I jumped into icy (literally) water with a few high school friends many decades ago. I still remember that it felt like my heart stopped when we jumped into the water. Now I find out that it can literally happen. Good thing we were young cross country runners in good shape. (Yes, I read the part that athletes aren’t immune.)

I’ve been swimming both winter and summer since 1ish years old though less so post 30’s due to locale, and I’ve never had much of an issue with gasping with cold water impact, sure there is an urge but I’ve always suppressed it without issue. Yet literature is adamant you can’t ? I wonder if it’s habituation or just a biological quirk.

Living in the alps this is something you hear from time to time, people going hiking and jumping into ice cold mountain lakes after and dying on the spot.

How common is this? In scouts we often did this, jumping into alpine lakes where you could see a glacier melting across the water.

We were also told that to treat heatstroke tossing someone in the lake and then treating for shock was somewhat preferable…

Is there a way to jump into cold water but also ensure you don’t stop your heart?

When I was doing road trip through Iceland in may cca 10 years ago, I ended up in northern part in some sort of camping where there was just my tent. Plus surprisingly some local kids were on some school trip.

I dont even recall how the heck I ended up with them in their trip bus, going to some canyons. Everybody got wet suit (around 5mm), and we ended up jumping from cca 5m cliff down to river. There were still patches of snow on the banks and water temperature was corresponding, most inland of Iceland had still metres of snow, only ring road was cca passable.

Most boys and me kept jumping and climbing back up, it was almost same cold in wet wet suit next to river than swimming in it. Most girls shivered like crazy, blue lips and all.

These were icelanders, around 13 years old, tough as it gets re cold. I recall their teacher explained it to me that in the past, as test of maturity every boy (not sure about girls) had to swim across big fjord somewhere around Husavik IIRC as sort of rite of passage, at least 3km width.

Glad nobody had heart stopped, that river was murky and strong. Every jump into that cold was like an electric ahock to mu body

Back in the old USSR we would go to banya (Russian Sauna) and it had creek right flowing close to front door. we dug in a huge barrel so it formed a tiny pond of really icy water. So we sit in a sauna for a while and then jump into that icy pool and then cycle repeats. One barely feels cold after getting out of sauna and into the water. More like some exciting sensation.

I learned to swim at an older age and my instructor told me this because at the time a person died screwing around in a boat with his family. Jumped into the water on a hot day and dived for fun, but never came back up.

Jesus, can’t anyone write their own fucking short blog post anymore??