The purpose of training is to improve your physical capabilities in preparation for competition.

By stressing the body via physical work, you force adaption in its capabilities – connective tissues remodel, becoming stronger, more elastic and they have greater resistance to injury. Our capacity for cardiovascular work improves, with a stronger, more efficient heart and improved gaseous exchange in the lungs. We develop more contractile filaments in our muscle tissues, making us stronger.

Psychologically we upgrade too. By working hard in training we improve our confidence, we learn about what we’re capable of and we understand how our bodies react to movements and actions.

In short, training is about developing your competitive advantage, but what if we could add to that, making disproportionate gains from the work we do? How can we reduce the time taken for us to see the rewards from our training?

In this article we’re looking at how infrared technology can enhance the effects of training, taking a look at the science and how it impacts training outcomes.

Obviously training requirements vary from sport to sport, but essentially the training cycle looks like this…

Training – Nutritional Replenishment – Recovery and Physical Adaption

If we could create a shortcut in this process, we could reap the rewards from training sooner. There’s strong evidence that infrared is the key to just that. Research shows that infrared benefits us at the training, recovery and physical adaption stages of the training cycle.

The impacts of this are enormous, because infrared technology allows us to train harder, for longer. In addition it reduces the injury risk and enhances the mechanisms of recovery, including blood flow enhancement, tissue remodelling and sleep quality.

By enhancing training quality and adjusting volume whilst protecting against injury risk, athletes and coaches will be able to make performance and physical gains in a reduced time frame.

A 2018 study compared the improvement in exercise capacity and delayed anaerobic metabolism induced by far-infrared-emitting garments. The subjects in the study wearing the infrared clothing to exercise in performed far better, leading the researchers to conclude that in healthy subjects, exercising with an infrared outfit is associated with an improvement in exercise performance and a delay in anaerobic metabolism. [1]

This evidence helps to outline the case that training in infrared allows for more volume and intensity of training.

There’s evidence of strength training and muscle building also being enhanced by the inclusion of infrared during the training cycle. A 2017 study assessed the impact of infrared on muscle hypertrophy (among other things), and it showed that the inclusion of infrared in the training and recovery process helps to increase the work capacity of skeletal muscle. It also helps to reduce muscle damage and increase muscle mass, recovery, and athletic performance. [2]

We’ve shown some of the evidence suggesting infrared improves physical performance, but the physiological changes occur during the recovery period. By enhancing the depth and quality of recovery, we bring about these changes more quickly. We also remove the negative impacts of higher training volume.

Evidence from a 2015 study investigating the impact of infrared on recovery showed that it helped to improve the recovery rates of subjects who undertook strength and endurance training sessions [3]. This is important because it shows recovery was enhanced in both training approaches, rather than just endurance training for example. This means the technology could be used by competitors from a range of sports.

One of the more debilitating impacts of high intensity training is DOMS – delayed onset muscle soreness. This can temporarily affect the capabilities of muscles and therefore reduce training quality. However, use of infrared clothing is shown to reduce the severity and the time to recover from DOMS, which is important for anyone with an intense training and competition schedule. [4]

Sleep is the bedrock of recovery, so if you improve sleep you enhance all of the additional factors of recovery. High quality sleep will normalise endocrine levels, help with neural adaption to training and also enable the musculoskeletal adaptions to take place. A 2017 study showed that CrossFit athletes who slept using infrared-containing bed sheets slept better and required fewer naps across the course of the study. [5] By wearing infrared clothing to bed you could recreate the same results.

We’ve shown here that infrared improves the most important phases of the training cycle – the work capacity and recovery quality. By adding infrared technology into your training and recovery regimen, you’ll stand to make disproportionate physical improvements. You’ll be able to train harder for longer and recover more deeply. You’ll also likely miss fewer training sessions through injury.

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