The sports world is increasingly using red light therapy. Infrared light has many advantages for athletes. But which one exactly, and how can you as an athlete make optimal use of it? We'll discuss it below!
What is red light therapy?
Red light therapy is, as the name suggests, a form of therapy that uses infrared light. Infrared light creates heat, which stimulates the energy production of your cells.
This in turn provides many health benefits that athletes can benefit from, such as better sleep, faster muscle recovery and greater endurance.
Infrared light and sleep
Whether you're an athlete or not, you need a good night's sleep to perform. After all, when you are in dreamland, your body has time to restore all the systems you need during the day. The immune system, endocrine system (takes care of your hormone balance) and nervous system are examples of this.
The longer and better you sleep, the better these systems can be restored and the better rested you are. However, sleeping well and long is often easier said than done. However, there are some things that can help with this, namely: exercise and red light therapy.
You probably already knew that exercising during the day ensures a better and longer night's sleep. However, if you exercise too intensively, you can suffer from overtraining syndrome, which, in addition to your sleep quality, also reduces your mood and hormone production.
Infrared reduces the risk of overtraining syndrome and improves sleep
As athletes continue to push their limits, the sports world has been looking for a way to exercise very intensively without suffering from overtraining syndrome and its disadvantages. Experts quickly discovered the benefits of infrared for avoiding overtraining syndrome and improving sleep.
Research, in which a group of Chinese basketball players were used as test subjects, shows that red light stimulates the secretion of melatonin (the sleep-inducing hormone) and therefore a better night's sleep. This research also shows that the positive effects of infrared on your sleep are greatest if you use infrared therapy in the evening.
Red light therapy against sleep inertia
Anyone who gets up early to exercise can also use red light therapy in the morning. In the early hours, infrared ensures that you suffer less from sleep inertia.
The latter is the name for the condition in which certain parts of your brain are still 'asleep'.
If you wake up in the middle of the night, it's nice to have sleep inertia because it helps you fall asleep straight away. However, if you want to exercise, it's a completely different story; sleep inertia then ensures that you are less alert and perform weaker in sports.
However, you now know how to counter that; use infrared therapy for your workout!
Red light therapy and sports performance
You already know that infrared helps you get a better night's sleep and prevents drowsiness in the early hours. However, that's not all infrared can do for athletes.
Research also reveals promising and exciting results in other areas. For example, research shows that the endurance of athletes who use red light therapy increases three times faster than that of athletes who do not.
In addition, research also shows that athletes who do infrared therapy have a higher resistance to fatigue, in other words they can go deeper during intense and prolonged efforts.
From these same studies we can also gain important information about when you should use infrared light to optimally improve your performance.
Is your goal to become more powerful? Then it is best to do red light therapy before your strength training. Do you want to train your endurance? Then it is a good idea to lie under an infrared sauna blanket or infrared lamp both before and after your workout.
We can already hear you thinking: “how long does that have to be done each time?”. The answer to that question is: no longer than 20 minutes.
Infrared and muscle recovery
Red light therapy could help your muscles recover faster, although there is some debate about this. According to some studies infrared therapy can shorten the time during which your muscles are stiff and sore after training.
Other studies find less positive results and require more research on this subject before we can say that infrared significantly affects your muscle recovery.
In any case, infrared is never detrimental to muscle recovery and therefore the following applies: if it does not help, then it does not cause any harm.
We are also certain that infrared therapy positively influences the quality of your sleep and that sleep in turn ensures fast and good muscle recovery. If infrared does not directly simulate muscle recovery, it does so indirectly by improving your night's sleep.
Conclusion
Infrared therapy is an excellent way to improve sports performance. By using it, an athlete can experience benefits in terms of sleep, sports performance and possibly muscle recovery.
