No one wants muscle soreness to slow them down. Whether you’re a competitive athlete, a weekend golfer, or simply trying to stay active, proper muscle recovery impacts your ability to keep doing what you love. For athletes of all levels, research shows infrared saunas are useful in enhancing muscle recovery and performance.
Your recovery process, or downtime between your workout or training sessions, should be equally as important as your training when trying to build muscle or enhance performance. During your recovery process, energy is restored and the body is able to heal tissue damage and rebuild muscles. Building muscle not only increases strength, but also boosts metabolism, reduces the risk of injury, improves bone density, and helps with excess body fat.
Infrared light benefits muscle recovery and performance, and is becoming a staple tool for athletes and everyday people to help aid physical and mental recovery and performance.
While heat, in and of itself, is great for recovery, temporary pain relief and inflammation – Infrared light heats the body from within and penetrates the joints, muscles and tissues, increasing circulation and blood flow. In an infrared sauna, the far and mid infrared light waves provide an even deeper therapeutic experience than the heat in a traditional sauna that only heats the air.
Good circulation is critical for proper healing. Red blood cells carry oxygen and nutrients to the site of the strain or inflammation, which helps to create new blood vessels and tissues at the site. The more red and white blood cells that can get delivered to muscles, the quicker they rebuild.
When looking to incorporate an infrared sauna at InstaPhysique, we chose Sunlighten’s mPulse® 3 in 1® as it is the only sauna with all three wavelengths in the optimal range in one heater. Sunlighten’s patented SoloCarbon® far infrared heaters have been found to be 99% effective in terms of far infrared absorption into the body.
Sunlighten’s infrared sauna therapy penetrates muscles deeper, increases blood flow and helps the body recover faster so you can stay in that game – of sports and life.
Below, we explore some of the science behind how infrared helps before, during, and after physical activity, and why choosing to incorporate infrared sauna in muscle recovery programs is a smart choice.
Far infrared accelerates recovery.
The Journal of Athletic Enhancement published a study of 10 national-level power athletes that found far infrared improves neuromuscular performance during intensive training associated with increased testosterone/cortisol ratio. “Improved recovery can enable harder training and accelerate further athletic development.”
Near infrared helps build muscles, decrease inflammation.
One of the foremost researchers on infrared, Dr. Michael Hamblin, published a study which suggests that red light and near infrared (NIR) can increase muscle mass gained after training, and decrease inflammation and oxidative stress. NIR is available in our mPulse 3 in 1 sauna at InstaPhysique.
Infrared increases flexibility.
Flexibility is also important for performance and injury prevention. A study conducted at Auburn University of Montgomery showed a Sunlighten mPulse 3 in 1 sauna can increase your flexibility up to 3x. Benefits of increased range of motion include joint mobility, less friction in the joints, enabling of joint function to diminish stiffness and joint relaxation.
Ready to feel the results for yourself? We recommend starting with 2 sessions in a week, or hitting the sauna after your net InstaPhysique workout. Learn more and book your session today!
