Discover how professional athletes use light therapy to boost recovery, enhance performance, and reduce inflammation after intense workouts.
Professional athletes devote hours each day to perfecting their sport. It is their life. Yet, like every profession, it carries risks. For them, one injury can stop a career in its tracks. Months or even years of training may be undone in seconds.
While famous athletes such as tennis player Novak Djokovic or basketball player LeBron James have private doctors and physiotherapists at every session, not every pro enjoys that level of support. Still, an injury does not have to end the journey.
Former Olympic medalist Jill Kintner, now a pro mountain biker, tore her knee during an Olympic season. The setback threatened her chance at gold. “After my surgeries I had to get back quick because of it being an Olympic year,” she told SI.com. “People are coming and going and wanting Olympians to use [their products], so I got to pick and choose and used a lot of modalities to heal faster.”
Kintner added red-light therapy to her recovery plan. She was surprised by the results.
How might light therapy help athletes?
Red-light devices deliver wavelengths that pass through the skin, warming tissue and boosting local circulation. The light may stimulate cells, reduce inflammation, ease pain, and limit swelling. Damaged cells can be rejuvenated while new ones form, potentially shortening recovery time. Some evidence suggests the treatment calms inflammation and supports healing of bone, tendon, and ligament injuries.
A quiet addition to the toolkit
More pros—including Olympic trainer Vinny Comiskey—are experimenting with red-light units. “We had a high level of scrutiny,” he said. “We wanted to make sure it was appropriate for use by athletes...we started to get results with soft-tissue injuries. You start to use it, you see reactions, and then the athletes give us two thumbs up.”
Some Olympians use sessions both before and after training. Pre-workout exposure may ease pain and warm soft tissue, while post-workout use could lessen inflammation, muscle fatigue, and shorten recovery time between sessions.
Injury risk never disappears, but red-light therapy offers athletes one more option to heal faster and stay on course.
Anti-inflammatory effects of photobiomodulation Light therapy and muscle fatigue Recovery time after exercise
A study published in The Journal for Laser Surgery followed university athletes and measured their recovery time after sports injuries. Participants who used light therapy returned to play 9.6 days after injury, whereas athletes who did not use red light therapy returned after 19.23 days. The authors reported that “LED phototherapy significantly and safely reduced the RTP in dedicated university athletes over a wide range of injuries with no adverse events.”
Whether you are a physiotherapist or an athlete, our company supplies red light therapy devices for clinical or home use. The units are designed to deliver consistent irradiance and can be used in the comfort of your own home. Contact our team for more information.
