Ask any Personal Trainer or ‘fitness Guru’ and they’ll stress the importance of ‘warming-up before working out’. In part that’s to do with stretching and loosening muscles. But it’s also to do with exercising within an ambience of warmth, both for general exercise and when recovering from injury. If you’re working-out or recovering from physical trauma Infra-Red (IR) heating can provide several huge benefits.
Heat Your Body, Not The Space, Push Harder More Quickly
In the first place IR directly heats your person – you don’t waste time and expensive heating energy warming-up a whole room before you start. Simply target your IR heater at your workout mat or gym equipment and your body feels the heat immediately. That means you can get into the ‘hard yards’ more quickly, more comfortably.
Create Your Own ‘Hot Yoga’ Experience
More and more professional Hot Yoga professionals are turning to IR heating as the most efficient and cost-effective way of dialling-up the warmth – watch the video and you’ll see how an IR driven Hot Yoga Studio looks, with an IR panel situated above each mat. The really clever thing here is that the panels can be turned on individually, so they just heat the student below, not the entire room, focussing heat whilst saving money.
If you want to create your own Hot Yoga experience/space at home nothing could be simpler. Given that the cost of most Hot Yoga classes is around £15 per session you can cover your costs and be saving money within a few weeks at the most.
A Multi-Purpose Work-Out Space
Obviously installing an IR panel heater above your workout space makes it equally ideal for Pilates, stretching, dumb bell, kettle-bell or Swiss Ball sessions too – especially during the colder months. And if you’re into static exercise bikes or Peloton simply position yourself underneath.
Other Benefits Of IR For Exercise
There are a range of other benefits for introducing IR heat into your routine or practice:
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Improved flexibility: IR heat helps your muscles relax and allows you to stretch more deeply.
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Remove toxins: IR heat encourages increased sweating, which helps your body detoxify through the skin.
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Healthy breathing: IR heating helps respiratory health and helps maintain a consistent humidity level.
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Burning calories: Combining physical exercise and increased heat can aid weight loss by increasing metabolism.
Benefits Of Heat For Soft Tissue And Joint Injury Rehab
The application of heat as a therapy isn’t exactly new – the earliest known use was by the Egyptian physician Imhotep around 2,655 BCE! Heat is particularly useful in increasing blood flow to an injured area, delivering more oxygen and nutrients which can relieve pain and stiffness and promote tissue healing. With joint pain improved circulation enables better, less painful, movement.
The challenge has always been how best to actually deliver heat. Part of the problem is that if you take a hot bath or put a heat pack or warm compress topically onto the site of pain, it eventually cools down. In comparison IR heat is controllable ‘always-on’ consistent heat. In fact it’s just like sitting in the sunshine – and from the ancient Greeks and Romans onward, sunlight was believed to have great healing properties.
How Much Power Do You Need And How To Handle The Installation
If you want to create your own Hot Yoga space of about 2m x 3m and plan to install a panel on the ceiling you probably need the help of an electrician and a IR panel sized 100cm x 80cm delivering 800w of power and costing around 20p per hour to run. If you’re into Bhikram Yoga and want it hotter still then bigger panels are available. Panels work on a smart wi-fi basis and come with a remote control.
Alternatively IR panels can be simply hung on a wall on a ‘plug-and-play’ basis near a standard 3 pin socket. They can also be supplied with feet so they can be moved around to wherever you choose to exercise.
