Recovery with IR sauna: Vetle Sjåstad Christiansen
Biathlon ace Vetle Sjåstad Christiansen grew up with a sauna at home in Geilo and actively used it in his recovery work. When he moved to Oslo, an IR SaunaPod Maxi from Radiant Health became his salvation.
– I've always loved saunas and was disappointed that I didn't have one in my apartment in Oslo. So, I wished for a sauna for Christmas last year, which I received from my grandmother.
He was surprised by how effective and hot the sauna tent was.
– It's exactly the same as having your whole body inside a blazing hot traditional Finnish sauna. It's fascinating. I didn't think I'd break a sweat with my head outside, but there's no difference. You sweat quite a lot.
Recovery and rest – often more important than the training itself
Vetle can look back on a dream season in 2021/22, with five individual podium finishes and two World Cup victories. The season peaked when he secured Olympic gold for Norway in the biathlon relay in Beijing.
To perform at his best, he believes that recovery and rest are just as important, and often more important, than the training itself. Sauna is a tool he uses to make recovery more efficient and shorten recovery time.
– With over 25 hours of training a week at most, it's absolutely necessary to be great at recovery to perform optimally. It's easy for many to train the same way, but what's perhaps difficult is having the patience, and daring, to recover well enough and let the body work with the training.
It's not necessarily how much you train that differentiates between becoming the best and failing to become the best, but how good you are at relaxing and recovering. It's about gaining surplus energy and getting into the positive.
– When we train, we accumulate a lot of lactate in our legs and arms. Skiing is a full-body sport. We use every single gram of muscle we have in our body and get a lot of lactic acid. This is where the sauna comes in.
Active and passive recovery
With the sauna, you get both active and passive recovery at the same time.
– You rest while circulation increases and more oxygen reaches the muscles. Lactic acid occurs when muscles don't get enough oxygen, and the muscles become "sore."
Sauna significantly increases blood circulation, delivers more oxygen to sore muscles, and can help break down lactic acid, thereby shortening and improving recovery time.
– With how much we train, it's important to be ready for a new session already in the afternoon, and the next day. It never ends. Elite athletes are the extreme part of society when it comes to working towards goals and considering consequences. Nothing is left to chance.
Efficient daily life and portable solutions
– Is making daily life more efficient something you think about a lot?
– Oh, we think about it almost every minute of the day. We are very, very meticulous that everything should be as efficient as possible. We want to spend as little energy as possible on non-sporting things, and recovery should go as smoothly as possible.
Even trips to the grocery store are carefully planned.
– For example, when we're in the car, we do our shopping on the way home from training so we don't have to make an extra trip and spend those extra minutes. That way, we get more time to either train or recover. When we travel, we don't show up at the airport until we absolutely have to.
Everything is in the details, which is also why he often chooses portable solutions for warmth and recovery in a busy daily life.
Looking forward to the journey with Vetle
When Siw Hansson Kaulbach, the founder of Radiant Health, heard that Vetle was an avid sauna enthusiast, she contacted him.
– I think it's so cool that my infrared products will contribute to optimizing Vetle's training and competition routine, she says.
– With so many travel days, competitions, and training camps abroad, the portable infrared saunas are perfect to take along on trips as well. I'm incredibly excited about this journey with Vetle.
Text: Trine Dahlman
