Life gets busy, you’ve been disciplined, consistent, and made progress with your fitness routine. What is the next important step that can improve performance in and out of the gym?
Recovery!
Recovery is just as important as the stresses your body adapts to during training. If you aren’t recovering well, you could see dips in your energy levels, a loss of muscle mass, or poor aerobic performance. Sleep and nutrition are crucial aspects of recovery, but what else can you do to speed up and get the most out of recovery?
Heat therapy options can help support your recovery!
Potential Benefits from Using the Recovery Area at NIFS
At NIFS we have three heat therapy options in our recovery areas, each located separately by walking through the male or female locker rooms offering a sauna, whirlpool, and steam room. These heat therapy options can offer several health benefits that support recovery.
Sauna
Dry sauna is the most well-known and researched heat therapy option. There has been substantial evidence that it offers numerous health benefits. Regular dry sauna sessions may improve endothelial nitric oxide synthase, which promotes better blood flow and circulation through your cardiovascular system. Increased blood flow means more oxygen and nutrients can reach deeper into the cells of muscle tissues and other organs, thus boosting recovery time in some cases.
Other benefits of sauna might include flushing toxins like heavy metals, PCBs, and BPA found in many plastics. These can affect your endocrine system which regulates your hormonal functions. Sweating out toxins could be one of many ways to support detoxification of environmental pollutants.
Whirlpool
Whirlpool is another option for heat application that could be more beneficial to joint health by combining heat application and hydrostatic pressure. Hydrostatic pressure reduces strain on the joints applied by gravity, and the buoyancy of water may help activate many stabilizer muscles surrounding joints. If you have poor mobility and stiff joints, this could be one heat therapy option. The heat of the whirlpool will support blood flow, as the water submersion can allow muscles to relax around joints.
Our whirlpool has two water jet systems as well, so you can experience a gentle water massage as you relax.
Steam Room
The steam room offers unique health benefits from exposure to heat and high humidity. Heat exposure is like other options but may have some unique benefits when compared to sauna or whirlpool. Various studies have shown that moderate heat exposure and high humidity can have an effect of relieving congestion of the nasal passages and improving breathing.
Other benefits of the steam room are that it can hydrate and open pours on the surface of skin. The steam room can also allow for joint pain relief for conditions like arthritis, while not involving the higher temperature of a dry sauna.
Safety Considerations
Exposure to high heat may be a potential risk for populations with cardiovascular disease as well as other other diseases affecting perfusion and internal core temperature regulation. If you have a medical condition, you should consult with your doctor before starting and integrating heat therapy into your routine, you can read more about NIFS general use guidelines for the recovery area via our house rules.
We hope you enjoy the numerous potential health benefits that are offered in our NIFS recovery areas!