By Ben Lucas -
Sports recovery has come a long way beyond protein shakes and ice baths. Learn the science behind three exciting new ways to reduce soreness and speed up your post-training recovery.
The biggest trend in health and wellness globally right now is recovery. Humans are more over-worked, stressed and time-poor than ever. These innovative recovery techniques will help you maximise your downtime and have you feeling fresh.
1. Infrared sauna
This is a type of sauna that uses light to create heat and has become a popular recovery method for athletes. While a traditional sauna uses heat to warm the air, which in turn warms your body, an infrared sauna heats your body directly without warming the air around you.
As you relax in the infrared heat, your body is hard at work producing sweat to cool itself and pumping blood to increase circulation – all the while burning a few extra calories. This increased blood circulation carries off metabolic waste products and delivers oxygen-rich blood to oxygen-depleted muscle, so they recover faster. Muscles relax best when tissues are warm, for greater flexibility and range of motion. Infrared heat also reduces soreness on nerve endings and muscle spasms as muscle joints and fibres are heated.
