How Can Saunas Help Build Muscle

Pushing weights and sauna sessions are the ultimate power couple because after feeling the burn in the gym, the sauna’s heat is the ultimate post-workout companion. Saunas enhance your recovery and hormonal balance while strengthening your immune system. These benefits forge the optimal environment for your muscle development to thrive so you can train consistently. Regularly embracing the gentle heat of a home sauna from SaunaFin optimizes your workouts by reducing your total recovery time and elevating your overall muscle-building potential. Here’s why SaunaFin’s luxurious outdoor sauna and custom sauna kits are your secret weapon for building a V-shaped torso that fills out your t-shirts and Calvin’s in all the right places. 

Sauna Enhances Muscle Recovery

Saunas help you recover by increasing the blood flow to all your muscles. This increased circulation delivers the oxygen and nutrients needed to accelerate your body’s repair processes. Will it reduce your post-workout muscle soreness? Many lifters swear by it, largely thanks to these improvements in blood flow. A paper in the American Journal of Physiology found that working out and having a 15-minute sauna 3 times a week enhanced recovery by improving cardiovascular function, reducing systolic blood pressure, and lowering total cholesterol levels. This research highlights how double-teaming weightlifting with sauna sessions may enhance your cardiorespiratory fitness and overall heart health compared to exercise alone. However, just because most gyms have a sauna attached to a locker room doesn’t mean taking a sauna post-workout is ideal for muscle growth. It’s smarter to sauna a few hours after training to increase the healing blood flow to all your muscles. 

Boosting Hormonal Balance

Superfluous muscle and well-balanced hormones go together like biceps and tank tops. Healthy hormone levels are crucial for generating muscle growth, found in a review in The Physician and Sportsmedicine. Fortunately, this is as easy as relaxing in the sauna’s gentle heat, which positively influences your body’s hormone systems, particularly growth hormone (GH) and testosterone. Regular sauna sessions stimulate growth hormone production, which plays a vital role in muscle repair and regeneration. When athletes regularly alternated between 12 minutes in a sauna and 1 minute in cold water, levels of the stress hormone cortisol decreased and testosterone increased slightly, found a paper in the American Journal of Men’s Health. These hormone boosts may enhance your muscle-building efforts by providing a natural way to help you destress and amplify your growth. It turns out that the secret ingredient to your muscle smoothie might just be to drink it in the sauna. 

Improving Circulation and Flexibility

While blocky bodybuilders may sometimes look a tad wooden, they work hard to be highly flexible to give their muscles space to grow. Enhancing your range of motion and flexibility is crucial for muscle growth because this helps stretch the muscle capsule. When the capsule, a white web-like sinew encasing all your muscle groups, is stretched, it creates more space for the muscle to expand and grow. This increased flexibility improves your range of motion so you can perform exercises with proper form, reduce your risk of injury, and target muscle groups more efficiently. Stretching in the sauna gives you the best bang for your buck when it comes to increasing your flexibility. One report found that stretching while in an infrared sauna, compared to doing the same stretches outside the sauna, created a 205% increase in flexibility. Think of regular sauna stretches as a preventive and restorative measure for keeping your muscles healthy. 

Strengthening the Immune System

Surf the net for workouts, and every trainer is there to tell you that their muscle-building system is the best. Can they all be right? Yes, suggests a paper in Sports Medicine. All workout systems are effective if you follow one key variable: consistency. The element controlling how much strength and muscle gains was always workout frequency. The more you train, the more muscle you build. Simple. For this to happen, you need a robust immune system so your workout consistency isn’t weakened by sick days. The heat stress from a sauna session boosts your immune system by increasing the production of white blood cells. This immunity uptick means fewer sick days, keeping your workouts consistent long term, which is crucial for continuous muscle growth and fitness progress. 

How To Use Your Sauna for More Muscle Growth

To maximize the muscle-building benefits of your sauna sessions, consider these tips:

• Stay Hydrated: Water transports nutrients needed to create growth in and out of your cells, supporting recovery. 
• Post-Workout Recovery: The heat helps to relax your muscles and may reduce soreness. Ideally, this can be several hours after training or before bed to improve your sleep quality, which creates muscle growth. 
• Make Sauna Regular: Aim for 2-3 weekly sessions to aid your recovery as much as possible. 
• Add A Stretch: Try gentle 45-second stretches in the sauna to improve flexibility and muscle relaxation. The heat makes your muscles more pliable, allowing deeper and more effective stretches.
• Try Cold Therapy Contrast: Alternate between the sauna and a cold shower or ice bath. This contrast therapy can improve circulation, reduce muscle inflammation, and promote faster recovery.

Sauna and Muscle Building: A Winning Combination

Incorporating sauna sessions into your muscle-building routine is one of the smartest things you can do for your entire body. SaunaFin’s high-quality saunas create the ideal environment to help your body reset after a grueling muscle-building workout. Whether you're a seasoned athlete or just starting to chase muscle gains, adding sauna sessions to your routine will help you achieve your brawn-building goals faster. SaunaFin’s luxurious and customizable sauna kits provide the ideal environment to support your muscle-building journey. Our systems are the perfect ally in your quest for stronger, healthier muscles. Start your sauna journey today and unlock your body’s full potential. 

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