cold plunge depends on what you’re aiming to get out of your cold plunge – muscle recovery, sustained energy, focus and clarity, or a digestion aid.

Now onto heat. LIT’s saunas are designed, again, from my wife Taylor and my personal experience living together. It’s safe to say our sauna preferences are complete opposites.

Taylor likes lower-heat and infrared mode, a light-based heat for lower temperature sessions and ideal for direct body heating, relaxation and muscle recovery. I like to sweat it out old-school style with a traditional high-heat sauna experience. That said, I wasn’t going to create two different saunas for our home tailored just for us.

So, we decided to double down on that, and build the insides with red cedar, and a Hemlock exterior. We’ve always been very passionate about product design at LIT, so we wanted to make aesthetically beautiful cold plunges and saunas, while building product differentiators that we’d know our clients would be equally passionate about.

People want to do contrast therapy, and they like the idea of it. They just don’t know what to do, and they want to know how to do it properly in order to get a return on investment, not something sitting there collecting dust because they’re intimidated by it.

I’m happy to share my routine with them, like how I use hot vs cold contrast therapy with our saunas and plunges, and any specific lifestyle or fitness questions they may have in relation to the therapies, like which to use first. We’re able to address these types of topics in our LIT wellness newsletter that goes out, which is a great way we can provide consults as fitness trainers on a larger scale. You can learn more about LIT’s products by subscribing to the newsletter and going to our website.

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