I've been coaching CrossFit for over fifteen years. In that time I've watched athletes with nearly identical genetics, nearly identical programming, and nearly identical diets produce wildly different results. Some plateau at a decent level of fitness and stay there — indefinitely. Others keep climbing, year after year, quietly stacking performance gains that seem almost unfair. And for a long time, I couldn't fully explain why.

Then I started paying closer attention to what my top athletes were doing between sessions. Not during. Between. The 22 hours a day when they aren't in my box. And what I found changed how I coach forever. The athletes breaking into the top 10% of our gym — and increasingly, into competitive regional rankings — had figured out something that most of the fitness industry still treats as optional: systematic, intentional recovery isn't a luxury. It's a performance variable. One of the most important ones.

Over the past three years, I've tracked what the best athletes in my gym are doing differently. I've read the research. I've seen the data from our internal performance logs. I've watched seven of my athletes go from "solid competitor" to "podium finisher" — and the single most consistent thread in every one of those transformations is a daily infrared sauna practice. Not ice baths. Not more protein. Not a new pre-workout. Heat therapy, done consistently, with a system that keeps them accountable. This page is the full breakdown of what I've found, why it works, and the exact setup I now recommend to every serious athlete in my program.

What 20 Years of Data Says About Heat Therapy and Your Body

Before I get into the athlete stories — and I'll get to those, because they're the most compelling evidence I have — I want to walk you through the research. Because when I first started recommending infrared saunas to my athletes, I was making a recommendation based mostly on observation and anecdote. Then I found the studies, and the anecdote started making a lot more sense.

The single most important piece of research in this space is the Laukkanen cohort study, conducted out of the University of Eastern Finland. It's not a small study. It tracked 2,315 middle-aged men over a period of 20 years — one of the longest-running observational studies on sauna use ever conducted. The findings are, frankly, staggering if you take a moment to sit with them.

Let me make sure that lands properly. A 63% reduction in fatal cardiovascular events. Not a 10% improvement in some secondary marker. Sixty-three percent. For men who sauna'd 4–7 times per week. The dose-response relationship was clear: two to three sessions per week showed significant benefit, but four or more was where the results became remarkable. Frequency was the key variable, not duration. Sessions of 19 minutes or longer showed greater benefit than shorter sessions, but getting in the sauna consistently outweighed session length in predictive value.

Now — these studies were conducted with traditional Finnish saunas, which operate at temperatures between 175–210°F. Infrared saunas operate at lower ambient temperatures (typically 130–150°F) but heat the body more directly through radiant energy, achieving comparable core temperature elevations at lower air temperatures. The mechanism of benefit is the increase in core body temperature, not the ambient air temperature specifically. Infrared achieves that more efficiently for many users, with the added benefit of being more tolerable for longer sessions and usable without the respiratory discomfort some people experience in traditional high-heat environments.

For athletes specifically, the research on heat therapy gets even more targeted. Here's a summary of what the evidence base looks like as of current literature:

• 1
  Heat shock proteins (HSPs) and muscle preservation. Repeated thermal stress triggers the upregulation of heat shock proteins — molecular chaperones that protect and repair cells damaged during intense exercise. Studies in the Journal of Applied Physiology have shown that heat exposure post-exercise can significantly reduce markers of muscle breakdown and accelerate the shift into anabolic repair phases.
• 2
  Growth hormone response. A study published in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine found that two one-hour sauna sessions per day for seven days increased growth hormone levels by up to 16x baseline in some subjects. More practically relevant for athletes: the heat-induced GH response is an acute effect that supports tissue repair and recovery during the 48-72 hour window after heavy training.
• 3
  Cardiovascular conditioning and VO2 proxies. Regular sauna use has been shown to increase plasma volume, red blood cell count, and improve the cardiovascular adaptations that make sustained high-intensity output possible. In endurance contexts, this is essentially heat training — a lower-impact method of stimulating the same circulatory adaptations as altitude work or repeated tempo intervals.
• 4
  Neurological recovery and sleep quality. The post-sauna drop in core body temperature mimics the natural cooling process the body uses to initiate deep sleep. Multiple studies show that regular sauna users experience improvements in sleep onset latency and time spent in slow-wave (deep) sleep. For athletes, where the majority of physical adaptation occurs during sleep, this is not a minor benefit — it's foundational.
• 5
  Inflammation management. Chronic low-grade inflammation is one of the most underappreciated performance limiters in high-volume athletes. Research on infrared sauna use specifically has shown reductions in inflammatory biomarkers including CRP and IL-6 with consistent use — changes that correlate with reduced joint pain and faster return to full training capacity after heavy blocks.

And here's where red light therapy comes into the picture — because modern infrared saunas like the ones I recommend don't just deliver heat. The Peak Saunas models I use and recommend include a full-body medical-grade red light therapy panel built directly into the unit. This isn't a marketing add-on. Red light therapy at 630–850nm wavelengths has a robust and growing evidence base: photobiomodulation at these wavelengths increases mitochondrial ATP production, reduces oxidative stress, accelerates tendon and soft tissue healing, and has demonstrated meaningful effects on muscle soreness and recovery markers in athlete populations.

The practical upshot for athletes: near-infrared penetrates deep into muscle tissue and stimulates mitochondrial function at the cellular level. Mid-infrared supports cardiovascular response. Far-infrared delivers the core heat elevation that drives most of the systemic benefits documented in the research. And the front-facing red light therapy panel adds photobiomodulation benefits that operate through an entirely different mechanism than heat. You get all four in a single 35-minute session. That's the actual competitive advantage my athletes have been stacking.

These aren't cherry-picked wellness blog statistics. The Laukkanen data is from peer-reviewed, longitudinal human research. The owner survey data is from 10,000+ Peak Sauna customers surveyed at the 90-day mark. Both point in the same direction: consistent, frequent heat therapy produces measurable outcomes. The word "consistent" is doing a lot of work in that sentence — which is exactly why I'll spend considerable time later in this page talking about the system that keeps my athletes showing up 4+ times a week instead of letting their sauna collect dust.

Three Athletes. Three Transformations. One Common Thread.

I'm going to tell you about three people from my gym. These are real athletes — not composites, not exaggerated outcomes. I've tracked their training data, watched their progress, and in two cases, had direct conversations with them about what specifically changed when they added a consistent sauna practice. Here are their stories.

Why Most Home Saunas Become Expensive Coat Racks (And How to Make Sure Yours Doesn't)

Here's a truth I've watched play out with gym equipment over and over again: people buy it motivated, use it consistently for two to four weeks, and then life intervenes. The usage drops. The routine breaks. The thing that was supposed to transform their health ends up as an expensive piece of furniture — or in the case of a sauna, a warm closet they occasionally remember they own. I've seen it happen with bikes, rowers, cable machines, and unfortunately, saunas. And when it happens, the investment isn't just wasted financially. It's wasted in terms of the outcomes the person was hoping to achieve.

Here's the critical insight from the research: the Laukkanen study benefits emerged at 4–7 sessions per week. The dose-response curve is real. Two or three sessions a week is better than nothing — meaningfully better — but the dramatic cardiovascular and cognitive outcomes were observed in the high-frequency users. And the data from Peak Saunas' own customer tracking tells the same story from a different angle: sauna owners who use the Peak Wellness Club (PWC) average 4.2 sessions per week. Sauna owners who don't use it average just 1.8 sessions per week.

Every sauna Peak sells comes with a 60-day free trial of PWC. After the trial period, membership is $49/month and you can cancel any time. I tell my athletes: run the 60-day trial, track your sessions and your performance markers, and then decide whether the cost-benefit makes sense for you. I have never had an athlete who used PWC consistently through the trial come back and say it wasn't worth continuing. The outcomes make the decision obvious.

The broader point I want to make here is this: any sauna can heat a room. The question is whether it heats your body consistently enough, frequently enough, and with enough accountability built in to actually produce the outcomes you bought it for. Peak Saunas is the only brand I'm aware of that treats this as a product responsibility — that goes beyond the hardware and includes a system designed to guarantee you actually use what you paid for. That's not a feature. That's a fundamentally different business model. And for athletes, it's the entire ballgame.

Which Model Is Right for Your Setup?

Every athlete I work with has a different living situation — different square footage, different household size, different electrical setup, different budget. Here's a clear breakdown of the real Peak Saunas lineup so you can find your fit quickly. For most solo athletes on a standard 120V outlet, the Shasta is my default recommendation — it's the full 4-in-1 setup at the entry point for full-spectrum infrared, and it runs on a standard outlet with zero electrical work required.