Way back in 2009, in the early days of this blog, I wrote a post sparked by this image from Ryan Hall's Twitter feed:
He was demonstrating his (at the time) new NormaTec MVP, a "dynamic compression" legging that squeezes the legs with a "peristaltic pulse" that travels up the leg from the bottom to the top. Think of it as a cross between a compression sock and a massage, with the goal of accelerating recovery by... well, it's not exactly clear how it works, but possibly by reducing swelling and increasing blood flow to accelerate the removal of metabolic waste.
The general idea of "intermittent pneumatic compression" (as the general technique is called) has been around for a long time in medical circles, where it's used to treat things like deep vein thrombosis. But at that time I'd never seen it used by athletes. Since then, of course, NormaTec systems have become hugely popular among top athletes: among the runners listed on NormaTec's site are Deena Kastor, Meb Kelezighi, Alan Webb, and Hall, and it's also widely used in other sports. According to the company, the U.S. Olympic Committee brought over 40 of them to the 2010 Olympics.
Still, popularity aside, I'd never been able to figure out whether anyone had actually tested the device to see if it works -- until a friend recently forwarded me Putting NormaTec to the Test Fastest Marathon Runners, published last November by researchers at Massey University in New Zealand. They took 10 volunteers and put them through a bout of "damaging" eccentric exercise (3 x 100 eccentric leg contractions) then monitored their recovery at 24, 48, and 72 hours using blood samples (to look for markers of muscle damage) and tests of strength and power. Each subject went through this process twice, one with the NormaTec immediately after plus again at 24 and 48 hours, and once without it.
As for the results -- well, there's not really much to report. There were no significant differences between the two conditions at any point in time. Does this mean it doesn't work? Well, that's harder to say. Certainly athletes seem to love how it feels. The researchers hedge their bets a little; here's how they conclude:
Nevertheless, it is important to note that IPC may have an impact on different types of exercise. Therefore, further research is necessary to investigate the potential role of IPC to expedite muscle recovery by focusing on finding an optimal pulse pressure, pulse time, duration and frequency of its application as well as investigating the effect IPC has on other modes of strenuous activity.
In other words, "We didn't find anything but maybe someone else will." That seems like a reasonable conclusion. Personally, I suspect that there's a pretty big placebo component going on here, but it's also clear that "proving" the benefits of recovery protocols is much trickier than people suspected when they first started trying to study things like ice baths and compression. It's very hard to quantify and measure the phenomenon of "feeling good." I will say this, though: if I was going to spend $1,750 on one of these suckers, it would be nice if it produced a measurable benefit.
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