Cold Metric: Ice Bath, Sauna & Contrast

Sauna, plunge, sauna, plunge - saved as ONE activity. Most trackers make you start and stop a separate timer for every stage, so an alternating hot and cold set ends up as six activities you have to piece together afterwards. Cold Metric runs the whole set. Set your cold and hot halves once, choose how many rounds, and get in. Every round saves as its own lap, so Garmin Connect and Strava show the cycle the way it actually happened. Between rounds the watch waits for you. Getting out of a barrel and walking to the sauna takes however long it takes, and counting that as sauna time would make the round a lie. Press when you are in position and the next round starts. It buzzes at every changeover, because you cannot see or hear a screen with your wrist under water. Start with the sauna or start with the plunge - your choice, set before the session begins. PICK WHAT YOU ARE DOING Ice bath or cold plunge, sauna, cold shower, or breathwork. Each carries its own sensible range and presets, so you are not dialling half-degrees at 85C or scrolling past sauna durations to log a 90-second plunge. Count up or count down, whichever you prefer, set on the READY screen right before you start. BREATHWORK A session in its own right, not a phase bolted onto a plunge: box breathing, four seconds each of in, hold, out, hold. A circle grows and shrinks with your lungs and the watch taps you at each turn - one tap in, two taps out, silence through the holds - so you can do the whole thing with your eyes shut. IT REMEMBERS Your last twenty sessions, weekly cold time, average, highest and lowest heart rate, your coldest and warmest, and your daily streak. Cold time is counted separately from sauna time, because the cold is the thing being trained and padding it with the warm half would make the number meaningless. A milestones page tracks progress towards your next marker for sessions, total cold time and streak, plus your longest single cold exposure and your most rounds in a session. One press on the opening screen repeats your last session exactly - speed matters when you are standing next to the water. Your streak and last session also sit on the glance carousel, so you see them without opening anything. FEELS RIGHT IN THE COLD Buzzes at halfway, ten seconds out, and at every transition - patterns you can tell apart by feel alone. No squinting at a screen with wet hands. STOP WHENEVER YOU WANT Press START during a session for Resume, End the current round, Save and finish, or Discard. Ending early still saves everything you did up to that point. A REAL GARMIN ACTIVITY Every session saves as a genuine FIT activity, so it lands in Garmin Connect alongside your runs and rides - under its own name, with duration and heart rate. Contrast rounds save as laps, so Connect shows the whole cycle. If you have Garmin Connect linked to Strava, your sessions go there automatically. ONE PURCHASE No subscription, no account, no upsell, nothing held back behind a second app. One payment on the Connect IQ store and that is the end of it. Nothing is transmitted anywhere - your sessions live on the watch and reach Garmin Connect the way any activity does. BEFORE YOU USE IT Cold water carries real risk, including cold shock response, impaired ability to swim, and hypothermia. Never plunge alone. Get out if you feel unwell. If you have a heart condition or any medical concern, speak to a doctor first. Breathwork is box breathing, deliberately. It does not pace hyperventilation-style rounds: over-breathing immediately before immersion can cause you to black out in the water. Cold Metric is a stopwatch and a logbook. It is not a medical device and gives no health advice.

Version 1.3 You can now stop a session. Press START during a session for Resume, End the current round, Save & finish, or Discard. Ending early still saves everything you did. Contrast sets can start with the sauna instead of the plunge. Choose it when you set the session up, and the READY screen lists the two halves in the order you will do them. Sessions are no longer lost if you leave the app mid-session. What you had done up to that point is now saved to Garmin Connect instead of being thrown away. START on the READY screen is a button now, so it is obvious that nothing is being timed until you press it.