Joe Rogan uses two cold plunges: a BlueCube at the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) studio in Austin and a Morozko Forge at his home. The BlueCube is the unit is the one his podcast guests cold plunge in. And Rogan has said it is the more brutal of the two, because its moving water makes 37°F feel colder than his 34°F home plunge.
He has no paid relationship with either brand; he cold plunges in these units because he genuinely likes them, which is exactly what makes his opinion worth listening to. In this article we cover which ice baths Joe Rogan uses, the temperatures he does cold therapy in, why he finds the BlueCube harder despite its warmer setting, the science of heat transfer behind that, and answers to the most common questions about Joe Rogan and cold plunging.
Many of us were inspired by Joe Rogan to start our cold-exposure journey. We are forever grateful for his contribution to the practice.
Which cold plunge does Joe Rogan use?
At the JRE studio, Rogan lets guests, staff, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighters work out and engage in contrast therapy in the BlueCube cold plunge and Salus Sauna. Several of his staff members liked The BlueCube much at JRE that they now have a BlueCube cold plunge of their own. In 2022, BlueCube was invited by Salus Sauna to build a cold plunge for the JRE studio, and BlueCube co-founder David Haddad delivered Joe Rogan’s first BlueCube cold plunge.
“If you really want to test your mind, BlueCube is the one to do it in.”
— Joe Rogan, The Joe Rogan Experience
What temperature is Joe Rogan’s ice bath?
Rogan runs his home Morozko plunge at about 33–34°F — essentially as cold as water gets without freezing — and his BlueCube at the studio at 37°F with RiverMode™ moving the water vigorously. The surprising part: even though the BlueCube is a few degrees warmer on the thermometer, he still finds it harder. We cover the science why this is the case later in this article.
He has been blunt that warmer settings do nothing for him. He once gave Andrew Huberman a hard time for running a unit in the low 50s°F, calling it “so warm,” and described an older unit stuck at 54°F as “a fucking joke.”
BlueCube Cold plunge vs. Morozko Forge Ice Bath— at a glance:
| Feature | BlueCube | Morozko Forge |
|---|---|---|
| Min sustained temp | 37°F | 33°–34°F |
| Water circulation | High continuous circulation (RiverMode™ — extra pump) | Low circulation |
| Filtration | 20-micron + ozone | 20-micron + ozone |
| Tub materials (premium) | 316, 14-gauge stainless steel (30% thicker than Morozko) | 304, 16-gauge stainless steel |
“I can’t differentiate between getting in that at 37° in the Morozko at 34°. it feels the same to me because obviously three degrees is nothing…what does feel different is the circulation of the water.” — Joe Rogan
Which cold plunge does Joe Rogan find harder — the BlueCube or the Morozko?
Both run within a few degrees of each other, but Joe Rogan repeatedly says the BlueCube is the harder, more uncomfortable plunge. The reason isn’t temperature — it’s chilling power and water movement. The BlueCube’s RiverMode™ circulation strips away the insulating thermal layer that builds against your skin in still water, so it keeps pulling heat the whole time. The BlueCube also has a significantly larger chilling motor.
In the clip below, Rogan explicitly explains to a guest why the BlueCube is more intense than his other ice bath.
Guest: “What temperature do you do for the cold plunge? Because I hear different things—you should do 40 / 50 for a couple minutes. He’s got it at 36°.”
Joe Rogan: “Yeah we have it at 34° at the house and this, the BlueCube that I have here in the studio—I love—it’s a little different than the Morozko because the water circulates. So it’s even more uncomfortable. That’s at 37°. But I can’t differentiate between getting in that at 37° in the Morozko at 34°. it feels the same to me because obviously three degrees is nothing. But that one thing that does feel different is the circulation of water. So when you get in the BlueCube, you’re like Jesus what the f#&% is this. It’s more uncomfortable. That’s where the BlueCube is really excellent because with the Bluecube the water is always moving so you don’t ever get that thermal layer.”
Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman on how the BlueCube breaks the thermal layer
This discussion between Joe Rogan and Andrew Huberman on cold therapy highlights the importance of thermal-layer disruption to get an adaptive benefit in a cold plunge.
Andrew Huberman: “There’s the Plunge, the Morozko, and then the BlueCube…”
Joe Rogan: “Yeah the BlueCube is what we have here [JRE].”
Andrew Huberman: “It’s beautiful.”
Joe Rogan: “You know what’s interesting with that…The BlueCube…the water is circulating, like your in a stream.”
Andrew Huberman: “…the circulation actually is key. So if you get into cold water and you’re completely still super stoic, you’re building a thermal layer that’s keeping you a little bit warmer. So if you really want to make it tougher, you can sift your body a bit because you break out that thermal layer.”
Joe Rogan: “So the Morozko is 34°, 33°, 34°. This one [BlueCube] is 37°. Not distinguishable the difference. But this one [BlueCube] moves. It f*$%in sucks.”
“This one [BlueCube] moves. It f***in sucks.”
— Joe Rogan, on the BlueCube vs. the Morozko
What is RiverMode™ That Joe Rogan Mentions on his Podcast, and Why Does it Make the BlueCube Cold Plunge Feel Colder?
RiverMode™ is BlueCube’s dedicated water-circulation system. A second pump — with no filter or chiller in its path to slow it down — pushes cold water continuously across your body. That moving water strips away the warm boundary layer that forms on your skin in still water, so 37°F – 45°F in a BlueCube pulls heat faster than still water several degrees colder.
Most cold plunges run a single pump. That one pump has to do everything: chill the water, push it through a filter, run it through ozone for sanitation, and circulate it. Every one of those jobs adds resistance, and resistance eats flow. By the time the water actually reaches your body, a lot of its velocity has been spent fighting through the filter and the chiller.
BlueCube takes a different approach. We split the work across two pumps:
- Pump one handles the treatment — chilling, filtration, ozone. The unglamorous but essential stuff.
- Pump two does one job and one job only: move water across your body. This is RiverMode™ — a dedicated recirculation circuit with no filter and no chiller in its path to slow it down. Almost all of its flow becomes movement against your skin.
That’s the difference. A single-pump plunge makes one motor fight resistance while trying to circulate. BlueCube dedicates an entire second pump to the variable that actually drives heat transfer.
How long does Joe Rogan stay in the cold plunge?
About three minutes, nearly every day (4-5 days per week on average). Joe Rogan typically plunges first — at home or at the JRE studio — and works out afterward, often followed by a sauna. He frames it as only three minutes of discomfort for hours of feeling good.
In one video, Rogan was seen doing a 20-minute cold plunge. A BlueCube customer commented on the post that he should never do that again, as it is a major risk for hypothermia. That is not his routine, and he has since not attempted any feat of how long he can stay in the ice bath.
“It’s only three minutes. Say f*** 360 times. Just deal with it.”
— Joe Rogan
What are the benefits of cold plunging, according to Joe Rogan?
Joe Rogan credits cold plunging with a surge of mood-boosting neurochemistry — a rush of endorphins, norepinephrine, and dopamine that lasts for hours — plus benefits for inflammation, the endocrine system, and mental health. He has said people with anxiety and depression have gotten off medication after starting a daily cold-plunge practice.
In an interview on his podcast, Rogan went through some of the main benefits of cold plunging. He explained that everyone would take the “pill” of how you feel after a cold plunge — the challenge is that it is not an easy practice to execute.
Guest: “And how long are you in?”
Joe Rogan: “Three minutes. But you get out and you’re like, this is amazing. You get out and immediately you get this rush of endorphins, this rush of norepinephrine and the dopamine, and it lasts for hours. This is a 200% increase in dopamine that lasts for four to six hours.”
Guest: “And it’s not just like your body’s saying thank you for getting her out of there.”
Joe Rogan: “That probably has something to do with it, yeah. It’s cold shock proteins. It’s your body responding to this imminent threat of death, so it produces these anti-inflammatory proteins. It’s really good for you. And it’s great for your endocrine system. It increases your testosterone when you do that and then work out right after. There are studies that show that. But it’s great for your mental health. A lot of people that have anxiety and suffer from depression have gotten off meds because they’ve started doing daily cold plunges.”
Joe Rogan: “If there was a drug that you could take that gives you the feeling that you get right out of the cold plunge, it would be insanely popular… You would take that pill, the post-cold-plunge pill, every day. You’d feel great… But it’s not a pill, it’s a f*74ing arduous, difficult routine. It sucks, but it’s only three minutes.”
The research backs the core of what Rogan describes. In the foundational study on cold-water immersion, one hour of cold exposure raised dopamine by roughly 250% and norepinephrine by 530% (Šrámek et al., European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2000; pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10751106). That study measured the magnitude of the dopamine increase — not the four-to-six-hour duration Rogan cites — so it supports the size of the spike, not its length. And a 2025 systematic review of 11 randomized trials (3,177 participants) found cold-water immersion significantly reduced stress and cut sickness absence (Cain et al., PLoS ONE, 2025; pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11778651).
If there was a drug that gives you the feeling you get right out of the cold plunge, it would be insanely popular.
— Joe Rogan
The Science of RiverMode™: How Does the BlueCube at JRE Strip Heat From Your Body More Efficiently?
Temperature is only one of two factors that determine how cold a plunge feels. The other is water flow. What your body responds to is the rate at which heat is pulled out of you, and that rate depends on both temperature and how fast water moves across your skin.
There’s a number everyone fixates on when they shop for a cold plunge: the temperature. Lower must mean harder, harder must mean better. It’s a clean story. It’s also incomplete — and the physics says so.
Heat leaves your body in cold water according to a simple relationship:
Q = h × A × ΔT
- Q is the heat-transfer rate — how fast heat is leaving your body. This is the thing you actually feel.
- ΔT is the temperature difference between your skin and the water. This is the number on the display.
- A is your submerged surface area.
- h is the convection coefficient — and this is the one nobody talks about.
Here’s the part that flips the whole conversation: h is governed by how fast water moves across your skin. Still water lets a thin, slightly-warmer layer build up against your body — a kind of insulating shell that slows heat loss. Moving water strips that layer away and keeps pulling heat. It’s the same reason a 40°F wind feels brutal while 40°F still air is just brisk.
So you can lower the temperature all you want. If the water around your body isn’t moving, you’re leaving the most powerful variable in the equation on the table.
“You hit this switch…it’s just like a raging river, so you never get a thermal layer.”
— Joe Rogan, The Joe Rogan Experience
Run the numbers. A single-pump system in most ice baths circulates around 10 GPM or less — split across chilling, filtering, ozonating, and moving water — and simply can’t generate the velocity at your skin that a dedicated 25 GPM circulation circuit can. Because heat transfer scales with that velocity, BlueCube pulls heat from your body meaningfully faster, even at a warmer set temperature.
The result: in a BlueCube cold plunge you experience significantly higher heat transfer per second. That means you don’t need to stay in as long to get an acute dose, you can titrate the experience across both temperature and flow rate, and you will never outgrow your cold plunge — it stays an adaptive experience.
That’s not a marketing trick. It’s the convection coefficient doing exactly what the physics says it should.
The Story of Joe Rogan’s three BlueCube Cold Plunges
Over the years, Joe Rogan has had three different BlueCubes at the JRE studio. The first two were all-wood units with a stainless-steel tub; his second was the first to feature RiverMode™, and his newest is built with carbon fiber.
In 2022, BlueCube was invited by Salus Sauna to build a cold plunge for the JRE studio, and BlueCube co-founder David Haddad delivered Joe Rogan’s first BlueCube cold plunge.
Joe Rogan’s first BlueCube was an all-wood model: a teak deck with padauk, wenge, and ambrosia maple streamers, built on a 304, 14-gauge stainless steel tub (about 30% thicker than Rogan’s other ice bath). This BlueCube had robust circulation, but it came before the launch of RiverMode™. BlueCube now has 316 stainless steel as standard.
On June 21, 2022, Joe Rogan posted on Instagram his contrast-therapy setup at JRE: a Salus Sauna and a BlueCube cold plunge. He went directly from his Salus Sauna into his BlueCube cold plunge set at 37°. His face during the experience says it all.
Thank you to @bluecubebaths for the cold plunge!
— Joe Rogan, Instagram, June 21, 2022
Joe Rogan’s second BlueCube cold plunge was also an all-wood model: a wenge deck with padauk and ambrosia maple streamers, with his favorite hobbies engraved on the side. He loved his first BlueCube and thought the circulation made it more aggressive than his other ice bath — but it was the second BlueCube, with the addition of RiverMode™, that made him a raging BlueCube fan.
Joe Rogan now has a third BlueCube at the studio, a new unit built with carbon fiber.
How did Joe Rogan get into cold plunging? (Wim Hof)
Joe Rogan’s fascination with ice baths started shortly after he had Wim Hof on the podcast. He has since become one of the practice’s most influential advocates, plunging nearly every day and keeping a BlueCube at his studio and a Morozko at home.
Joe Rogan brought ice baths to the forefront of mainstream biohacking. Although cold exposure has been practiced for thousands of years, it did not become a mega-trend until the early 2020s — and Joe Rogan is perhaps the core reason it did.
What makes Joe Rogan unique is that he is a practitioner: he does an ice bath nearly every day. Many people online give opinions on cold therapy without committing to the practice or supporting their claims with science. Joe Rogan is different — he owns two ice baths and prides himself on having opinions on subjects he is actively involved in. His perspective deserves more weight on cold exposure than that of most influencers.
And he is not alone: many people echo his enthusiasm because of the profound experiences cold plunging generates. The science is still nascent, but cold exposure is a hormetic stress related to exercise and sauna, both of which have well-established, peer-reviewed science behind their benefits. Cold plunging is likely to deliver benefits as profound as sauna and to become just as ubiquitous — with more residences and commercial facilities adding ice baths to leverage them.
Joe Rogan’s cold plunge moments with guests
Some of the most memorable JRE cold-plunge moments happen with guests — from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to Action Bronson to Theo Von — all of them in the BlueCube at the studio.
The cold plunge compilation
This video highlights key moments on JRE when Joe Rogan and his podcast guests discussed BlueCube cold plunges. Speaking to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Rogan describes the BlueCube as a raging river that never lets you settle into a thermal layer.
“Raging River, so you never get a thermal layer. The thing that happens in the cold plunge is like a minute in your body develops sort of a thermal layer and it actually is more tolerable after a minute than it is for the first minute, but not with that raging river…” — Joe Rogan, to Dwayne Johnson
— Joe Rogan, to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Joe Rogan and Action Bronson do an ice bath together
Joe Rogan and Action Bronson go through a Rogan workout together at JRE. They get into the sauna and BlueCube cold plunge together and talk through the experience.
“Ok, now we are going to do 3 minutes in the cold.” Rogan tells Bronson, who then looks at the camera in dread.
Joe Rogan and Theo Von on their ice bath routine
In this video, Joe Rogan and Theo Von discuss the depression and anxiety Theo Von experienced and what he did to counteract that episode in his life.
Theo Von: “And then I started like getting in this…I got this BlueCube Ice Bath…”
Joe Rogan: “Yeah that’s—we have one of those next door.”
Who else uses a BlueCube?
Plenty of people in Joe Rogan’s orbit own a BlueCube. Jocko Willink, Theo Von, Tulsi Gabbard, Patrick Bet-David, Jillian Michaels, Korrect Fitness (formerly Onnit Gym), and Rogan’s own bodyguard and executive assistant all have BlueCube cold plunges in their homes and commercial facilities.
Frequently asked questions
What cold plunge does Joe Rogan use?
He uses a BlueCube cold plunge at his podcast studio in Austin and a Morozko ice bath at home.
Which cold plunge does Joe Rogan prefer?
He likes both, but he has said the BlueCube is the more brutal of the two because its RiverMode™ moving water makes 37°F feel colder than his home unit at 33–34°F. When it comes to cold therapy with his podcast guests, he uses the BlueCube.
What temperature does Joe Rogan cold plunge in?
33–34°F at home and 37°F with RiverMode™ in the BlueCube at the studio. He has publicly criticized warmer settings (50°F and 54°F) as “so warm” and “a fucking joke.”
How long does Joe Rogan stay in the cold plunge?
About 3 minutes, daily. He likes to do it at home or at the JRE studio before his workout, followed by a sauna.
Is Joe Rogan sponsored by BlueCube or Morozko?
No. He uses both because he likes them, with no paid relationship — which is the only kind of endorsement that means anything.
Why does the BlueCube feel colder than a colder ice bath?
Moving water. RiverMode™ strips away the thin warm layer that forms against your skin in still water, so 37°F moving water pulls heat from your body faster than still water several degrees colder.
What is the BlueCube RiverMode™ feature that Joe Rogan mentions?
RiverMode™ is BlueCube’s continuous water-circulation system. It keeps cold water vigorously moving across the skin so the plunge stays intense for the full duration instead of easing off as you sit still.
Can I get the same cold plunge Joe Rogan’s guests use?
Yes. The BlueCube C2 cold plunge — the same units used at the JRE studio — ships for home and commercial installations.
What is Joe Rogan’s BlueCube cold plunge made of?
A 316 marine-grade stainless tub in 14-gauge steel — about 30% thicker and far more corrosion-resistant than the 304 steel common in other plunges — with 20-micron filtration plus ozone. Joe Rogan now has a newer BlueCube tub made with carbon fiber.
When did Joe Rogan start getting into cold plunges?
Shortly after having Wim Hof on the podcast, Joe Rogan started his obsession with cold plunging. He engages in cold plunging nearly every day (4–5 times per week on average). His peak obsession was 2021–2024, and he still maintains his routine to this day.
What other influencers in Joe Rogan’s orbit have a BlueCube cold plunge?
Jocko Willink, Theo Von, Tulsi Gabbard, Patrick Bet-David, Jillian Michaels, Korrect Fitness (formerly Onnit Gym), and his bodyguard and executive assistant all have BlueCube cold plunges in their homes and commercial facilities.
How many BlueCube cold plunges does Joe Rogan have?
Over the years, Joe Rogan has had three different BlueCubes at the Joe Rogan Experience podcast studio. The first two were all-wood units with a stainless-steel tub; his second unit was the first time he experienced RiverMode™.
