Sauna and Exercise for Cold Relief and Prevention: A Complete Guide

Because people use it straight after training, while they are still changed and before they shower and leave. A sauna that is a short walk from the training floor gets used; one on another floor is often skipped. In hotels, clubs and villas the sauna is usually placed between the changing room and the gym, with the showers on the route.

This page is about the room: where it goes, how big it is, what heats it, how it breathes and how it is looked after. It does not make claims about what a sauna does for the body. Anyone with a medical condition should ask their own doctor before using a sauna.

On the route from the training floor to the changing room, with a shower before the sauna door. That order keeps sweat and chalk out of the cabin, keeps the benches cleaner and shortens the walk. A rest area with seating and drinking water close to the sauna door completes the sequence.

• Gym or training room, then showers, then sauna, then rest area.
• A floor drain in the shower and rest zone, not inside a dry sauna cabin.
• Non-slip floor finishes on the wet route.
• A clear door swing outward from the cabin.

Size it from the busiest hour, not from the floor plan. Count the people you expect after the most popular classes, allow bench length per person, then add the heater guard zone and the door swing. A home training room is usually served by a two- to four-person cabin; a commercial gym is sized from its peak attendance.

Bench layout, tier heights and the clear space above the top bench are covered in our guide to sauna bench height, and room sizing for gyms in our page on gym saunas.

Source: Sauna Dekor approved design values (Finnish sauna 80–100 °C, bio sauna 50–65 °C, infrared cabin air 45–60 °C).

From the corrected cabin volume. Harvia gives an average of about 1 kW of heater power per cubic metre of room volume, and adds about 1.2 m³ for every square metre of uninsulated glass, stone or concrete surface. The result is a minimum; the chosen heater's published volume range must contain the corrected volume. In a gym, where the door opens often, a heater at the upper end of its band holds temperature better.

The heater, its control panel and their certificates come from the heater manufacturer, such as EOS or Harvia. We size, install and commission them. More detail is in our guide to sauna heater sizing.

Fresh air in low near the heater and air out on the far side, so the cabin is refreshed during use and dries out afterwards. The heater needs its own circuit sized to its rating, installed by a licensed electrician to the local rules; IEC 60364-7-703 covers rooms and cabins containing sauna heaters. In a gym, the cabin's extract is planned with the building's ventilation so the changing rooms do not draw warm, moist air.

Most users finish their training, cool down, shower and drink water before going into the sauna, then rest between rounds. Session length and number of rounds are personal choices; many gyms display simple house rules at the door, such as showering first, sitting on a towel and leaving the cabin if they feel unwell. Our sauna rules page lists common ones.

• Shower before entering.
• Sit or lie on a towel.
• Drink water before and after.
• Leave the cabin and cool down if you feel unwell.

Yes. A cold shower, a shock bucket or a cold plunge pool next to the sauna lets guests cool down between rounds. We build cold plunge pools for water temperatures from 2 to 15 °C, with the chiller, filtration and drainage sized with the shell. See our cold plunge pool and shock bucket pages.

Daily: wipe and air the benches, check the heater guard and the door, empty and refill a bio sauna reservoir. Weekly: clean the floor and the bench undersides. Periodically: check and rearrange the heater stones and replace cracked ones, and have the heater and control serviced as the manufacturer specifies. Heavy-use benches are made removable so they can be cleaned and dried.

Sauna Dekor Spa Solutions designs, manufactures and installs saunas, steam rooms and cold plunge pools for gyms, hotel fitness floors, sports clubs and private homes. The cabins are built in our own facility in İkitelli OSB, Istanbul, where we have manufactured since 1987, and installed by our own teams. See gym sauna, steam room and plunge pool packages.