We started out by laughing at the optimization-obsessed Sauna Bro. But two years since beginning this newsletter, co-founder Robert Hammond ponders whether near-constant immersion in bathing culture has infected him with the very wellness rituals we once mocked. Illustrations by Grant Schaffer. Plus pre-order Mikkel Aaland’s cult classic Sweat and new book Naked Sweat and scroll down for news and events.
By Robert Hammond
When we started Culture of Bathe-ing about two years ago, we needed something to poke fun at. Many subcultures have a light-hearted villain. Skiers have snowboarders. Cyclists have other cyclists. And we, the earnest new congregants of communal sweating, had the Sauna Bro.
If you’ve spent any time in a bathhouse, you know him. The Sauna Bro is a close relative of the tech bro, possibly the same organism in a different habitat. He treats the sauna not as a place of rest but as a performance venue for his own optimization. He has metrics. He has protocols. He has opinions about your protocols. He says “heat shock proteins” out loud, to strangers.
I loved making fun of Sauna Bros. It was one of the founding pleasures of this newsletter. And we took some criticism for it. Readers wrote in to say that bathing is supposed to be for everybody, and did we really need to dunk on the men? Fair. Noted. We kept doing it anyway, because it was fun, and because we were certain we were nothing like them.
Reader, I have some symptoms to report.
I do weird, awkward stretches in the sauna. Not graceful ones. Not yoga. These are stretches with no name and no lineage, performed at hip height in a small room full of strangers. I have become the person other people politely angle away from.
I time stuff. My sauna is timed. My cold plunge is timed. And they are timed by the beeping of my Casio watch, which is arguably not as bad as a souped Garmin watch.
In the cold plunge, I hum loudly on my out-breath. I would like to tell you this is a subtle, meditative sound. It is not. It carries.
I over-sauna. Sometimes I sauna so much that I wake up that night with a headache and have to take an Excedrin Migraine in the dark like a person nursing a hangover. This is what happens when you treat rest as a competitive event.
My son wants to train to be an aufguss master. I have raised a child who waves a towel theatrically at home. I cannot pretend this happened in a vacuum.
I lie about where I’m going. Sometimes, instead of telling my husband I’m going to a bathhouse, I tell him I have a work meeting. Then I go and try to fit a full sauna and a cold plunge into under 30 minutes — which, if you’re keeping score, combines the deception of an affair with the scheduling of a CrossFit class. Speed-bathing. Efficiency-relaxing. The bros invented this, and I do it in secret.
I own an AG1 water bottle (Ed: a bottle where you can shake in AG1 soluble supplement). I want to be very clear that I did not buy it. It was free, at a wellness event (Eudemonia which is another wellness bro symptom).
I have owned multiple Oura rings. Plural. And one of those bracelet things. I stopped using all of them, which I’d like to count as recovery, but buying wearables and then abandoning them is not the opposite of Sauna Bro behavior. It’s just the second stage of it.
For the record, my remaining innocence
There are lines I have not crossed, and I’d like them entered as evidence. I have never worn cologne in a sauna. I have never done push-ups in a hot room. And I have never once shamed anyone for how they pronounce “sauna” — SAW-na, SOW-na, live your life.
So that’s where I stand: not fully symptomatic, but no longer able to claim I’m just an observer. Somewhere in the last two years, while I was busy laughing at the guys with the timers and the breathing techniques and the branded water bottles, I became a person with a timer, a breathing technique, and a branded water bottle.
I guess the lesson is that I shouldn’t have made fun of the bros. The bathhouse humbles everyone eventually — usually at around minute twelve, when your Casio starts beeping and the whole room turns to look at you.
A final credit where it’s due: the term “Sauna Bro” came to us from Megan Kress, the woman who first named the species and who created the original Sauna Bro Bingo card [Ed: who we wrote about in our Sauna Sirens post]. Megan, I regret to inform you that I am four squares away from bingo.
By Robert Hammond, co-founder of Culture of Bathe-ing and President, Therme Group US
@thehighlineguy
Illustrations by Grant Shaffer, commissioned by Culture of Bathe-ing
@nyseecomic
News, happenings and openings
After 45 years, Mikkel Aaland’s cult classic Sweat is being reissued along side his new book Naked Sweat as a Collector’s Edition. Pre order now
Who doesn’t love a boogie New York Times Magazine buyers guide to update your summer beachwear?
The San Francisco Chronicle wades through the facts of sauna wellness in the midst of a sauna explosion in the Bay Area
Grotto Baths, built in the Wynwood neigbourhood of Miami, is opening with a concept that has more in common with ancient Rome than with the neighborhood’s usual rooftop bars
Angelique Chrisafis details the fight to save France’s rural swimming pools in The Guardian
One last thing
In Odesa the Kuyalnyk Sanatorium, a swimming pool designed by architect Henrikh Topuz, has a striking steel pyramid roof. The pool is filled with salty water pumped in directly from the Kuyalnyk Estuary.
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Doesn’t the watch get very hot on your skin? I try to sauna occasionally but I’m kind of a wimp about the heat and I never know how long I’m supposed to be in there for, unless I find myself in one of the rare saunas with a rotating hourglass timer bolted to the wall.