Recovery is not one thing you do once.
It is a cycle you run.
Most people treat recovery like a checklist. Sauna, tick. Ice bath, tick. Done. That is not how the body responds, and it is not how the people who recover for a living do it.
Contrast
HEAT
opens the blood vessels and moves blood to the surface.
COLD
closes them and drives it back to the core.
Alternating between the two turns your circulation into a pump. One round does a little. Cycling does the work. That is the difference between sitting in a sauna and running a protocol.
How It Fits Into Real Week
Every training day: sauna and red light
After you train, the session is not finished. Fifteen to twenty minutes in the infrared sauna while your body is already warm extends the work and starts recovery before the soreness sets in. Red light is a separate input, not part of the heat. Ten minutes on the panel, most days. It is a consistency game, not a one-off. Do it often, not long.
Recovery days: the contrast cycle
Start warm. Ten to fifteen minutes in the sauna to raise your core temperature. Then alternate. Two to three minutes in the ice bath, then back into the sauna for ten. Repeat two or three times. The pumping between hot and cold is the point, so the rounds matter more than the total time. End on the cold to finish alert. If you are doing this in the evening and want to sleep, run the sauna on its own and skip the final plunge.
Evening, and want to sleep? Run the sauna on its own and skip the final plunge.
After legs, or on a rest day: compression
Compression is passive and does not belong in the contrast loop. It goes at the end, or on its own. Fifteen to thirty minutes in the boots after a heavy leg session moves the fluid your legs cannot shift on their own. On a full rest day, put them on while you sit down and let them work. No heat, no cold, no effort.