👋 Hey.
Welcome to issue #48 of The Everyday Athlete Newsletter. Thanks for being here.
Here are my 3 favourite ideas, learns and resources to help you improve your performance this week (4.5 min read):
🔥 Infrared vs traditional saunas, what's the go?
Saunas are going off.
Good reason. Lots of science-based benefits for recovery, healthy and longevity (which I've dived into here).
But there's different types of saunas – dry/traditional, steam, infrared – and they’re not all the same.
Here's what you need to know...
The biggest difference is how they heat you up:
- 🔥 Dry/traditional sauna – heats up the air around you (usually with an electric heater), which heats you up
- 💦 Steam sauna – also heats up the air around you (with steam from hot water), which heats you up
- 🚨 Infrared sauna – uses infrared waves to penetrate your skin, which heats you up from the inside
Which influences 2 main things:
- 🌡 Temperature – 🔥 dry is hotter (80-100˚C), 💦 steam and 🚨 infrared are a bit cooler (45-50˚C), generally
- ⏱ Time – 🔥 dry and 💦 steam are shorter (10-20 mins), 🚨 infrared is longer (30-60 mins), generally
Bit of trivia:
Because of the water vapour, steam saunas are more humid. They feel hotter. But aren’t actually. An 80˚C steam sauna will feel way hotter than an 80˚C dry sauna. So steamies tend to run cooler to make them more bearable.
Same deal when you pour water on hot stones in a dry sauna – more humidity, not temperature. Preference thing.
Righto, the benefits…
They’re really the same: heart health, longevity, stress, mood, skin, sleep, recovery, hormones (again, more on that here).
🦠 There’s claims infrared saunas are better because they also help you sweat out toxins.
But there’s no significant evidence to prove that.
Plus, it’s not sweats job to “detox” us.
The liver and kidney do that.
Sweat's job is to cool us down. And yes, a small amount of toxins come out in it. But if we've got a toxicity drama, we probably wanna visit a doc rather than an infrared sauna.
Detoxing after a big night? Research found we sweat out way more heavy metals exercising vs sauna.
😊 But, near-infrared light in infrared saunas can activate fibroblasts (a cell in connective tissue that boosts collagen and elastin). So infrared sauna could get our skin glowing.
👃 Steam saunas can help open up our sinuses if we’re blocked up. But they're not as hot, so you lose some benefits there.
Otherwise, we’re splitting hairs.
So it’s really about what you prefer.
- 🔥 Do you want it quick and hot? Go dry
- 🚨 Bit longer, bit more comfortable? Maybe some skin goodness? Infrared
- 💦 Need to clear a cold? Steam
But, if we wanna split hairs...
Most of the good quality research out there about the benefits of deliberate heat exposure has been done in dry saunas (at 80-100˚C).
Plus, if you’re clocking up serious time in infrareds, there could be a small risk of radiation (particularly cheap options).
And I’d also rather the time-poor, quick and hot option.
🔥 So dry/traditional for me.
🎵 Post-training tunes
You’re probably all over your training playlist to get you up.
But what about your post-training tunes?
Because the right music can help our recovery too.
It's been found that slow music can shift our heart rate, cortisol levels and heart rate variability (vs no music and fast music) after training.
The 2 key music criteria:
- 🎵 Gotta be slow (around 70BPM)
- 🙂 You gotta like the music
Google or Spotify search “70 BPM playlist” or “slow wave binaural beats”.
Pick your faves. Pair with a couple mins of exhale-emphasis breathing. It'll help your recovery, stress and more.
⚡️ Latent energy
Latent energy is the idea that we give more effort when others are watching us.
Could be the surge we get when running past a crowd. The social confidence boost when you’re with mates. Working harder when the boss is around. And why accountability is so effective for starting new habits.
Social psychologists reckon there’s a bit at play:
- 🏟 We want to impress other people
- 👀 And interestingly, what we’re doing feels more important when people are watching
Here’s the thing:
I’m convinced the best performers in the world can tap into this latent energy when no one is watching.
They’ve wired their standards and beliefs to the point that it doesn’t matter if there's eyeballs on them. Same effort and actions whether they’re training by themselves or performing in front of a full stadium.
Success leaves clues. And Johnny Wilkinson’s 24-hour camera is the perfect example.
He imagined living life like there was a camera following him 24 hours a day.
“At the end of each day, you've got to be willing to sign for what's been seen by that camera. Just because no one's there or you don't fancy it, that's not good enough. You've got to give your best as a person every time it's asked of you."
And giving our best is really what performance is about.
So tapping into our latent energy might help us do that more often.
Because our biggest opponent is really ourselves.
That's it!
Have a great weekend 🤙
Matt
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