More and more people have the chance to have access to a sauna. Whether at the gym or even at home, it is a terribly effective recovery tool. It fits perfectly in a logic of sports recovery, whether for performance or for objectives related to weightlifting.
A method of Finnish origin, it has quickly spread around the world and its success is fully justified. Between its benefits for your psyche and its concrete effects on the body, there is a lot to do! Here, we take you on a tour of this ancestral practice.
Sports recovery, an essential element
First of all, it is essential to understand the principle of sports recovery. If you didn't already know. Your progress is not made at the gym, but the rest of the time. This is true for muscle gain, but also for sports like gymnastics, volleyball or tennis.
Indeed, progress comes from two main criteria. On the one hand, the muscular adaptation. When the muscles are subjected to a strong tension, they will grow and strengthen.
On the other hand, it is a neuronal adaptation. The famous muscle memory, very poorly understood by most athletes, actually means that the body has created a privileged information channel between a muscle and the brain. Information is therefore shared more quickly.
These two adaptations, essential for any progress, are not made directly in the gym, but rather outside, during sleep. This is why, in addition to an effective workout and a well-tuned diet, getting enough sleep is essential to achieving your goal.
Recovery methods
You might be wondering what this has to do with other recovery methods like sauna (heat treatment). Well, during your workouts, you radically change the bio-chemistry of your body. Many hormones are produced including cortisol, commonly referred to as the stress hormone.
If it is essential for performance, it is necessary to evacuate it afterwards. When you add to that the fact that the muscles have lost a good part of their nutrients and oxygen, it is rather simple to understand what the goal of the different recovery methods is: to reset the counters.
To drain the muscles, you have three options: hot (sauna, hammam, hot bath, etc. ...), cold (ice bath, cryotherapy, ice bag, etc. ...) and massages (at a masseur, alone, with a percussion gun, etc. ...).
In this article, we will focus on the easiest method to add to your calendar: heat treatment.
Sauna or steam room, which one to choose?
It's a complicated dilemma: steam or dry heat. Is there really a big difference? Well, yes. It is mainly in the heat that you will notice it. In general, in a steam room, the heat is around 50°, and while it may be higher, it will never reach the average 90° in a sauna.
But this difference is not really important (if you are not five minutes away, obviously) because the idea is to raise the temperature on the surface of the skin. In the case of the steam room, it will just take a little longer.
So it's up to you to decide whether the oriental atmosphere and smells of the hammam or the volcanic heat of the Finnish sauna suit you best.
How often to use it
If heat has proven benefits, it is essential to use it sparingly. Indeed, overusing it could eventually desensitize you and therefore ruin all its effects. The same is true for cold treatments such as cryotherapy. When you use them repeatedly, the body gets used to them (which is more of a problem with heat because otherwise you can keep lowering the temperature).
So we recommend that you use it once a week. This can be after your most intense workout or on your day off, as an active recovery! In any case, don't do more than two per week.
The many benefits of the sauna
Very well known for stimulating blood circulation, the sauna has the aura it deserves. For athletes, it is a dream. After a workout, your muscles are completely dead: no more amino acids, no more glycogen, no more oxygen, tons of metabolic waste and of course, cortisol. Not the ideal feeling, you'll agree.
Fortunately, heat will cause a phenomenon called vasodilation. The idea is that in an effort to regulate body temperature, the brain will make the blood flow faster and dilate the veins inside the muscles. This will allow them to be drained and take all the waste products with them.
Your muscles and your joints will then become more elastic and you will greatly reduce your chances of having aches and pains and in the long term, you will avoid injuries related to tendons and joints.
For your mental balance, you couldn't ask for better. We have already seen that thanks to the increase in blood pressure, you can more easily eliminate cortisol. But its other strong point is that it increases tenfold the effects of endorphin, the happiness hormone. In a way, it will help your brain associate a reward with working out and push you into a virtuous circle!
