In the summer, I fairly quickly built up to being able to stay in a river for about 10 minutes. Life happened and I took a break - and now I’m back at it. I head down to the same river but now it’s carry heavy snow and glacial melt and god only knows what the temperature is. Since it’s a river, I do not build up any insulating laminar layer around me.

Well, I may be a softie now but I’m struggling to get past 30 seconds. It’s actually quite painful when I emerge from the water. Is this amount of time enough to get some of the purported benefits of cold plunging? Any tips on how to progress with the length of time beyond the ‘suck it up cupcake’ approach that i am currently working on?