Fake the heat: how saunas and hot baths prepared us for Dubai

The top international sevens teams have once again descended on the Arabian Peninsula to kick-start the new HSBC SVNS Series. A good start in Dubai is vital to getting your momentum rolling for the rest of the season. 

Driving for an hour out from downtown Dubai along an arrow-straight road, you are reminded of the challenge that awaits. 

Desert, as far as the eye can see, rolling dunes dancing in the heat haze. The sandy horizon is occasionally interrupted by lonely vegetation or a flock of camels. Eventually, you reach the oasis of the Sevens Stadium, pristine grass pitches surrounded by a stadium of scaffolding. 

We all accept that sevens rugby is a physically and mentally demanding sport but the added heat of the scorching desert makes it all the more difficult. 

Dehydration and exposure are two of the biggest challenges for players. Even a small drop in hydration levels can lead to big impacts on performance. 

With Wales and Great Britain sevens, we had the added challenge of coming from near-freezing conditions in the preceding weeks of training. In November, we often had to contend with frozen pitches in the morning, while temperatures often just limped into double figures. In contrast, midday games at the Dubai Sevens will regularly reach temperatures around 30C. 

This difference in temperature poses a challenge for every strength and conditioning coach – and we’ve tried several interesting methods to try and adapt to the heat. 

One of our earliest methods involved cranking the heaters up to full blast when we were in the gym. We would spend an hour lifting weights and another half an hour doing a fitness circuit four times a week. The temperature would get up to the late twenties and we would be dripping with sweat inside five minutes. 

At the Vale Hotel, where we trained with Wales Sevens, a barn facility has half a rugby pitch inside. We tried the same technique here with the heaters when it was too frosty to go out on the full-size pitch – but it was a lot harder to heat the large indoor space compared to the gym. 

We resorted to training in full-length skins and woolly hats indoors to try and increase the temperature.

The following year, we set up four inflatable baths in the changing rooms with attached water heaters. Immediately after a rugby session, we would get into the baths to keep our core temperatures and heart rates elevated. We started at 15 minutes six weeks out from Dubai – but by the final week, we were staying in there for 40 minutes at a time. 

Initially, after coming in off a frozen pitch, the baths were a lovely way to warm up but that heat soon became irritating. It was a really uncomfortable process that felt like you were sitting in there for an eternity. 

Luckily, the whole team could fit in the baths at the same time so they turned into team bonding sessions. We would share stories and jokes to help the time pass but would normally end up playing a game of categories, where you take it in turns to name words beginning with each letter of the alphabet. 

One summer, the Welsh Rugby Union invested in a large sauna and we repeated the same process of sitting in there after training. The sauna was nowhere near as uncomfortable as the baths, which felt like you were being hugged and squeezed by an oven for 40 minutes. In hindsight, I would say the heat of the sauna was more comparable to the heat in the desert. 

When we joined with Scotland and England sevens to form Great Britain we would share stories of how we prepared for Dubai in previous years. Scotland, we learned, took WATT bikes into their sauna and would do repeated sprint sets in the heat over a half-hour period. 

But did these methods really help us? 

Honestly, I don’t know. When that plane door opened in Dubai, you were still slapped in the face by the heat. It feels like a warm blanket being draped over you. 

The first training session under the sun sapped everyone’s energy in half the time than back in Britain. Your water intake increases dramatically and you have to balance this out with electrolytes as well. Every sprint, every tackle, every pass is just that little bit harder. 

We would try our best to limit the time we spent out in the sun, every extra hour would deplete the batteries by a fraction. The aim of the training week was to experience the heat but also to not let it impact the weekend’s games. 

Extra care was taken to ensure we weren’t dehydrated. You get weighed before and after a session. The difference in weight is used to calculate a certain volume we would have to drink to make up for the water loss. If the weight drop was significant, it also indicated that we weren’t hydrating properly before and during the session. 

Every team plays a ‘scrag’ game in the week leading up to the tournament. This is a non-contact game at full match speed against another one of the teams. 

This is where I would see the benefit of the baths and sauna sessions that we did. They may not have helped us adapt physiologically to the heat but mentally, they had worked wonders. Playing a 14-minute game in the sun felt very quick compared to 40 minutes in a boiling hot bath. 

So, on the offchance you are going to head out to play in the invitational sevens tournament in Dubai this year, I hope you have had some heat exposure as part of your training. It won’t work miracles but it definitely softens the blow.