If building muscle is one of your goals, your workout matters, but so does what you do around it.
Strength training creates a signal. Your body responds to that signal by repairing tissue and adapting to the demands you repeatedly place on it. Over time, with progressive resistance training, adequate protein, nutrition, sleep, and recovery, that process can lead to muscle hypertrophy, or an increase in muscle size.
At enduraLAB, this is why we care about the timing of two popular recovery tools: the cold plunge and infrared sauna.
For members focused on strength and hypertrophy, our simple training-day strategy is:
Cold before. Lift. Sauna after.
Here’s why.
Cold Plunge After Lifting May Not Be Ideal for Muscle Growth
Cold-water immersion can be an effective recovery tool. It can help reduce perceived soreness and may be useful when rapid recovery between competitions or training sessions is the priority.
But feeling recovered faster and maximizing long-term training adaptations are not always the same thing.
Resistance training creates a cascade of cellular signals involved in muscle protein synthesis and adaptation. Research has found that regularly using cold-water immersion immediately after resistance exercise can dampen some of those anabolic signals.
In one resistance-training study, post-workout cold water immersion reduced increases in Type II muscle-fiber size and blunted mTOR-related signaling compared with passive recovery.
Broader reviews have reached a similar conclusion: regular post-resistance-training cold immersion may modestly attenuate some strength and muscle adaptations, although outcomes vary by protocol and study.
That doesn’t make cold bad.
It means use the right tool for the goal.
If today’s priority is maximizing the adaptation from resistance training, we generally don’t want to make intense cold exposure the automatic finish to every hypertrophy session.
Why Put the Cold Plunge Before Your Workout?
Moving cold exposure before the workout separates it from the immediate post-training period when the body is beginning the repair and adaptation process.
It can also provide a powerful change in state.
Cold demands attention. You have to control your breathing, manage discomfort, and become present quickly. enduraLAB’s own cold-plunge guidance describes cold exposure as stimulating and emphasizes developing consistency and tolerance over time.
There is also evidence supporting pre-cooling before endurance exercise in hot conditions. A meta-analysis found cold-water immersion before exercise in the heat improved endurance performance and reduced thermal strain.
But there’s an important distinction for strength athletes:
Cold exposure is not your warm-up.
Cooling muscles too much can temporarily work against explosive performance. Recent evidence also shows acute cold exposure can transiently impair power under some conditions.
So don’t climb out of the 45°F plunge and immediately attempt a heavy squat, Olympic lift, or sprint.
Use a short, controlled exposure, then rewarm and complete your full dynamic warm-up before training.
Think:
Cold → rewarm → movement prep → lift.
Why Use the Sauna After a Hypertrophy Workout?
Heat fits differently into the training equation.
Research on whole-body heat exposure has shown increased activity in the Akt/mTOR pathway along with increases in heat shock proteins. Both are biologically interesting because they are involved in cellular protection, repair, and muscle-growth signaling.
That does not mean sitting in a sauna builds muscle.
In fact, a 2025 study involving female team-sport athletes compared six weeks of strength and power training with or without a 10-minute post-exercise infrared sauna. Both groups gained muscle, and the sauna group did not experience significantly greater hypertrophy.
That’s an important distinction.
Your lifting creates the primary hypertrophy stimulus.
Your protein intake, overall nutrition, sleep, and training consistency do the heavy lifting when it comes to actually building muscle.
The sauna is a hypertrophy-compatible recovery tool, not a shortcut to bigger muscles.
There is also evidence that infrared sauna after resistance exercise can improve perceived recovery, reduce muscle soreness, and help preserve next-day neuromuscular performance.
That makes sauna a logical place to finish a demanding training session.
The enduraLAB Hypertrophy Sequence
If muscle growth is your primary training goal, keep your recovery strategy simple.
Before your workout, use cold strategically if you enjoy the alertness, controlled stress, or mental preparation it provides. Keep the exposure manageable and give yourself enough time to warm completely before lifting.
Then train.
Create the hypertrophy stimulus through progressive resistance training, sufficient volume, good technique, and consistent effort.
Afterward, choose the sauna rather than automatically jumping back into the cold plunge.
Hydrate, allow your heart rate to settle, and use the heat as a transition from training into recovery.
On a completely separate recovery day, you can still enjoy full contrast therapy: 10 minutes sauna, 1–3 minutes in the cold plunge, 2–3 minutes rest, and repeat for at least three rounds.
Train for the Adaptation You Want
Recovery isn’t about using every tool every time.
It’s about choosing the tool that supports your goal.
If you’re trying to build muscle:
Cold before. Warm up. Lift. Sauna after.
Then eat well, get your protein, sleep, and come back ready to train again.
That’s how recovery becomes part of performance.
Build Your Complete Performance System
Want a training program where strength, conditioning, recovery, and coaching work together instead of competing with one another?
Sign up for an enduraLAB Performance Membership and let our coaches help you build a training and recovery strategy around the results you actually want.
