Austin Laudenslager — Founder & CEO, Peak Saunas

Austin Laudenslager

Founder & CEO, Peak Saunas

Former NCAA Division I Football Player

Product Engineering • Red Light Therapy • Verified Claims

Austin Laudenslager is the founder and CEO of Peak Saunas, a US direct-to-consumer sauna company. He leads Peak's product engineering — including the specification of the 8-wavelength (630–1060nm) red light therapy panel built into every full-spectrum Peak sauna — and writes the buyer's guides published on this site.

He came to sauna the way a lot of former athletes do: through recovery. Years of Division I football meant years of learning what actually helps a body bounce back — and what's just marketing. That distinction became the founding principle of Peak.

About Austin

Austin played NCAA Division I football before founding Peak Saunas. Competing at that level means treating recovery as seriously as training — heat exposure, sleep, and load management stop being wellness trends and become part of the job. When he later went looking for a home sauna that matched what he'd learned as an athlete, he found a market full of vague specifications, unverifiable claims, and red light "add-ons" that cost thousands extra. He started Peak to build the sauna he couldn't buy.

Today Austin leads product engineering at Peak. The clearest example of that work is Peak's red light therapy panel: 8 wavelengths (630–1060nm) — four red and four near-infrared — with 216 dual-chip LEDs per panel and irradiance published at three distances (175 mW/cm² at 6", 107 at 12", 80 at 24") from Peak's engineering documentation. Publishing per-distance irradiance is unusual in this industry; Austin insists on it because a light-therapy number without a distance attached is a number you can't act on.

He also set the editorial policy that governs everything Peak publishes: specifications come from engineering documentation, lab reports get published in full, and competitors get credited by name in the categories where they genuinely win. If a Peak buyer's guide says a competitor does something better, that's not a mistake — it's the policy working.

Outside of Peak, Austin is a husband and dad — the photo above is him with his daughter, which tells you most of what you need to know about how he'd rather spend a Saturday.

Areas of expertise

Infrared sauna product engineering

Full-spectrum heater configuration, cabin design, and the specification decisions behind Peak's indoor and outdoor lineup.

Red light therapy specification

Wavelength selection across the 8-wavelength (630–1060nm) range, LED architecture, and per-distance irradiance measurement.

Heat therapy for athletic recovery

How athletes use sauna protocols for recovery — the use case that brought him to the category, grounded in published research.

Sauna buyer education

Comparative research across brands, checkable competitor claims, and buyer's guides written to be verifiable rather than persuasive.

Editorial standards at Peak

Every guide Austin writes follows the verified-claims policy he set for the company:

Specifications come from engineering documentation. If a number appears in a Peak guide, it traces to a documented source — not a marketing page.
Lab reports are published in full, not summarized into a favorable sentence.
Competitors are credited by name where they win. Peak's comparison pages concede real strengths — and date-stamp every competitor claim so readers know when it was checked.
Health claims stay inside the research. Guides cite peer-reviewed studies (linked to PubMed) and claim only what the cited study supports. Peak saunas are wellness products, not medical devices.

You can read the full policy at Why trust Peak Saunas.

Articles by Austin

Peak guides are reviewed for technical accuracy by Caleb Niednagel, Peak's Technology Lead.