5 Best Tools For The Ultimate Home Wellness And Exercise Recovery Setup

BodyMindGear

25 Jul

With a huge shift in people doing fitness and recovery at home in the COVID environment where making it to gyms and wellness centres is not possible, it is important to know your options. There are many ways to take exercise recovery, performance and wellness home with you and we have tried and tested no shortage of home sauna, home red light therapy, home ice bath, home float tank and home compression technologies.

The benefit of taking your exercise recovery, injury recovery or wellness regimen home with the best gear is that it ends up saving you time and money in the long run. The average gym and wellness membership costs over $200/month for limited use.

Why not put that towards your very own gear that you can have at home to use as you please without the crowds. Gone are the days of just cramming in training without rest and recovery. The science was ‘in’ long ago that effective recovery plays a crucial role in performance, injury prevention, sleep, stress levels and libido.

Giving your body sufficient time to recover helps replenish energy, repair damaged muscle tissues, treat inflammation and increase your strength and endurance. This is why rest and recovery are an indispensable part of an effective fitness routine.

Below we have 5 best tool for the ultimate home training recovery and wellness set-up in 2021 to bulletproof the body and mind from your own home.

Best Infrared Sauna For Home Recovery 2021

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If we were to pick any bit of equipment to have in our ultimate home gym or at home recovery set-up it would be an infrared sauna.

Sauna bathing is a form of whole-body thermotherapy that has been used in various forms for thousands of years in many parts of the world for hygiene, health, social, and spiritual purposes.

The studies on this fantastic piece of recovery gold, being heat exposure, are endless and we have touched on them in depth in previous articles of ours.

Most of you already know the amazing benefits of both traditional and infrared saunas for performance, sleep, pain, muscle recovery, healthier skin and detoxification and most of our readers have spent a good amount of time sweating it out in one at their local gym or wellness centre.

Since they are mostly off limits during COVID, we decided we need to up our at home recovery and wellness set-up and an infrared sauna was the first thing we got on board.

There are so many options but they are not all created equal. We have tried and tested over 10 different sauna setups and they range in price, construction quality, light spectrum (far/near infrared), warranty and design.

The best infrared sauna we have come across for home is the 1 or 2 person sauna range from Clearlight® Infrared Sauna.

Why did we choose The Clearlight® Sauna out of all of the options?

It is made from beautiful cedar which has withstood some heavy use from us as well as a lifetime warranty for residential use
Clearlight® Sauna has Australia wide delivery
They offer Australia wide installation services available
They include the most effective Infrared Heating Technology
Superior Full Spectrum Technology
Lowest EMF & ELF on the market
Medical Grade Chromotherapy
They offer an optional upgrade of Vibrational Resonance Therapy

We understand a full sized infrared sauna can be a little out of reach in price for many. Another cost and space effective infrared sauna option we have reviewed in depth is the HigherDOSE Infrared Sauna Blanket.

We were sceptical when we first saw these but we have since been blown away by how well it works and it is essentially like a sleeping bag that you climb into and zip up that works with the exact same principles and effects as a full sized infrared sauna for a fraction of the cost. The best Australian Infrared Sauna blanket we have come across is this one by MiHigh which we have not yet reviewed.

Zen Float Tank For Home Recovery

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Float therapy or sensory deprivation tanks are a well studied approach to exercise recovery, anxiety and stress management, mindfulness and pain reduction. We have taken a deep dive into float therapy in some of our previous content and we continue to thoroughly recommend it to our readers.

The truth is, float therapy can be an expensive practice for exercise recovery when doing it regularly at a wellness space. That’s why it is yet another practice that we have taken home with us for our ultimate home recovery set-up. There are not a whole lot of options for float tanks at home.

Zen Float Tank is by far the best and most affordable float tank that fits perfectly in a spare room or garage. We have one of these in the corner of our garage along with our Jacuzzi Infrared Sauna, the absolute dream combo really. The gold standard for recovery is 40 minute float in the Zen Tank followed by 40 minute sweat in the Jacuzzi (or vica versa), while the partner does the opposite. It will seriously be the best sleep you have ever had!

Best Massage Gun For Home Australia - Blackroll Fascia Gun

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We have tried and tested over 50 different bits of recovery and wellness gear and gadgets (and counting) in the name of optimising your body and mind.

We know the value of percussion therapy for recovery so a portion of our gear testing tally has been spent testing massage guns and we are always thrilled to support a homegrown quality Australian product when we find one.

We have been lucky enough to be blessed with our very own Blackroll Fascia Gun to use at home and on-the-go. Initially, we had our reservations about a product that currently sits at less than half the price of the top of the line massage guns on the market like the Theragun Pro. What the Blackroll Fascia gun proves to us is that you can have an all round high performing massage gun without breaking the bank - perfect for self-myofascial release at home.

Best Portable Inflatable Ice Bath

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Cold therapy, cold immersion and ice bathing has been made popular in modern times by the eccentric “ice man” that is Wim Hof. In fact, the RG team met at a Wim Hof Breathing Workshop in Sydney back in 2010 long before we decided to pool our wellness and recovery journeys together to create this site. Cold therapy has a bulk of scientific studies to support its efficacy in helping to aid recovery and reduce weight among many other benefits which we have discussed in some of our other content.

Initially, when we started practicing ice bathing at home after training, we all admitted to using the recycling bins at home, emptying them out of all the cardboard and filling them with water and 4 bags of ice from the service station. This is a pretty effective ice bath option for home to be honest. But for something a little more purpose built to have as a specific cold therapy tub we have this Portable Plastic Bathtub from Amazon. We have the Large which is a perfect size freestanding tub for 1 person that is super easy to fill and empty with a tap fitting attached as well as a foot pump for inflation.

Best Compression Boots For Recovery At Home - Endurance Relax

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We love recovery that we can combine with other things like journalling, reading, meditating or just watching TV, whatever floats your boat really.

Whether you’re an elite athlete or a weekend warrior in the gym, there’s mornings when you roll out of bed and feel every muscle. Your body cringes at the thought of putting your shoes on for another session. Traditionally we would have approached this with plenty of time on the foam roller, combined with targeted massage gun therapy and some massage if we were really hurting.

Science tells us that compression technology, like the Pulse Technology in the Normatec boots, effectively mimics the muscle pump of the legs and arms, enhancing the movement of fluid and metabolites out of the limbs after an intense workout.

Although they are costly, we are here talking about the “Ultimate” home muscle recovery and wellness setup so it wouldn't really be complete without the Endurance Relax Compression boots if we are being honest, but you can check the price here.

Expect your training partners to constantly be at your house trying to use your setup. Seriously, we know our fair share about recovery and the difference in recovery time using the boots compared to passive recovery is insane.

Although we generally employ a very broad spectrum of recovery methodologies, we tested out the boots in isolation. Using the Normatec Pulse 2.0 compression boots in isolation for recovery, we collectively recorded an average of a 48 hour improvement in returning to a state of full, pain-free readiness to train following a set 10km run.

This is not a scientific study but it is a noticeable, unmistakable fast tracking of muscle recovery if we have ever come across one and the best part is, you can use them in your own home.

Conclusion

Particularly during these times of lockdowns, social distancing and COVID in general, it is more important than ever to remain active and recover well. We can do this by taking some of our favourite wellness and recovery methods home to create the ultimate home recovery setup.

These 5 must-haves are 5 practices that we have used and studied extensively, finding significant benefits for our performance in races and training, positive impacts on sleep, mental state, wellbeing, stress, pain and recovery speed. These are essentially all habits and wellness practices that we have decided we can’t live without and are worth spending the money on to set up at home - we urge you to do the same!