Taking a 30-minute sauna bath immediately after exercise, twice a week for three weeks, improves cardiovascular endurance and extends time to exhaustion.

noli's read

This recommendation is based primarily on a crossover study conducted by Scoon et al. in 2007 on six competitive distance runners. Although this study did observe a 32% increase in time to exhaustion, this specific laboratory measure actually translates to an improvement of only about 1.9% in a real-world time trial. Furthermore, another controlled trial conducted by Kirby et al. in 2020 observed real but more moderate benefits, with a 12% increase in time to exhaustion after three weeks of post-exercise sauna use. However, other work, such as a 2021 randomized crossover controlled trial on thirteen active students, revealed no improvement in endurance capacity after post-training sauna use. The effect of passive heat exposure on increasing blood volume is well-documented for optimizing exercise adaptation, but actual performance gains vary widely among individuals. Thus, while post-exercise heat exposure is a relevant strategy for physical well-being and recovery, the claim of a generalized 32% increase is largely overstated and stems from an extremely small sample size.

the sources

1. 1NIH Office of Dietary Supplements 2026
2. 2Manson JE et al. 2019
3. 3foundmyfitness.com/topics