After testing over 30 saunas and hearing from thousands of users in the Certified Sauna Community, here’s the real answer to how often you should sauna—and how to stay consistent without burning out. I share my personal weekly routine, how I fit sauna and workouts into a busy schedule, and what I’ve learned about consistency over perfection.
If you’re trying to make sauna use a sustainable habit, this one’s for you.
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Transcript
There’s a noticeable difference from an accumulation of this. You don’t have to do it every single day, but a few times a week, if you can just work that in, in six months from now, your health will be noticeably different. Just your personal experience with the importance of finding the balance when you’re doing sauna sessions, health, like working out, all of that.
I feel like people go really hard and then they end up burning out. Can you kind of like talk about like maybe your own personal experience with that? Yeah, I don’t always sauna every day. I mean, I’ll go through phases.
I would say my situation’s a little bit different because like if we’re doing this type of stuff where there’s people here, we’re filming, or maybe another day I do a sauna demo. I mean, I’ve been doing sauna demos for years. I just don’t advertise it because I don’t want people coming like it’s a retail establishment, it’s appointment only.
But those things affect my personal routine a little bit because if we’ve done this all day, or for instance, if I’m having to be sweating and we’re filming, or if I’m doing something with other people and I’ve kind of already allocated two hours of my day and I’ve been in the thing, the last thing I want to do that night is get in the sucker again, but that’s me.
Other times, I feel like I need it and it’s like a sanctuary where it’s like, no, I do want to retreat to my own sauna and have like my own private downtime. A lot of it is what you pair it with or how you view it, what you believe that this is to be used for.
For me, I like the relaxation of it. I like the, I don’t want to say solitude, but most of the time, no one’s coming in here with me. So even if we’re doing some of these things during the day, if I feel like I haven’t had enough sessions that week, I will retreat to the sauna in the evening, even though we’ve spent.
multiple hours just because it’s relaxing and feels good to me and I always feel better the next day because I sleep better if I do this at night. But the long and the short of it is I aim for three sauna sessions a week for myself. If I feel like saunaing every day or multiple times a day, that’s fine.
But if you were to take six months and look at my overall sauna usage, my real goal is to just sauna three or four times a week. And so as long as I can hit that three number, I’m pretty happy. I’m very similar with workout. I work out with the guys Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 5.30 p.m.
And then I’m also, if I’m really on my game, I’m walking twice a day, minimum of 20 minutes each time. So if you look up the research for, oh, who was that? I think it was Stan Efferting, the rhino, that made it popular. But if you look up research for 10-minute walks post-meal, more effective than metformin at controlling, I believe, its glucose response and the timeline on that to normalize, regardless of the food that you ate.
And so I try to implement some of those types of … I could be butchering that, by the way. I’m not an expert in metabolic science, by any means. But you get the idea and you can look it up and check out the studies yourself and you’ll find the evidence.
What I found is that doing these mainstays, to me these are mainstays, as long as I work out three times a week, I sauna three times a week, and then I’m doing walks. And I miss the walk sometimes. Like today, I got up early to do a walk this morning.
I had a Zoom call before our session today. And I may or may not have time to do it tonight, and I have a flight tomorrow. So some of it will get butchered. But if I just get 70 or 80% of it in each week, it seems to make a huge difference for me.
You’ll also notice the same changes for people in the sauna group. Some of them get crazy. Some people want to sauna two times a day for like 40 minutes to an hour each. No problem with that, as long as you feel good.
feel good and you can stay hydrated. And some people in the sauna group claim that that has eliminated all signs of depression for them, some other ailments, helps them with pain, arthritis, things like that. I would just say that every single person is different. If you were to try to replicate that schedule or even my schedule for some people, it’s too taxing for them or they don’t jive with it.
It’s just not the right fit or compliment to their lifestyle. And it’s a case of, you know, do what you can. Some sauna is always better than no sauna. You know, the benefits of heat therapy are great, but you actually have to do the heat therapy to get them.
The consistency is what has really made a difference. I am. More than like going through the reps, being like, okay, I did it, you know, 10 times last week. I’m gonna keep doing it 10 times.
I feel like just consistently using it when you can, when you have time for it. Very much. And become like your home for stuff. So like, even in the routine of working out, it seems like you’re just trying to stay generally within a like consistent realm of stuff.
Is there anything that you do to try to keep yourself consistent with that? Yeah, if I’m slacking one week or like I can do makeup sessions to get myself back on track. I might do two or three days where I sauna every single day because the rest of the week is butchered or like tomorrow I’m traveling or like yesterday I was running late, missed part of my workout.
You know, life gets in the way sometimes. You just have to figure out a way to work it in. And I think having a positive association to it, like I view it as, well, I know for a fact that I sleep better if I sauna at night. And this just absolutely destroys other people.
They say, oh, I sauna at night and I can never go to bed. I’m just amped up. I don’t know what their association to using the sauna is either. To me, it’s like my time, it’s a relaxing time.
It’s a very positive experience. I always feel more grounded. I don’t know, it chills out my nervous system.
And part of that could just be my intention, my belief structure on using it, or how I spend the time when I’m in here. Like, I’m not in here on my phone watching some stuff that’s really going to spike my nervous system or things like that. To me, it’s a relaxation time.
I’ll put a meditation track on the stereo. I have a particular CD that I like that has, not binaural beats, but certain types of relaxation frequencies, meditation tracks, and things like that. And then I kind of just get lost in that time, let my body do its thing, let the heat therapy, let the far infrared do its thing, and just kind of de-stress from the day, prep for sleep, and I always sleep better every single time.
And so, the next day, I’m less brain fog, mentally sharp. You know, my thinking is, there’s a noticeable difference from an accumulation of this. You don’t have to do it every single day, but a few times a week. If you can just work that in, in six months from now, your health will be noticeably different.
So if there’s something that you like from today’s video, or you’re looking for more resources, at CertifiedSaunas.com, on the homepage, there’s recommended sauna resources. So if you’re looking for a brand, a size, a model, reviews, installation videos on how to put them together, we have step-by-step tutorials that show you how to receive a sauna, how to prep your house for it.
We’re trying to make it as easy as possible for you, so you don’t have to wade through four hours of YouTube video to find the exact thing that you’re looking for. But a lot of times in these episodes, I’ll mention sauna hats, sauna accessories, different types of electrolyte supplements.
If you want to put an infrared sauna in a cold basement or unheated garage, there’s accessories or additional supplemental heat that you can add to it. If you continue down, you’ll find everything that you’re looking for that we’ve mentioned today. In addition to CertifiedSaunas.com, you can go to the Facebook group, which is a certified sauna community on Facebook.
It’s our sauna group. There’s no hardcore pitching. There’s thousands of members in there that offer really, really, really good advice. I learn from them every day.
I’m also contributing and answering questions in there every day. In addition to that, you can go to the Amazon store.
Or a lot of people have requested on where to buy sauna towels, sauna hats, different various supplements, minerals, electrolytes. Now we have all this in one place on various lists on this Amazon store, so you can go to this one link and everything will be right there for you.
See you in the next video.