The keys to increasing baseline dopamine are cold water immersion, which can raise your baseline up to 250% for hours, avoiding bright lights and screens from 10pm to 4am, and keeping your rewards intermittent so effort — not the easy hit — is what your system chases.
In the final part of our dopamine series on Physical Friday, wellness coach Zach Fagerberg shares the research-based tools for climbing out of a low, burned-out place. These are simple, mostly free, and powerful — and they tie directly into why the hardest-to-catch fish are the ones that hook us for life.
Listen now: press play in the player above and follow along.
Zach Fagerberg shares three research-based tools. First, cold water immersion: five to ten minutes has been shown to raise baseline dopamine up to 250 percent for up to three hours, and you can do it four to seven days a week. Second, avoid bright lights and screens from 10pm to 4am, because exposure in those hours doubles down on the damage when you are already low. Third, keep your rewards intermittent so your system stays wired to seek effort. Unlike the quick spike-and-crash of easy hits, these reset and lift your baseline.
Yes. Zach Fagerberg cites a study showing that five to ten minutes of cold water exposure can increase baseline dopamine up to 250 percent for up to three hours — a sustained lift, not the immediate spike-and-crash of social media or processed food. You do not have to start ice cold; if you are not acclimated you can begin milder and still see benefit. It is accessible and free: take a cold shower for five minutes in the morning, or turn your hot shower cold for the last five minutes, and just be there for the shock to the system.
In the study Zach Fagerberg references, the group started at 50 degrees and went colder, but there was not a drastic change in dopamine response once you got below about 50, so if you are not acclimated, start around 50 degrees and still get the benefit. As you adapt and 50 stops delivering that shock to the system, you need to go colder to keep triggering the response. I use a 350 Yeti with a lid — I add ice, it stays cold, no machinery needed — but a cold shower like Wim Hof advocates is the simplest entry point.
Because your body is hardwired to punish screen and bright-light exposure in those hours, when it expects you to be resting and sleeping. Zach Fagerberg has found that people in a down place often describe scrolling late at night to let their mind turn off — and that creates a double-down negative effect on an already-low baseline. Simply understanding that you are compounding the damage makes it far easier to cut, rather than being told you just should not do it. If that late scrolling is a regular habit, it needs to go now.
It means not giving yourself a guaranteed payoff every single time. Zach Fagerberg points to fishing: at first the fishing itself is the intermittent reward, but once you stack on phone time, a substance, or music every trip, the reward becomes guaranteed and you lose the urge to go. Our dopamine system was built for the intermittent rewards of hunting and gathering, where food was never a sure thing — and that uncertainty is what kept people seeking. Keep your rewards intermittent and you protect your baseline or help a low one reset.
Because of friction. The fish that bite everything and fight hard but come easy — amberjack, jack crevalle — are the least popular, even though that sounds like the perfect recipe. The fish people obsess over are the ones you work hard for, where everything has to line up and only occasionally does, like a hole in one. Zach Fagerberg explains that on all those days you do the right things without catching the fish, you are not robbing yourself of dopamine — you have taught your system to reward you for doing the right things, which is what lets you enjoy it for the long term.
After two episodes on how dopamine gets drained, I wanted Zach Fagerberg to give us the tools — the science-based, mostly free things we can actually do to climb out of a down place. What made it land for me is how it ties back to everything this audience already does: the cold plunge, the fishing, the hunting, the workouts. There is a reason I have a shirt that says seek adversity. We connect all of it in the episode, so press play in the player above.
Here are the tools Zach Fagerberg lays out to close the series. We go deeper in the episode.
I unpack each of these in the episode. Press play in the player above.
This is the part that made the whole series click for me. Social media, Vegas, and processed food give an immediate spike followed by an immediate crash. Cold water does the opposite — five to ten minutes can lift your baseline up to 250 percent for hours, the kind of durable rise you actually want. It is uncomfortable, free, and repeatable. I share how I run my own cold immersion and sauna routine in the episode, so press play in the player above.
I keep coming back to the fish you have to earn. There is friction in every day you do everything right and still do not catch it — and Zach Fagerberg's point is that those days are not wasted dopamine. You have taught your system to reward the doing, not just the catching. Wire your dopamine that way through the things you are passionate about and it carries into anything you are trying to move in life. We get into it in the episode, so press play in the player above.
The tools that actually raise your baseline — cold, protected sleep, intermittent reward — are the uncomfortable, unglamorous ones. That is exactly why they work.
Big thanks to Zach Fagerberg for sharing his research across this series; you can find him on Instagram and at his coaching business, Actualized Potential Wellness Coaching. Press play in the player above.
Physical Friday is my weekly fitness series for fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen — the training, nutrition, and mindset to stay in the game for life. Watch and listen to every Physical Friday episode from Tom Rowland.
dopamine · baseline dopamine · cold water immersion · cold plunge · sauna · screen time · intermittent reward · Zach Fagerberg · Wim Hof · Yeti · fishing · Physical Friday · Tom Rowland Podcast
I'm Tom Rowland, a professional fishing guide based in the Florida Keys, host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, and the longtime host of the Saltwater Experience television show. On the podcast's Physical Friday series I share the training, nutrition, and mindset that keep fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen strong enough to do the things they love — hunting, fishing, hiking, and more — for life.
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