6 ms·
"Cool" invention triples athletic performance
The invention is based on a neat concept but can this $2500 device stack up to a bag of ice? This may be a case of over-engineering a solution.
- DenisM 18y agoI keep track of my excersize performance - amount of work, heart rate and ambient temperature. I have certainly noticed positive correlation - for every centrigate of room temperature drop I perform about 1% more work (keeping the heart rate the same in all cases). But this. Wow. 1000 push ups at 65 years old? Truly dramatic. I should buy one.
- nazgulnarsil 18y agoto be fair once you break the 100 barrier you can pretty much go forever. pushups aren't that hard because you're only pushing about 2/3rds of your body weight. lots of pullups however IS impressive.
- browser411 18y agoI wonder if this is a case of over-engineering a solution. Does it have that much more of a positive effect compared to a lower tech solution (e.g., bag of ice). The machine costs $2500 retail.
- 13ren 18y agoOr hands in cold water. It's surely not as good, but if the effect is so dramatic, it would still have a noticeable impact. Easy to test.
- DenisM 18y agoMy understanding is that hands in cold water will lead to blood vessels contracting and thus the entire body not being cooled, just your hands being kinda cold. Their device keeps blood vessels expnaded thus inducing hypothermia. The diference is between chilling entire body and only your arms.
- 13ren 18y agoDo you know why this happens, or how they circumvent it? Is it because it is water (i.e. not air-cooled)? Or is it because the temperature differential is too great (i.e. dangerously so, according to the body)? A damp towel might overcome these issues - or wetting your hands and holding them in front of a fan, for evaporative cooling via fake sweat + fake breeze.
- khafra 18y agoI've got a ~$120 vest full of a gel that freezes at 50 degrees, so it's not painful to wear. I use it as A/C on my motorcycle here in Florida; but my marathon-running co-worker says he's seen people wearing them for a few hours before races, to lower their core temperature. Looks like it works, but it can be done cheaper.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- tocomment 18y agoWhat do you mean exactly? How do you measure work?
- shard 18y agoIf he is doing weight training, work = mass * gravity * height.
- Alex3917 18y agoWhen you lift weights your muscles break down and release proteins into your bloodstream. I've heard that if you do things like 1000 bench presses with just the bar then you can get so much muscle breakdown that the protein can actually cause liver damage. If that is true then that is something I would worry about when using this device. You are basically circumventing your body's defense mechanism to prevent that from happening. If I were a coach I'd probably have the athletes do some bloodwork to make sure this wasn't a problem, especially for college kids who are likely to be drinking and such in addition.
- ars 18y agoCare to post any citations for that? Because it doesn't match what I know about how muscles work. I've never heard of muscles breaking down proteins, nor have I ever heard of proteins causing liver damage (that doesn't make any sense). Muscles do release lactic acid, which will eventually cause enough pain to make you stop, but I never heard of any serious damage caused from it. And this cooling method won't prevent that feedback. It's obviously possible to inure a muscle, but it will hurt, and this cooling method won't affect that.
- Alex3917 18y ago"When the total CPK level is very high, it usually means there has been injury or stress to the heart, the brain, or muscle tissue. For example, when a muscle is damaged, CPK leaks into the bloodstream. Determining which specific form of CPK is high helps doctor's determine which exact tissue has been damaged." http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003503.htm http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003503.htm The part about muscles releasing proteins when working out is definitely true, I just don't know about the rest. It's something I was told by my sports doctor though.
- oostevo 18y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis It's usually caused by crush injury, but if you're enough of a knucklehead, you can give it to yourself in the gym too.
- natch 18y agoI've got the opposite kind of thing going on here in my life, with a super-warm, and that's putting it politely, laptop. Can these guys do anything for me, I wonder?
- Eliezer 18y agoIf there were a drug that had an identical effect, it would be banned, of course. Or heaven forbid, a gene therapy. Apparently we've got some kind of huge mental distinction going between outright transhumanism and a little temporary cyborging.
- ars 18y agoWe do - you're right. It's kind of odd, but even after thinking about it, I still see a distinction, but I can't place my finger on what it is.
- DaniFong 18y agoThe potential for harm. Perhaps. One of the psychological 'disgust' responses has to do with the invasion of chemicals or other external elements into the body. It's pretty near universal. Drugs trigger that response. These are amplified by reports of steroids harming people. But the glove involves zero fluid or substance transfer. It is like a type of clothing, or an ice pack.
- ajkirwin 18y agoI don't have that psychological 'disgust' response. Infact, I can't understand why drugs aren't used for more things. Safer steroids for athletes. Smart drugs for college students. And so on. I mean, sure, they might have bad long-term effects, or have side-effects, etcetera.. but so does most things, that most people do.
- Prrometheus 18y agoMany banned substances can be used safely. This would be even more true if it were legal to use them under physician supervision.
- DaniFong 18y agoIt might just be a silly gut reaction that putting stuff in your body could be bad, but how can we really know, honestly? 'Safe' is obviously a relative term. How safe do we need? We have very incomplete understanding of cellular and molecular biology (much less than, for example, the circulation system, which the glove uses). Where harm can be potentially averted by the use of drugs for medicine, it makes sense. But where harm can be potentially caused by the use of drugs for recreational activity (of which sports are an example), things seem much more morally ambiguous. You have to draw a line somewhere. At some point, the increased risk is simply too much to ignore. And when you have a highly competitive situation like professional sports, it is, I argue, immoral to tempt people, by competition, into doing something potentially harmful to themselves. Voluntary recreational drugs are one thing, but in competitive sports, I argue that we should try to keep training methods and substances as safe as possible. I think, in general, if, by competition or incentives some other method one induces a class of people to risk inflicting harm unto themselves, one is doing a moral wrong.
- trapper 18y agoThis is crap. Why do you guys accept a press release from the company as fact? Better than steroids my a$$! Can it make you gain 20lbs of muscle in a month? Doubt it. Anyway, this technology has had ample chance to prove itself via peer reviewed studies and to my knowledge has never had any results confirming their claims.
- kingmaker 18y agoI participated in this study at Stanford for a while. The results are pretty dramatic. I doubled the number of pull ups that I could do in six weeks and went from being able to do 12 reps of 155 on bench to 12 reps of 175.
- scott_s 18y agoThat's very good progress, but I'm not convinced the glove is what's responsible. That sounds like reasonable gains for someone who is working out regularly and trying to improve. Good, of course, but still within reason.
- Alex3917 18y agoLooking back at my own logs from three summers ago, I see it took me from June 5 to July 17 to go from 12 pullups to 24. It seems like your rate of improvement is about par for pullups and a little below average for bench press. I doubt the glove made any difference.
- gdee 18y agoThe idea is pretty old too: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/07/19/icebox-on-wrist-to-cool-the-whole-body/ http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/07/19/icebox-on-wrist-to...