For athletes, maximizing performance is essential. Your team, your coach, and your fans count on you to be at your best, which means minimizing injuries and increasing endurance. As an athlete, you know that there are three phases to any athletic routine that helps you to mentally focus and keep your muscles in peak condition: pre-workout warm up, physical training, and post-training recovery.
Luckily for athletes everywhere, there is an easy solution to maximize the physical return of all three with hot tub hydrotherapy.
With the athletic hot tubs available at Master Spas, you can be at the top of your game with every movement.
In this blog post, we will go into exactly what hydrotherapy is as well as the specific benefits of soaking in a Master Spa hot tub before and after training.
What is Hydrotherapy, specifically in Hot Tubs?
Hydrotherapy has been around for hundreds of years and has been medically proven to treat both injuries and illnesses. It involves using warm or cold water with the force of pressurized jets to ease pain, increase circulation and inflammation, increase range of movement, and even lower stress and aid in better sleep.
Water is naturally buoyant, meaning that things submerged in water tend to float due to there being less gravitational force weighing them down. This is especially beneficial to athletes as it reduces strain on muscles and allows them to release tension and relax. The warm water combined with pressurized jets also massage muscles, increasing blood flow which aids in both preparing for strenuous activity as well as recovery.
Benefits of Hot Tub Therapy for Athletes
Decreased Muscle Soreness
All athletes have experienced pain and muscle soreness after particularly brutal training sessions. If left without the proper time and techniques to recover, this soreness can negatively impact performance. That is why it is essential to allow your muscles to recover in the right way.
However, athletes rarely have the time to do this as full recovery can take multiple days. By using hot tub hydrotherapy, though, you can increase the rate of muscle recovery. Anaerobic exercise leads to lactic acid build up, which increases muscle fatigue.
Submerging muscles in warm water allows this lactic acid to dissipate at a quicker rate than it would otherwise. In addition, the buoyancy of water reduces strain on muscles while jets massage tension away, allowing them to relax and recover peacefully.
Decreased Joint Soreness
Many athletes suffer from joint pain due to repetitive motions and constant strain. This can lead to prolonged medical issues such as arthritis and preventable injuries. Similar to muscle soreness, joint pain can be alleviated with hot tub hydrotherapy as warm water increases blood flow and water buoyancy reduces joint pressure and pain. This minimizes the risk of prolonged injuries.
Increased Performance
When you need to get your body moving at peak performance with optimal endurance, you need your blood to flow quickly and efficiently. Blood is the powerhouse of the body; it is what delivers nutrients that keep us moving when we need to push ourselves and allows us to recover quickly. This is why enhancing blood circulation with the use of warm water and massaging jets is essential to both pre-workout enhancement and post-workout recovery.
Injury Recovery
Unfortunately, sometimes injuries are unavoidable. Whether it’s an accident that occurred off the field or a sprain from pushing yourself too hard on the field, injuries happen, and they can bench you for the rest of the season.
Hot tub therapy has been recommended by medical professionals for hundreds of years to ease both pain and increase recovery time. At the risk of sounding repetitive, water buoyancy, water temperature, and massaging jets are proven to quicken injury recovery by increasing blood circulation and reducing tension pain. This allows sprains and other injuries to recover comfortably and heal quickly.
Tips to Using Hydrotherapy for Athletes
While hydrotherapy has many benefits for athletes, you should use it strategically to maximize its power. Soaking in a hot tub infrequently or at random times will lead to inconsistent performance.
Instead, soak in a hot tub before both on-season and off-season workouts to increase circulation and nutrients to muscles.
Accompany this with a proper stretching and warm up routine. Then, dip into the hot tub as your post-workout cool down to relax muscles, reduce lactic acid, and to receive better sleep that will prepare you for the next day’s activity. Doing this in both the on-season and off-season will allow you to get the most out of your training.
Also, use a hot tub as much as possible when injured and move the offending joint or muscle without inflicting pain. This gives you the freedom to retrain the appendage comfortably.
Hot Tub Use Overall
At every stage of training, hot tub hydrotherapy is an essential component of every athlete’s routine, and Master Spas has just the tools to optimize your performance that can be found at The Hot Tub Store in Rochester Hills.
As a premium supplier of both recreational and athletic grade spas, including the Michael Phelps Legend Hot Tub specifically designed to increase recovery time and enhance athletic performance, we make it our priority to provide high-quality hot tubs and swim spas that meet the demands of every individual. Enhance your natural athletic ability with Master Spas products available to you at our Hot Tub Store in Michigan!