Tag: sports technology

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My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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If you have any interest whatsoever in the role of science in evaluating the claims made by fitness products, you’ll be thrilled about this. The makers of Power Balance bracelets, which purport to “work with your body’s natural energy field” to improve your strength, flexibility and balance, have been compelled by an Australian tribunal to admit that they have “no credible scientific evidence” whatsoever to support their misleading advertising claims, and to offer a refund to unsatisfied customers. For full details, read Ross Tucker’s Science of Sport report here. (And Ross’s follow-up post, in response to those who ask why it matters whether the bracelets are placebos as long as they work, is also worth reading.)

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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At the risk of sounding a bit cranky, I’m going to complain about another piece of new-fangled sports technology. Doug Binder of TrackFocus has an interesting article about Alberto Salazar’s Nike group in Oregon using a “Space Cabin” for cryotheraphy to cool down after workouts:

Step inside this metallic cylinder and liquid nitrogen-cooled air (say, 170 degrees below zero) rushes in and cools your skin to a chilly 30 degrees, yet penetrates just a half millimeter. You slowly rotate for two and a half minutes, holding your hands up and out of the freeze, wearing socks on your toes, and at least some underwear to cover your privates.

Okay, I’m down with ice baths, and maybe this is a super-ice-bath – though I’m certainly curious about how much one of these gadgets costs, and whether it’s actually any better than a simple ice bath. What got me cranky was the manufacturer’s website, which claims that the benefits of this device include (but are not limited to):

* Decreased fatigue
* Decreased muscle soreness
* Decreased injury recovery time
* Quicker surgical recovery
* Psychological competitive edge [okay, this one I believe]
* Decreased anxiety
* Decreased depression
* Decreased incidence of colds and flu
* Tighter, healthier skin
* Cellulite reduction
* Stronger, fuller hair
* Stronger nails
* Fewer skin blemishes
* Increased libido
* Increased sexual stamina

And of course, “it f-ing prints money!” I mean, seriously. They must have lots of evidence to back up those claims, right? Why yes, FAQ no. 17 is “Are there any studies regarding Whole Body Cryotherapy (WBA) in the USA?” The answer is:

Yes, there is. We recently installed cryosauna in the office of Dr. Jonas Kuehne in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California. During a six month study, Dr. Kuehne successfully served his clients with cryoprocedures. HERE you can find a video clip with some results of his studies.

Click on the link and, if you don’t poke your eyes out with a fork, you can watch a lame infomercial by some doctor who makes no mention of a “study” and who simply reasserts that these machines can do everything including your taxes.

Anyway, perhaps I’m being premature in my scorn. Maybe the studies demonstrating all these wonderful effects just haven’t been published yet. After all, it’s fancy new technology, right? As FAQ no. 1 says:

The process was originally developed in Japan in 1978, and the benefits have been studied and refined in Europe since that time.

Silly North Americans, ignoring all these wonderful benefits for the last 32 years!

(Okay, so what’s my real message here? When I first read the story, I was interested to find out more about this technology. But what really turned me off was the wildly inflated claims on the website with a complete lack of evidence. It’s entirely possible that this technique will have some benefits for Salazar’s athletes, but the snake-oil website lowers my confidence in it dramatically.)

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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I wrote about the bogus ban on APL’s basketball shoes a few days ago, and the bad science behind it. I just noticed that the New York Times, of all places, actually wrote about the shoes. The piece has some very interesting nuggets in it — and some very sloppy reporting. The key point to note is a statement from the NBA:

“No player has asked to wear these shoes, so it’s a nonissue,” the N.B.A. spokeswoman Kristin Conte said. “However, we determined that they don’t conform to our rules, based on the company’s representation of what they do.”

The key part is in bold here. In other words, the NBA has no idea whether the shoes enhance vertical jump. APL called up the NBA and said, “We have shoes that will make players instantly jump 3.5 inches higher using special technology in the toes, will players be allowed to wear them?” Of course the answer was no — but that says nothing about whether they work.

The other passage that caught my attention is here:

The Goldstons have compared the spring embedded in the front part of the sole to a diving board; the more pressure that is pushed down on it, the more spring it will provide. They claim it increases vertical leap by an average of about three and a half inches.

Lucky break for the company here. Even they don’t make that claim, although that’s exactly the impression they’re trying to give when they repeatedly mention increases of “up to 3.5 inches.” The Times reporter fell for it without checking the fine print. As I pointed out in my initial post, only one of 12 test subjects increased by anywhere close to 3.5 inches, under test conditions that the company won’t even disclose.

The more I read, the more unimpressed I am by how sleazily dishonest this whole campaign is. On the other hand, it’s a very successful campaign — the surge in sales after the “ban” shut down their servers. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised: apparently the 23-year-old twins running company are the sons of Reebok’s former chief marketing officer — the guy who came up with the famously stupid but commercially successful Reebok Pump.

THANK YOU FOR VISITING SWEATSCIENCE.COM!

My new Sweat Science columns are being published at www.outsideonline.com/sweatscience. Also check out my new book, THE EXPLORER'S GENE: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map, published in March 2025.

- Alex Hutchinson (@sweatscience)

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A reader recently tipped me off about an interesting shoe technology story [thanks, Alexis!]. According to the company’s own press release, Athletic Propulsion Lab’s Concept 1 basketball shoe, featuring “Load ‘N Launch technology” is banned by the NBA because it provides an “unfair competitive advantage.”

Now, the first thing that came to mind when I read the press release was the brouhaha a few years about Spira’s spring-loaded running shoes, which they claimed were banned by USATF — despite assurances by USATF that they weren’t, in fact, banned! In fact, Spira is still using this supposed ban as a selling point:

We expect with time to have the rule overturned, but the mere existence of a rule that prohibits the use of our shoe for competition certainly provides us with a level of credibility. After all, if it wasn’t better, why would it be banned?

I think something similar is going on with the APL basketball shoe: from the press release, it sounds like they called the NBA and more or less begged them to ban the shoe. So what are these shoes supposed to do?

The technology itself features a unique device that serves as a “launch pad” housed inside a cavity at the front of the shoe, which compresses (The “Load” phase) and then releases (The “Launch” phase) as the athlete exerts force on the front of the foot.

The description of the technology’s benefits on the APL site provides a very nice lesson in the difference between science and salesmanship. To their credit, the company has performed a study comparing vertical jump in the fancy shoes versus ordinary basketball shoes, at an unnamed “leading West Coast university.” They even show the data (in graphical form) for the 12 subjects, and boast that participants saw “an increase of up to 3.5 inches instantly in their vertical leap.” Nowhere do they say anything about the average increase in vertical leap, let alone provide any information about statistical significance.

The problem is that, from the data they do show, it’s clear that only one person in the study (subject 4) came anywhere near an increase of 3.5 inches. The average looks to be a fraction of an inch at best. And we don’t know whether these were one-time tests — maybe subject 4 just had a bad jump in the regular shoes?

I give the company credit for at least paying lip service to idea that they should back their claims up with scientific studies. But what they’ve provided falls way short of the mark. If the results are so good, why not disclose all the details of the study? If they’re not that good, I guess they’ll have to rely on a bogus “ban” to get attention.

[UPDATE: a follow-up post on the banned basketball shoes here]