MY DAY OFF

RW went to try out the sauna and ice baths at the Bristol Bears front-row pair's Sivo Wellness business

- JOSH GRAHAM

WIM HOF I’m certainly not, but as someone who is partial to a cold shower on a hot British summer's day, I signed up for a trip to Bristol to try out the cold-water therapy and saunas at Sivo Wellness, the new business run by Bears’ Harry Thacker and Jake Woolmore.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll have noticed the shift in public attitude towards health and wellbeing. More runners than you ever thought possible, padel courts appearing out of nowhere and charging astronomic hourly rates, and ice baths and saunas → becoming not only mainstream but maybe even cool too?

Of course, our front-row duo's main foray into this area was as a source of recovery. Packing down up front is not for the faint-hearted.

“As we've got a little bit longer in the tooth in the game and we've got over 30, things take a bit longer to recover than when I was 21,” explains prop Woolmore.

“If anything, we are trying to grab those one or two-percenters that can help us perform in the next game. From a sports perspective, the cold water has the anti-inflammatory benefit and the recovery stuff. So when we've been beaten up on the weekend, it’s nice for us to shut that down in our body and get ready to go again.”

While trying to spend as little time as possible feeling sore is usually a rugby player’s main priority, there does come a time where the ice bath is no longer their best friend.

Thacker says: “The science behind ice baths and saunas is well documented but how you best use it depends on what you want to get out of it, which is really important.