If you’re looking to understand a little bit more about infrared sauna workout benefits, you’ve come to the right place. Providing Sydneysiders with the leading infrared sauna retreat, Rimba Sweat are the experts when it comes to understanding the benefits of infrared therapy.
Rimba Sweat is Sydney’s first dedicated infrared sauna studio. Located on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, we provide infrared sauna sessions that benefit your physical and mental wellbeing. Our infrared sauna sessions aid those looking to detox, relax, support their weight loss journey, and recover.
Whether you’re new to the infrared therapy scene or you’re a seasoned sweater, you may be wondering, “how do infrared saunas tie in with workouts?”. The answer? It really depends. Whether or not you should be working out in an infrared sauna comes down to your experience, health, and what you wish to achieve with infrared therapy. However, you’re in luck – we’re going to break down the main infrared sauna workout benefits as well as how and when you should use infrared in tangent with your next workout.
Infrared Saunas & Working Out
Your infrared sauna session will take place in a custom-built sauna pod with infrared heaters that are designed to heat the space and provide a detox for your body. Conversely to a traditional steam sauna or steam room, infrared therapy will not heat the air around you – instead, infrared therapy is the practice of using light to warm the body directly. Infrared light waves work to penetrate your skin and become absorbed by the body.
From there, a deep, relaxed sweat is induced, providing all of the benefits of a traditional sauna (and more) at a lower, safer temperature. Infrared heat waves penetrate the skin more effectively than steam saunas, allowing the user to experience a much more intense sweat at a lower temperature without heating the surrounding air.
Infrared sauna heat works to raise core body temperature, heart rate and improves metabolism. The heat waves of an infrared sauna dilate the muscles, work to burn calories, improve circulation, and enhance body detoxification. Similarly, as we all know, working out can provide a wealth of benefits to both your physical and mental health.
So, can you work out in an infrared sauna? Or should you be using the sauna as your post-workout recovery?
Exercise and infrared sauna sessions go hand in hand. Working out in infrared saunas is a thing – many of our loyal clients will bring in a yoga mat for some gentle exercise. However, if you’re new to infrared sauna sessions, it may be best to ease into the routine of using the sauna, without putting your body under additional stress for your first few sessions.
Working out in an infrared sauna should only be done if you’re someone who has experience with infrared sauna sessions. For those new to infrared therapy, working out can pose the risk of dehydration and put your body under stress.
Infrared Sauna Workout Benefits
Whether you’re choosing to engage in some light exercise during your infrared sauna session, or you’re using an infrared sauna as post-workout recovery, either way, the infrared sauna benefits are bountiful. For those that physically struggle to work out every day, infrared saunas are a great substitute, allowing you to increase your heart rate and speed up your metabolism without much movement.
Across the board, working out in an infrared sauna has many benefits, including but not limited to increasing your heart rate and cardiovascular output, improving recovery time, increasing your endurance, relieving joint and muscle pain, and detoxifying the body.
1. Increased Heart Rate
If you’ve never been in an infrared sauna, the experience is very similar to how the body reacts to moderate exercise. Your heart rate will increase, and your blood vessels will widen. As the heart rate increases, so does the volume of blood pumped around the body, increasing cardiac output. Increasing your heart rate trains your body to move more oxygen and blood to your muscles more efficiently, burn more calories and lowers your cholesterol. If you choose to work out during an infrared sauna, gentle exercises can only enhance these benefits.
2. Recover Like Never Before
Infrared light is fantastic for after your workout. Post-exercise infrared sauna sessions have been shown to promote muscle recovery, reduce stiffness or tension and get rid of any performance inhibiting toxins from the body. The heat from an infrared sauna session is ideal for exercise recovery – expediting healing in sore, aching muscles after vigorous exercise.
Similarly to how an infrared sauna can help to manage chronic pain, the benefits also work to alleviate joint pain in athletes and those who train regularly. The relaxation and dilation of muscles, in combination with the increased circulation to joints, allows for increased healing and repairment of stiff, sore, and impacted joints.
There’s no doubt about it – if you’re looking for the best way to recover from a hard workout, an infrared sauna is your best bet. The heat found in infrared saunas also contributes to eliminating lactic acids, allowing depleted muscles to relax fully.
3. Increased Endurance Performance
Working out in infrared saunas or using an infrared sauna after exercising can actually increase your endurance performance. Regular use of an infrared sauna will help your body acclimatise better to heat, making your muscles more efficient in receiving nutrients and oxygen that’ll help them perform better. Your body will adjust its thermoregulatory mechanisms, developing a stronger tolerance to high temperatures that will benefit you in competition or performance.
As your endurance capacity improves, the volume of plasma and red blood cells within your body increases, which in turn boosts your body’s capacity for oxygen intake. A 2007 study done on male long-distance runners showed that regular sauna usage increased their time to exhaustion by 32%, proving the notion of increased endurance performance.
4. Relieves Joint and Muscle Pain
One of the main infrared sauna workout benefits is the alleviation of severe joint and muscular pain that arises from chronic illness, fatigue, repetitive strain and more. Near-infrared waves are ideal for cellular growth, muscle recovery, boosting recovery time and the strength of your immune system. As heat therapy works to reduce pain, you’ll find that your capacity for physical exercise increases as you’re able to put your body through a greater volume of work. This is perhaps even more relevant and beneficial when used post-workout, to improve your recovery time for the next workout.
5. Detoxifies Your Body
Infrared saunas can make you sweat profusely, inducing up to three times more sweat volume compared to traditional saunas. When you combine infrared heat therapy with working out, you can only imagine the amount of sweat that is produced.
As we sweat, the body naturally rids itself of toxins such as ‘obesogens’, promoting weight gain and preventing weight loss. As you sweat out these fattening chemical toxins, your body becomes more efficient at regulating its weight. What’s more, your bodies overall health and vitality will receive a boost, improving your capacity to workout in the future.
Risks Associated with Infrared Sauna Workouts
Here at Rimba Sweat, we have a fair number of clients that utilise infrared saunas and practice gentle workouts or exercise routines when inside.
However, exercising while in an infrared sauna is not for everyone – for many of our clients, the space is used purely to relax, recover, and rejuvenate.
People with pre-existing conditions or impairments and pregnant women may find that working out in a sauna is too stressful on the body. There is a point where too much sweating can present a risk as dehydration, and irregular cardiovascular responses become a very real concern.
Ultimately, it comes down to listening to your body, taking it slow and being wary of the risks. Consider talking to your doctor in order to weigh up the benefits versus the risks for exercise and infrared sauna.
The Benefits of Infrared Sauna Treatment Post Workout
An infrared sauna is incredibly beneficial post-workout, as the heat and sweat work to facilitate the body’s detoxification process. The dilation of muscles allows for faster recovery of muscles and joints, alleviating any aches, discomfort, or muscular pain after a good work out.
At the tail end of a workout, infrared sauna offers your body a way to wind down from the high-intensity nature of a workout slowly. Moreover, the boost in circulation you experience from infrared sauna use improves relaxation and recovery times as your muscles ease in tension and soreness, preparing you for the next day.
Discover the Benefits of Rimba Sweat Sauna Treatment
So, there you have it; it is clear that infrared sauna workout benefits are a very real thing, and you may experience great results upon continued use.
At our exclusive studio on the Northern Beaches, Rimba Sweat has both standard and large sauna rooms, so you can enjoy the relaxing and healing benefits alone or with a friend. Combining modern technology with the age-old practice of sauna, Rimba Sweat offers the best in infrared heat therapy Sydney.
Are you ready to enjoy a private, calming oasis? Discover the many infrared sauna workout benefits on offer today! Book online now and enjoy access to our luxury infrared sauna studio in Manly.