Ben Greenfield walks through a sauna workout that pairs strength holds and leg raises with a cold shower after. Do two circuits of side planks to failure, front plank to failure, 50 side leg raises each side, and 50 back bridges, then finish with 5 to 10 minutes cold water to boost cardiovascular capacity and capillarization.
Questions this video answers
50 per side (one set of 50 for each side).
50 back bridges (one set).
Approximately 30 minutes (two 15-minute rounds).
About 5–10 minutes.
Hey, what's up, you guys? It's Ben Greenfield. Dripping with sweat right now, on my way home from the gym with my heater on high. Why the heck am I doing this? Well, what I want to do is give you a workout that you can do that's going to really jack up your cardiovascular capacity and your capillarization or your blood flow delivery to muscle so you get more oxygen and nutrients and stuff like that in your tissue.
Now, the way that this works is you go into the sauna at your gym and this is a substitute for one of the other workouts that you might do. And you do a set of four different exercises. Okay? The first exercise is side planks. And what you want to do is hold a side plank on one side for as long as you can and then a side plank on the other side for as long as you can. And these are all exercises that you should be able to do in the average dry heat sauna. Once you've done that, you get into a front plank position and you hold a front plank position for as long as possible. And then you get onto your side and you do side leg raises.
You do one set of 50 side leg raises for one side and one set of 50 side leg raises for the other side. And then you finish up with back bridges where you lie on your back and you do 50 back bridges. Now that's going to take you about 15 minutes. And I do that two times through. So I stay in the sauna for 30 minutes. Now the nice thing is that this particular workout hits a lot of the typical weak spots in the human body. So you're kind of killing two birds with one stone. Now then I get in my car, I turn up the heat on high and I drive home. I am completely covered with sweat when I get home. Now when I get home, all I do is I go hop in the cold shower for five or ten minutes and boom, that's my workout for the day. And that's going to give you just as much cardiovascular benefit as going and kicking your butt on the treadmill for an hour or, you know, hopping on a two hour bike ride. And you know it's something new that you can try. It's just kind of using this underground training tactic of heat and cold to maximize your body's response. So try it out. I hope you like it. And leave a Message over at facebook.com bgfitness if you try it out, let me know your results or you can leave a comment under this video. Alright, time to go home. And get my shower on.
