Infrared Sauna in Maroubra: What It Does and How to Use It

An infrared sauna heats your body directly with radiant heat instead of warming the air around you, so it runs cooler than a traditional sauna while still making you sweat. People use it to relax, loosen stiff joints and recover after training, and the evidence for those uses is reasonable, even if it is younger and thinner than the research on traditional saunas. Here is what an infrared sauna actually does, who it suits, and how we use ours at 6X Training in Maroubra.

What an infrared sauna actually is

A traditional Finnish sauna heats the air to somewhere around 80 to 100 degrees, and that hot air heats you. An infrared sauna works the other way around. Panels emit infrared light that warms your body and skin directly, so the air can sit much lower, usually around 45 to 60 degrees, while you still sweat properly. Most people find the lower air temperature easier to sit in, which is why infrared sessions tend to run a little longer and feel more comfortable for beginners. The sweating is similar. The main practical difference is comfort, not magic.

What the evidence actually supports

Worth being clear here, because the marketing around infrared saunas gets loud. The strongest long-term health research, the studies linking regular sauna use to better heart health, comes mostly from traditional Finnish saunas, not infrared specifically. The infrared research is smaller and newer, so anyone promising you infrared will fix your blood pressure or add years to your life is running ahead of the evidence.

Where the signal is more solid is recovery and how you feel. A 2023 study on post-exercise infrared sauna found that a session after resistance training reduced muscle soreness and helped explosive performance bounce back faster than doing nothing. The likely mechanisms are simple: more blood flow to worked tissue, and the relaxation that comes with sitting in warmth. So the reasonable, evidence-backed reasons to use one are:

• Recovery and soreness. Moderate evidence that it eases muscle soreness and helps you back up after hard training.
• Relaxation and stress. The warmth is calming, and for a lot of people that alone makes it worth it.
• Warming up stiff joints. Handy on a cold morning or before mobility work.

What an infrared sauna does not do is "detox" you or burn fat. Sweat is your body cooling itself, not flushing toxins, and that is your liver and kidneys' job. The weight you drop on the scale after a session is water, and you put it straight back when you rehydrate. That is not a knock on the sauna, it just means you should use it for what it is good at.

Where it fits around your training

Think of the sauna as a recovery tool, not a workout. It is not a substitute for lifting or moving, and it will not out-train your nutrition. Used well, it is something that helps you train more often by taking the edge off soreness and helping you switch off.

A sensible time to use it is after a session or on a rest day. If you have trained hard and you are dehydrated, cool down and get some fluid in before you sit in heat. If your main goal is fat loss, the sauna supports it only indirectly, by helping you recover so you keep showing up. The work still happens in the gym and the kitchen, which is the point we make in our complete guide to fat loss in Sydney. For the fuller picture on sauna, ice baths and contrast therapy, and what the research does and does not support, we go deeper in our guide to recovery in Sydney.

How to use one safely

• Hydrate before and after. You can lose roughly half a litre to a litre of sweat in a session, so drink water going in and coming out.
• Start short. Fifteen minutes is plenty when you are new. Build up to 20 or 30 as you get used to it. Longer is not better.
• Listen to your body. Dizzy, lightheaded or unwell means get out. Never push through it.
• Skip the alcohol. Heat and alcohol are a bad mix for blood pressure and dehydration.
• Check with your GP first if you are pregnant, have a heart condition, or take medication that affects blood pressure or hydration. Older adults should take particular care with heat.

Using the sauna at 6X in Maroubra

Our recovery suite in Maroubra has an infrared sauna alongside an ice bath and compression, and members use it a few different ways: to wind down after a Max8 group session or one-on-one PT, to loosen up on a rest day, or as a standalone reset when training has been heavy. What we have noticed since 2011 is that the people who recover deliberately are usually the ones who train the most consistently, and consistency is what actually changes a body.

As Sydney warms up out of its warmest winter on record and everyone starts adding sessions before summer, recovery is what lets you handle the extra load without falling apart in week three. If you want to build the sauna and ice bath into a proper training and recovery routine in the Eastern Suburbs, that is exactly what our recovery services are set up for.

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