"Cool" invention triples athletic performance

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/22/BAQU12UC28.DTL&type=tech

by browser411 • 18 years ago

59 37 18 years ago

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.

DenisM2• 18 years ago

I 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• 18 years ago

to 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• 18 years ago

I 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.

13ren2• 18 years ago

Or 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.

tocomment• 18 years ago

What do you mean exactly? How do you measure work?

shard• 18 years ago

If he is doing weight training, work = mass * gravity * height.

Alex39175• 18 years ago

When 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.

ars3• 18 years ago

Care 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.

Alex39175• 18 years 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

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• 18 years ago

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• 18 years ago

I'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• 18 years ago

If 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.

ars3• 18 years ago

We 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.

DaniFong3• 18 years ago

The 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.

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

Well, there are several distinctions, but an important one is that the Glove just hasn't been around long enough for the dangers of Glove abuse to become apparent. If it turns out that excessive Glove use raises your risk of concussion, or ages your joints prematurely, or induces heart attacks in 2% of the population, or causes impotence, or takes twenty years off your life, or whatever, there might come a day where nobody sees a distinction between Gloves and performance-enhancing drugs.

(Not that I have any reason to expect any bad side effects. But you never know. It takes time and statistics to work these things out. Physiology is holistic. And, when you remove one bottleneck (in this case, the rate at which your body can dissipate heat) you inevitably run up against another bottleneck, one which may have much scarier consequences than the first.)

river_styx• 18 years ago

Huh? There's a huge difference between injecting a foreign chemical into your body and simply cooling your own blood. Not even in the same ballpark.

gaius2• 18 years ago

Testosterone and HGH are not foreign chemicals. They're just more of what you've got naturally.

trominos• 18 years ago

Well, people have been cooling themselves for literally millions of years without adverse effects. Of all the performance enhancers you could buy, including legal ones, the Glove seems the least likely to screw you up long-term.

Alex39175• 18 years ago

It doesn't matter which drugs are banned and which are legal, as long as everyone is playing by the same rules. I don't see what the issue is here.

huherto• 18 years ago

Many athletes are willing to put their life's at risk. That pressures the other athletes to do the same. Banned substances are meant to protect them.

trapper• 18 years ago

This 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• 18 years ago

I 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• 18 years ago

That'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.

Alex39175• 18 years ago

Looking 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• 18 years ago

The idea is pretty old too: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2007/07/19/icebox-on-wrist-to...

"Cool" invention triples athletic performance

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