Hot Tubbing: Can soaking in hot water help you run faster?

About this episode

Can you improve your endurance by sitting in a hot tub instead of doing another hard workout? We dig into a study that put elite runners through five weeks of what we affectionately call “endurance hot tubbing” to see whether heat alone could trigger the same cardiovascular adaptations as altitude training. Along the way, we explore crossover study designs, multiple testing, why significant physiological changes don’t necessarily translate into better athletic performance, and how an exploratory regression analysis ended up answering the wrong scientific question. We also discover that serious hot tub research involves surprisingly little relaxation, debate whether bubbles should count as an experimental condition, and learn why distance runners pay good money to sleep in tents with some of the oxygen sucked out. Statistical topics • best subsets regression • causal inference • crossover studies • exploratory analyses • mediation / mechanisms • model specification • multiple testing • peer review • sample size • (00:15) - Introduction • (00:44) - Can Hot Tubs Replace Exercise? • (01:27) - Crazy Runners and Crazy Training • (05:44) - The Amazon Delivery System Metapho