When I learned about Normatec boots, my recovery life changed forever.
Courtesy Normatec
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Why LeBron’s Hyperice Normatec Boots Are a Game Changer
LeBron James reportedly spends over $1.5 million a year on health and nutrition.
It’s an investment, he says, in himself, his career and his legacy. And an amazing thing when you do the math, getting sound just over $4,000 a day. How, exactly, does a person spend $4,000 a day on their health and wellness?
About five years ago, I thought I’d found the answer. It was the heart of the NBA season and LeBron was in the midst of (another) stat when I opened up Instagram and spotted a photo. James was wearing what appeared to be legs in an astronaut suitfully inflated and lying on a long table. Outside of images from NASA, I had never seen a product like it before. I didn’t know where it was from. I didn’t even know how to google it. But I was fascinated.
A few years later, my girlfriend Jamie decided to run the Chicago Marathon. When it came time to book accommodations for race weekend, we decided on the Westin River North because we had heard of a “runners clubThe program operated by the hotel chain at each of the six “biggest” marathons. The Westin, we were told, invested thousands in the latest and greatest technology for runners, which guests of the hotel’s “runners club” were free to use at their leisure during the race weekend.
On our first day there, I went down to the lobby and saw her. Space Pants – of Lebron space pants – sat idly next to a strange looking lawn chair. With no competing plans for the weekend other than deep dish and light beer, I turned to Jamie.
“Do you mind me trying?”
Five minutes later, I was strapped in. And as my pants puffed and my chair tilted back, I learned for the first time about the product that had fascinated me years ago. Not the space pants though Normatec Compression Boots — a still-new piece of recovery technology revolutionizing the way athletes manage their health. The pants were basically big balloons, an on-site PT told me, trained to inflate and deflate in very specific ways to stimulate blood flow and speed healing. The secret sauce was called something dynamic compression technologywhich boosted leg circulation, flushed out lactic acid and metabolic waste, and mimicked a natural muscle “pump.”
HyperIce Normatec 3
699 dollars
Normatec 3 is the next evolution of the iconic Normatec series, using dynamic air compression to advance your well-being, recover faster, improve your training and maximize your performance.
As my “cycle” continued, rhythmically tightening my legs, calves, knees, and thighs, I looked around the lobby. Twenty more pairs of NormaTec boots lined the area, each with its own zero-gravity chair. I went back to PT.
“They must have spent a WEALTH for that,” I said, recalling LeBron’s $1.5 million bill.
“Actually, they probably spent less than you think,” she said.
As it turned out, she was right. True to my memory, Normatec’s technology had sparked a revolution in high-level professional sports, especially the NBA, about five years ago. Back then, the boots cost a fortune, and the technology they promised was still very old in the space, but stars like LeBron were early adopters. Soon, the rest of the league took notice, with players eager to relieve the stress of an 82-game season by running and jumping on their ankles. The popularity helped materialize plans to turn the boots into a full consumer product, which is how Westin eventually got into the game.
“Many people actually alone … own these“, PT said.
I laughed then. But I wasn’t laughing 15 minutes later, when my 30-minute “cycle” ended. I had gotten off a transcontinental flight from the Ryder Cup two days earlier, then boarded another one flight to Chicago that morning. And yet, as I walked into the lobby flexing my legs, I felt positively supple. The feeling lasted for the rest of the day. After a pre-marathon run the next morning, I stumbled through the lobby to see lines of runners forming in front of the boots. I didn’t have to imagine their relief, I saw it on Jamie’s face.
“She rock“, she said.
The months that followed that first experience passed, but my memory of the boots did not. Apparently, the same could be said for Jamie, who was still running and suddenly sharing LeBron’s desire to take some stress off her feet. With the arrival of spring, I went on a golf trip, playing 36 holes a day with some of my colleagues. I went to bed every night with aching knees, silently dreaming that I could do an afternoon “cycle” in my boots.
Thankfully, with another marathon (and golf) trip coming up, I don’t have to wait much longer. Normatec is dropping the price of their boots for Black Friday by $100, and while the cost is still very nosebleedsit’s not a $1.5 million nosebleed. As far as I’m concerned, this is worth the benefit for a very active pair of walkers (golf) and runners (marathons).
Now if you don’t mind, I have a Turkey Trot to recover from.
HyperIce Normatec 3
699 dollars
Normatec 3 is the next evolution of the iconic Normatec series, using dynamic air compression to advance your well-being, recover faster, improve your training and maximize your performance.
