10 Benefits of Steam Room After Workout (2025 Updated)

It’s often said that ‘no pain, no gain,’ and this certainly holds true when it comes to exercise. Physical exertion can result in micro-tears in your muscle fibers, a burning sensation, an elevated heart rate, and sometimes inflammation—especially if you’re new to working out. It’s not unusual for beginners to feel soreness the next morning.

However, don’t let this discourage you. In fact, these symptoms are excellent reasons to do more than just shower after your fitness session—consider incorporating time in the steam room. Curious about its benefits? Keep reading to learn how a steam room can support your post-workout recovery, along with tips on proper usage and other essential considerations.

Why Use A Steam Room For Post-Workout Recovery?

Using steam rooms after a workout has many health benefits, from muscle recovery to detoxification. Muscle recovery is a necessary phase that your body undergoes after a workout session. It can be painful at times, but you can help your body during this stage by taking post-workout supplements or using a steam room. Let’s take a closer look. 

10 Benefits of Steam Room After Workout

The soothing combination of heat and humidity helps reduce muscle tension, improve circulation, and deliver a range of other wellness perks. Below, we’ll explore ten key benefits of adding a steam room session to your post-exercise routine.

1. Detoxifies the Skin

One of the benefits of a steam room after a workout is detoxifying the skin. The heat and humidity help open pores, releasing sweat and toxins, such as impurities, dirt, and oil build-up from exercise. In addition to cleansing, steam rooms also make you feel refreshed. 

2. Improves Circulation

Heading to a sauna or steam room before or after a workout also helps promote circulation. The heat, humidity, and everything in the steam room dilates your blood vessels to enhance blood flow throughout your body. Each time blood flow improves, this helps reduce inflammation, speed up your post-workout recovery, and distribute more oxygen-rich nutrients to your body parts. 

3. Helps You Breathe Better

Some people find it hard to breathe normally after a workout session. If you do, you might want to spend a couple of minutes inside the steam room or sauna. Its heat and humidity help open up your cardiorespiratory pathways, allowing your breathing to return to normal after rapid breathing during the workout. The increased airflow also helps reduce congestion and makes breathing easier. 

4. Soothes Muscle Soreness

Muscle recovery is one of the greatest benefits of the steam room after a workout. Relaxing in a sauna or steam room after a workout relieves you of muscle soreness felt from the exercise. Thus, this makes a steam room also a fantastic way to de-stress and calm the mind. 

5. Promotes Weight Loss

According to the Indian Journal of Medical Biochemistry, getting into post-workout recovery sessions, such as steam and sauna, helps with weight loss. Know right now that they are not false claims but real. The heat from steam rooms helps reduce stress levels. Once stress levels are lessened, you won’t yield to overeating or poor eating habits. Therefore, helping you achieve the proper weight for your body. 

Also, the steam room’s humidity encourages sweating, which leads to water loss and calorie burning.  

6. Loosens Stiff Joints

It’s difficult to drive home from the gym if your joints are painful from the workout. That said, it’s always a wise decision to use the steam room. Steam helps loosen stiff joints as part of its post-workout recovery benefits, thus increasing flexibility, similar to a warm-up. A study published on PubMed Central revealed that the application of moist heat to joints offers healing benefits. A steam room provides moist heat. 

7. Helps Prevents Cardiovascular Diseases

Spending some time in the sauna or steam room before or after your workout can help prevent heart disease. The last thing you want to happen while working out is to pass out because you feel pain around your heart’s area. 

Studies show that these post-workout sessions prevent the onset of illnesses—for instance, the common cold, which may lead to difficulty breathing—because the body reacts to heat and humidity in the same manner it does during moderate exercise. The intense heat and steam stimulate heart activity, exercising your cardiac muscles without exhausting them too much. Therefore, your heart becomes stronger. 

8. Relieves Pressure from Sinus Cavity

Do you feel your sinuses and nasal passages getting clogged during a workout? That’s normal, but there’s a way for you to address this: through a steam bath. Intense workouts may cause the mucus membranes in your nose to become inflamed and irritated, resulting in heavy congestion and sinus pressure. 

Just as inhaling steam helps those suffering from colds, the moist environment in steam rooms helps loosen mucus clogging your sinuses and nasal passages. However, be sure to inhale and exhale properly while inside the steam room. 

9. Promotes Better Mental Health

Exercising itself can improve your mental health. For instance, if you are in a Zumba class, happy hormones kick in, eradicating your sad thoughts. You can further boost good mental health by using a steam room. It’s a perfect area to meditate and set a fantastic intention for yourself. 

10. Increases Athletic Performance

Lastly, using a steam room after a workout may also increase your athletic performance. True story. So, especially if you have a sports career, regularly spending time in a steam room after your exercise can help you perform better during your training and actual play.

How to Use a Steam Room at the Gym The Right Way

However, to experience all the benefits of a steam room, from its post-workout recovery to its cardiorespiratory benefits, you should know how to use it properly. Yes, there are wrong ways to use a steam room. 

1. Stay Hydrated 

This should be a no-brainer. It can get really hot inside the steam room, so to replenish lost fluids from your body, you should refill your workout tumbler or jog, or ask for a glass of water from the gym staff, and drink water while in your steam room session.

2. Take a Shower First

Most of the time, you won’t be alone inside the steam room. As a way of respect for the others there, do not just step inside the room sweating from the workout. Take a short shower first before using the steam room. 

3. Dress Up Properly

Loose-fitting shorts, shirts, and bras made of cotton are best as they absorb excess heat, allowing the skin to breathe properly. Bathing suits are a big no-no because they’re made of thin materials that can react with the heat of the steam room’s walls and seats. Also, do not wear your workout shoes inside and don’t come in barefoot, too. Bring a pair of flip-flops or sandals.

4.  Watch the Time

The steam room can get satisfying, but you shouldn’t go overboard. The ideal time to use a steam room is between 10 to 20 minutes, and a maximum of three times per week. 

5. Cool Down

Just like with a workout out, you must cool down after using the steam bath, and this goes beyond immediately after the steam bath session. Drink water, take a shower again, moisturize your skin, stretch your muscles, and sleep tight. Also, enjoy a cup of tea or meditate.

How long should you steam after a workout?

The ideal time to spend in a steam room is a maximum of 20 minutes. You may also try intervals, such as taking a five-minute break after a 10-minute session. Spending too much time can be dangerous, leading to dehydration, heatstroke, or even death.

Does a steam room help burn fat?

While promoting weight loss is one of the benefits of a steam room, it isn’t an effective way to burn fat. When you wish to burn fat, you’re looking at controlling your diet or engaging in cardio exercises.

Is a Sauna or Steam Room Better After Exercise?

It really depends on the experience you want. Saunas use dry heat and are hotter than steam rooms. So, if you don’t want intense heat, steam rooms provide moist, steam-filled air that can give the benefits you learned about above.