ArticleBMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation2025
The effect of post-exercise heat exposure (passive heat acclimation) on endurance exercise performance: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Article in BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Skeletal Muscle Blood Flow and NIRS Oxygenation Kinetics as a Tool to Evaluate Adaptations to High-Intensity Exercise Training.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
background"Active" heat acclimation (exercise-in-the-heat) can improve exercise performance but the efficacy of "passive" heat acclimation using post-exercise heat exposure is unclear. Therefore, we synthesised a systematic review and meta-analysis to answer whether post-exercise heat exposure improves exercise performance.
methodsFive databases were searched to identify studies including: (i) healthy adults; (ii) an exercise training intervention with post-exercise heat exposure via sauna or hot water immersion (treatment group); (iii) a non-heat exposure control group completing the same training; and (iv) outcomes measuring exercise performance in the heat (primary outcome), or performance in thermoneutral conditions, V̇O
resultsTen studies (199 participants: 156 male, 43 female, age 20-32 years) were included. The effect of post-exercise heat exposure on performance in hot conditions (33-40 °C) was trivial (ratio of means = 1.04) with poor precision (95%CI 0.94-1.15, P = 0.46) and low predictive certainty (95%PI 0.81-1.33). There were also trivial effects on performance in thermoneutral conditions (18-24 °C) and speed at lactate threshold, small effects on V̇O
conclusionsThe use of post-exercise heat exposure for improving exercise performance is uncertain. Further high-quality trials are needed to make firm conclusions. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: Open Science Foundation ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/256XZ ).
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