This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Wim Hof is a Dutch extreme athlete, born April 20, 1959 in Sittard, Netherlands, known as the Iceman for a series of Guinness recognised cold endurance feats performed from the 1990s and 2000s onward. Those feats included prolonged ice water immersion and high altitude climbs undertaken in minimal clothing, performances that first brought him public attention as an individual endurance athlete rather than as a teacher.
Hof developed the method underlying those feats over decades of his own personal practice, refining a discipline that combines a controlled breathing exercise with graduated cold exposure and a component of focused mental commitment. What began as a personal training system for his own extreme feats gradually became something he could describe and pass on to others in structured form.
He began teaching that system formally in the 2000s, founding the Wim Hof Method organisation and an instructor certification program built around it. The transition from solo endurance athlete to founder of a teachable method marks the point where his personal cold tolerance became an institution with its own instructors rather than remaining a single man's demonstrated capability alone.