Relaxing in a sauna after a resistance training session feels like a gift to your sore muscles. So, it goes without saying that if you’re an athlete — whether you’re an aspiring one, an amateur, or a semi-professional — if you work out on an almost daily basis, then adding a sauna to your training routine is a good idea.
So, what are the sauna benefits for athletes, exactly?
Why do we say this? Well, not only are these traditional hot boxes used regularly by our European cousins because of their relaxing therapeutic effects for athletes, but saunas can also help assist in pain relief and muscle recovery.
Read on for a detailed explainer on why sauna can be super for athletes.
Sauna Benefits For Athletes
If you’re an athlete and have access to a sauna, whether it’s at the gym, a local spa, or even in your own home, then visiting a sauna on a regular basis will provide you with a whole host of benefits that go beyond simply relaxing your muscles after a hardcore training session.
For starters, just like how high-intensity interval training benefits your cardiovascular system with short bursts of intense exertion, raising your body’s temperature with added time in the sauna after your training session could help you gain improvements in your overall performance.
And doesn’t that sound pretty good?
Also known as hyperthermic conditioning, research has suggested that the body’s ability to tolerate increased heat with sauna bathing has the added benefit of increasing nitrous oxide levels, blood flow circulation, and plasma levels.
Also known as hyperthermic conditioning, research has suggested that the body’s ability to tolerate increased heat with sauna bathing has the added benefit of increasing nitrous oxide levels, blood flow circulation, and plasma levels.
These benefits combined help to improve performance, as well as reduce the potential effects of overtraining your body.
This means that having a sauna after your training session will relax your muscles, relieve any pain, calm inflammation, and provide other health benefits like the growth of new brain cells, and increased lifespan, but it will also offer amazing improvements to your overall athletic performance.
Find us an athlete that doesn’t dream of that!
How Saunas Aid In Recovery
If you’re in the unfortunate position of being sidelined with a muscle injury, for example, then using a sauna for hyperthermic conditioning will help. This is because saunas slow down the degeneration of any muscle that you’ve been building up.
Heating the body up in its entirety also helps to boost muscle regrowth and reduces the potential of atrophy while you’re in recovery mode, especially if you’ve been immobilized due to your injury.
Sitting in a sauna at least four times a week will aid in this process.
And it’s not only athletes that will benefit from this regime. Because besides sore muscles, saunas can help alleviate pain associated with physical fatigue and arthritis, while also helping asthma sufferers (salt saunas are great for this), or anyone wanting to easily flush toxins out of the body through sweat, which also helps to clear the skin.
How Saunas Boost Endurance
Knowing how to increase endurance without adding undue stress and strain on your body is a key to overall athletic performance, because it’s an accurate measurement of many aspects of your body at any given moment, including your heart health.
Acclimatizing the body with heat through hyperthermic conditioning allows your body to adjust to performing when your body temperature has been elevated due to heat stress.
The benefits of safe heat stress on the body from sauna use include increased blood flow and plasma to your muscle tissue, including your heart, strengthening of your muscle tissue, as well as increasing your muscle mass.
The benefits of safe heat stress on the body from sauna use include increased blood flow and plasma to your muscle tissue, including your heart, strengthening of your muscle tissue, as well as increasing your muscle mass.
In fact, a study published in 2006 showed that distance runners who had a 30-minute sauna session twice a week, for three weeks, after a workout ended up boosting their endurance levels by more than 30% over that time.
An increase in blood flow and plasma also benefits your connective tissues, not to mention the increased levels of oxygen that are transported to your muscles, which also provides an improvement to your cardiovascular health.
And there’s more!
Heat Shock
In addition, exposure to heat during a sauna session raises your heat shock proteins, which are produced by healthy cells under stress-related conditions like exposure to high heat, UV light, and extreme cold. A sauna cold plunge routine really focuses on this aspect.
Raised heat shock proteins make the healthy cells in your body even stronger by protecting them from injury and stress, which makes you even more resistant to getting injured in the first place.
On top of all this, there’s the fact that regular saunas for athletes provide a boost in human growth hormone (HGH), which not only increases exercise capacity, bone density, and muscle mass, but also lowers body fat, repairs body tissue, and gives you overall anti-aging benefits.
Regular saunas for athletes provide a boost in human growth hormone (HGH), which not only increases exercise capacity, bone density, and muscle mass, but also lowers body fat, repairs body tissue, and gives you overall anti-aging benefits.
Conclusion
So overall, you can see that finishing a training session does a lot more for the body than just relaxing in the heat. And this health improvement can have a great effect, especially for athletes who can use it to improve their performance, as well as aid them in their post-exercise recovery.
Athletes can benefit significantly from time in the sauna (and in the cold). The physical benefits of hyperthermic conditioning are significant. But there’s also the mental part: saunas are super relaxing, a chance to meditate and calm the body while experiencing soothing, intense heat.
