Professional athletes are always looking for ways to enhance their bodies’ natural ability to heal and develop to improve their performance in their respective sports. Generally, athletes will turn to certain forms of training, like high-altitude training, take supplements, or get sports massages to help rehabilitate their muscles.
Those who go to the extreme will take performance-enhancing drugs. But, there’s another therapy on the block, known to improve your performance before you exercise and help you recover afterwards. We’re talking about Infrared Therapy.
What is Infrared Therapy?
Infrared is one of the many therapies that are currently being tested and used to help patients deal with chronic pain. It uses wavelengths of light that are delivered to different areas of the body to alleviate pain. The reason infrared light is used is because it’s able to penetrate deep into the skin without damaging your skin tissue like UV light does. Instead, it aids the cell’s ability to regenerate while promoting better circulation of oxygenated blood.
How Does it Work?
Unlike red light therapy, infrared cannot be seen by the human eye. When you undergo infrared treatment, you either use a handheld infrared device or enter an infrared sauna, which surrounds you with infrared light.
When turned on, the infrared light will penetrate your skin at about 2-7 centimetres, reaching the muscles and underlying tissue. As the light enters your body, it interacts with and is absorbed by your photoreceptors in your cells. This kick starts a chain-reaction on a metabolic level, triggering your body’s ability to recover after exercise.
The Physical and Mental Benefits of Infrared Therapy for Athletes
Infrared therapy has both mental and physical benefits for athletes. Considering the fact that one of its main effects is improving blood flow, the benefits that follow this are significant. Here are some of them:
Mental benefits:
Reduced Stress
Stress has a nasty way of limiting your cognitive function and wasting your brain power on things that are, at times, out of your control. As an athlete, you face mental and physical stress often. Infrared treatment can reduce your stress by improving the blood flow to your braid and muscles, allowing you to feel more relaxed and at ease.
Better sleep
Stress, anxiety, or fatigue can ruin your sleep. Infrared therapy can solve this problem by helping you feel more relaxed. By providing your body the aid it needs to relax, you’ll be able to sleep soundly again.
It’ll help you stay focused
Stress has a way of fogging up your mind with loads of things that you don’t need to be thinking about. As an athlete, you need to be alert while you’re performing. If not, then you’ll underperform. Generally, this mental state is called over or under aroused. Have you ever heard the phrase “in the zone”
Well, scientifically, this is called optimal arousal, and it’s the mindset you need to be in to perform at your best. However, stress hinders that. Infrared therapy can help alleviate your stress so you can get into the zone when performing.
Physical benefits
Better blood circulation
Infrared light ignites the molecules in your body, such as nitric oxide, which is responsible for dilating your blood vessels so they can pump larger volumes of blood at a time. This essentially enhances your circulatory system, allowing the body to transport nutrients to important areas faster, which leads to other benefits.
Faster Muscle Recovery
Because infrared therapy improves blood circulation, it also aids with a faster recovery. The blood carries nutrients to the muscles. These nutrients like proteins and oxygen, are essential for the muscle to repair itself and strengthen. Thus, the fast the nutrients get to the muscle, the faster they can regenerate. Leading to a speedy recovery.
Detoxification
When you sit in an infrared sauna, the heat will cause you to sweat. This is an important aspect of the treatment because sweating allows your body to rid itself of harmful toxins that can cause you to feel lethargic and demotivated.
The Ideal time to use an Infrared Sauna as an athlete
For athletes, the best time to use an infrared sauna is either before or after your workout. Using it before will get your blood pumping, allowing nutrients to travel to your muscles faster and preparing you for the workout ahead. Likewise, going for a sauna session afterwards will aid your body with its recovery process, relieving muscle soreness and providing the muscles with the nutrients they need to recover. You could also do contrast therapy after your workout.
Contrast therapy involves moving between a hot and cold environment to trigger your body’s recovery process and shorten your recovery period.
Final Thoughts
After trying infrared therapy, you’ll say goodbye to ice baths and other recovery methods for good. Infrared therapy is the future for dealing with chronic injuries and recovery for athletes. And we’ve only just touched the surface of what it can do. If you’re still uncertain whether infrared therapy is for you, do some research to learn more about infrared saunas and how they work, or call a sauna and ask for a test run. Don’t knock it till you try it!