Rules and techniques of hardening
1. Study on adaptation
I was preparing to write about hardening as a form of adaptation, a person’s adaptation to the conditions of a changing environment. Winter swimming is the highest form of hardening. From here, it seems to me, one can most clearly and visibly trace all the stages of the process.
I was told: “On Sunday, the winter swimming section of the Leninsky district is leaving for the Klyazma. There will be a “farewell to winter.” Early in the morning I settled into a bus, already packed to the brim with “walruses.” Boys, girls, but mostly people of stately, family life, with wives and children. A regular Moscow picnic, a Sunday outing out of town.
My neighbor turned out to be a 30-year-old physicist with a hobby that is quite common these days — he studies various non-standard methods of recovery. He himself is quite healthy, so his hobby is not of a purely pragmatic nature. He talks about therapeutic fasting and throws up the names of Bragg, Shelton, de Freese, Sinclair, mentions others - Nikolaev, Leshkovtsev, Borodin...
He was engaged in marathon running, athletic gymnastics and autogenic training, breathed according to Buteyko and Durimanov, tried Zalmanov's turpentine baths and raw food, is familiar with acupuncture and hyperbaric oxygenation, studied mumiyo, sea buckthorn, ginseng and propolis, listened to lectures on parapsychology, telepathy and Tibetan medicine, and now swims with "walruses".
It is interesting to talk to such people. They write detailed letters, come to the editorial office, delicately wait until the interlocutor finishes urgent matters. They are full of the most unexpected ideas, they are nice and unobtrusive. Sometimes they are called the "people's militia of science." True, there are also those whose enthusiasm goes beyond reality. There was, I remember, an eccentric who mathematically substantiated the possibility of... running on water: you just need to run so fast that you don't have time to destroy the film of surface tension.
My companion looks at winter swimming with the eyes of an amateur researcher and tries to compare the adaptation capabilities of a person - a "walrus" and a real walrus.
"Odnobenus rosmarus," he specifies the Latin name of the species and continues: "The walrus is good: it weighs a ton and is covered with a thick layer of fat, which perfectly protects against frost and thus reliably maintains a constant body temperature. A person does not have such protection. A person swimming among ice floes reminds me of a walrus from which the skin has been removed along with the fat layer. I consider it unnatural, although I swim in the winter myself, besides. You see, I do it with pleasure.
Indeed, we are far from perfectly adapted to the environment. Moreover, this is a property not only of modern man, but also of our distant ancestors. “Man was captured by the present at a certain stage of his evolution, with a multitude of all sorts of shortcomings, underdevelopment and remnants. He seems to have been snatched from the laboratory of nature at the very height of the process of his formation, unfinished and incomplete,” wrote Vikenty Vikentyevich Veresaev. Needless to say, we have enough shortcomings. When we get into the rain, we catch a cold; 15 degrees Celsius - we are cold, at 25 - hot; having risen to the third floor, we suffocate, when we go down to the dark basement - we cannot distinguish objects, we suffer from appendicitis and toothache, we are haunted by migraines and insomnia. And if we list our shortcomings further, we can mention that we cannot run at the speed of a horse; swim like fish; fly like birds; or are unable to dig the ground, like moles, and live in the ice, like walruses.
And why live in the ice? There are forests, mountains, gardens, cities, and Black Sea beaches. Maybe it's better to live there? Evolution has created a walrus, a mole, a bat, a horse with a narrowly focused life specialization, with a highly developed ability for one, certain type of activity. But scientists consider such successful specialized adaptation to be a dead end of evolution. When the efficiency of some functions and organs is formed at the expense of the underdevelopment of others, a biological species is doomed to life in very narrow, purely specific ranges of activity. A mole is created to dig the ground. If it is forced to live on asphalt, it will die. We can say that a mole is a biologically formed tool for digging the ground. But a person is not a tool. She herself creates tools when she needs to dig the ground, fly, swim or race, overtaking birds, fish, horses! Human adaptability is non-specific, her strength lies in the harmonious variety of properties and qualities. Nature seems to have tested various options for adaptation in her laboratory - man has found his place in the graph allocated to the complex of all (or almost all) adaptation options. At the same time, we cannot complain about poor plasticity, the inability to rework our adaptation mechanisms in accordance with changing environmental conditions. And biologists, by the way, have always believed that the more complete the variability of an organism or species, the higher its ability to survive.
So, although we are not designed to live in icy water, we can adapt to it.
Of course, with the help of appropriate training. This is a fact proven by thousands of winter swimming enthusiasts. But now I have to make sure that "walruses" swim not at all to confirm the hypotheses put forward by evolutionists.
2. Man among the ice, or Stages of hardening
The bus rolled up to the reservoir. Bright spring sun, small islands of gray snow on last year's thin grass, a strong breeze. The entire reservoir is covered to the very horizon with a meter-thick ice field. Near numerous holes are petrified statues of fishermen in fur coats and quilts, like sad monuments to humanity's eternal hope for a lucky chance. Between them, safe gulls happily soar white sails of buers. Blue sky, white sails, blue, porous ice, black water near the shore... This strip of water forty meters wide became the object of desire of my companions.
The men quickly lay down and ran for a warm-up in just their swimming trunks and sneakers.
"And you, of course, won't risk it?" one of the ladies turns to me.
"Why?" I suddenly get confused. "I'm just acclimatizing a little."
I know for sure that I'd better not run now: I've never had to run in just my swimming trunks at this time of day. And then there's this strong and cold wind... But I still obediently undress and join the runners. "There's no need to worry," I try to console myself. "I'm a hardened person. I walk without a hat for half the winter, I don't recognize warm underwear." A week ago, in a sunny March forest near Moscow, I was skiing shirtless. True, there was no wind then..."
In a minute, I no longer feel the cold, and after another twenty minutes, even a light sweat appears. I watch my companions jump into the water one by one and say to myself with satisfaction: "And now I'll put on a warm sweater." But then I catch myself thinking with horror that I will now also climb into this terrible black icy water.
Why? I already have a sad experience. Once in Finland in late autumn, several of us Soviet journalists were invited to a real village sauna - a kind of smoky log cabin on the shore of a lake. We steamed well, and then, following our Finnish colleagues, jumped into the lake. I remember that right then and there, I frivolously decided to swim past everyone, including the Finns. I swam them, but on the same day I caught the most severe cold. They say I was still easy to get over. However, last year's mistake can be explained by ignorance of the hardening method. And now I know exactly what stages I need to go through before jumping into the icy water! ..
I quickly go through these same stages in my memory, hoping to dissuade myself from a reckless step. It takes people a year to wipe themselves. First, they adapt to wiping with room temperature water, then they gradually lower the temperature and increase the duration of the procedure. I have never done wiping.
Then a shower. A contrast shower is wonderful. Stand under the tap and turn the handles of hot and cold water. While the temperature difference is small, you don't feel any discomfort, but as soon as you accustom yourself to alternating cold and hot water, quite sharp sensations appear. A contrast shower is considered the best remedy for colds - I am convinced of this. The next step is a cold shower.
3. Rules of hardening.
The famous German hygienist Erich Deuser believes that it is better to end a regular shower with a 10-15-second stay under a completely cold stream.
In a contrast shower, in his opinion, the sequence should be as follows: 2 minutes - hot water (not warm, but hot), 5-10 seconds - cold (the hot tap is turned off completely). Again 2 minutes of hot water, etc. In total, from 4 to 6 cycles. Be sure to finish with cold water.
Thus, after two or three years of training, more or less young people (children and adolescents are categorically contraindicated for "walrusing") and, moreover, completely healthy people can think about the highest form of hardening - year-round swimming. The first year, having started in the spring or summer with swimming in water with a temperature of 18-20 degrees, they continue this good deed until October-November, the second year - until December, and in the third or fourth year you can already swim among the ice floes. And even then, no more than 40-60 seconds. Even very experienced "walruses" do not swim for more than one and a half to two minutes.
Melancholy thinking about this, I slowly head towards the water and already know for sure that I will not retreat: some kind of relay has worked in my brain, which has removed the brakes from the mechanism of making risky decisions, since it has managed to calculate that the miscalculations in the hardening method in this case are compensated by professional necessity.
I step into the black water, swim energetically. I listen to myself. So what? No way! It's normal! Have you never been doused with cold water? It feels exactly the same. Perhaps even softer, because there you stand motionless under the cold stream, and here you work diligently. Nothing special! God, how much talk!
I swim quickly to the edge of the ice. Pink "walruses" jump on it, waving at me. I notice that their bellies and arms are very scratched: the spring ice is covered in sharp spikes. I will swim to the edge now and immediately back, I will not climb onto the ice. Oh, no! My arms and legs suddenly began to quickly cool, freeze, and throb, as if I had stood motionless in the frost for an hour. Of course, you can endure it. But you shouldn't. This is exactly the case when you shouldn't force yourself. The feats here are not caused by necessity, and therefore are inappropriate. Not having swum some five meters to the edge, I decisively turn and with all my might scrape to the shore.
Finally I jumped out! They hand me a bath towel and a blanket. They rub me hard. But I don't need the blanket. I expose my body to the bright sun and the wind, which turns out to be not at all hot, but gentle. My skin instantly dries up, thousands of joyful needles settle in it. My body sings. Fun! Wonderful!
I don't feel like getting dressed at all. I run quietly across the clearing and think that, probably, winter swimming is good primarily for that unusual feeling that appears after getting out of the water. It was about the same when I first tried to starve for two days. All sorts of fears also crept up, but overcoming myself turned out to be much easier than expected! But when the
first torments and difficulties passed, a feeling of amazing lightness appeared throughout the body, unusual clarity of thoughts, enormous spiritual uplift and efficiency.
I want to keep this state of joy that is bursting out as long as possible. A ball has hit nearby. The "Walruses" have started playing football. Their feet have carried them there themselves. I have been greedy for the ball since childhood, and now I can't help myself!
What passes there are! Alone, alone, forward, through the legs, through the defenders! They took it. What a failure! And they also kicked me in the legs. No respect. And only half an hour ago they were embarrassed to address me, they politely whispered: "Comrade correspondent..." Needless to say, football simplifies contacts...
Forty minutes of frantic running around - and no fatigue. I want to get into the water again, but it's not worth it. Now, according to all the explanations of physiologists, I have the right to dive into cold water no earlier than in two days: I need to give my body time to recover. No matter what I felt there, swimming in icy water was a huge shock.