Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com
and today I've got special guest Timmy Haman on the line and we
dive into all things palm cooling.
So this is a concept that I had originally heard on the Huberman
Lab podcast, and basically it is a technique used to increase
exercise performance and recovery via cooling the palms
of your hand. I'm super skeptical about all
things that sound too good to be true.
This is no different. But he makes a really good
argument here and I'm keen to give this a try for myself and
see if it makes a difference. And it makes logical sense when
you look about, when you think about Thermo regulation, how
much it impacts sleep quality, it makes sense that Thermo
regulation would also have a pretty pronounced impact on
exercise performance. So thoroughly enjoy the
conversation, open my eyes up to some new potential possibilities
here. But I will absolutely be testing
this out, see if I can tell the difference with it.
Hopefully you enjoy it and take something from it.
I haven't got no doubt that you will.
So that further delay, sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation
with Timmy Hammond. And we're live.
Timmy Hammond, how are you, Sir? I'm very good, thank you.
Very psyched to be here to talk about Hong Kong, Robert.
I am excited to learn. So I have briefly heard of palm
cooling. I am not well versed in it by
any means, but I'm all about trying to improve recovery,
especially as it pertains to weight training, resistance
training, and that that's where I've heard about palm cooling.
But like I said, I don't know anything about it and at first
glance, you know, it seems almost too good to be true.
Like I'm I'm a highly skeptical person.
So enlighten me and hopefully break my skepticism.
First of all, what is palm cooling?
Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm like you.
I'm, I'm very much I'm, I'm a sceptical person.
When you hear things that sound too good to be true that you
just, you kind of God comes up a bit, then you're like not really
trusting this. But to be honest, Palm Cooling
has kind of shocked me with what he can do and what he can
deliver. Personally, I first came across
it listening to the Uberman Lab podcast, which I'm sure you and
most of your listeners have come across at some point.
And it was an episode called like supercharge your
performance with the help of cold.
And I was like, OK, let's listen to this could be interesting.
I mean, I since before you a bit fair bit about brown fat and
those things. This was a different area, it
seemed like. And he started talking about
such studies where they had increased amount of pull ups.
Trained guys could do 4% in six weeks.
And I was like, what? Because often when you hear
things, you're like, you hear, oh, yeah, if you do this and you
do that, then you're like, you can increase a couple of
percentage here and there. And I'm a recreational athlete,
so to speak. So like, I'm not going to jump
through 10s of hoops to get a 5% increase at the end of the year.
That's not like, you know, open your hair of these kind of
little hacks and stuff and you're like, well, it's so much
and it doesn't really give that much, but something that can
give that. I was like, wow, this sounds
super interesting. And I listened to that podcast
and as you say, I'm also, or as you said, you're sceptical.
I'm also sceptical. So what I did was that I started
looking up these studies like, is this really true, etcetera.
So geeked out on the science, the best read some of those
studies because they came from an Greg Heller's lab at Stanford
University as well. And after reading the studies, I
was like, you know what, this seems like it's really working.
And the mechanism, we call it palm cooling because it's as
simple as it actually sounds. You cool the palms of your hands
and what that does is that it also cools down in your body.
And it turns out that in our muscles we have an enzyme called
pyruvate kinase which is heat sensitive and that makes a huge
impact. This enzyme helps or is a part
of producing the ATP and because it's heat sensitive, as soon as
our body temperature and our muscle temperature goes up, the
ATP production goes down. Got you.
Anybody who understands what the ATP is, etcetera, and I would
assume most of your listeners are fairly accustomed to that
term, understands that if the ATP production is shut down, the
energy production in the muscle is shut down and you can't
continue doing what you're doing.
And this is a huge impact. And it turns out that if you
cool down your muscles, you can then perform for significantly
longer. And one of the most effective
ways to cool down your body is actually cooling down the palms
of your hands because we have what is called glabrous skin.
It's skin that doesn't have hair follicles like as humans have
hair or hair follicles. Basically all of our body, even
though you can't see hair, we don't look like a monkey, so to
speak. But in three areas of our body,
which is the like our face above our beard line, the palms of our
hands and the bottom of our feet doesn't have any hair follicles
for some evolutionary reason. And in these ones we have a
different set of blood vessels that is significantly Piper or
more abundant you could say. And also the blood that gets to
these surfaces don't go through thin capillaries on the way
back. So it's the most effective way
to cool down your body. So even then when you work out,
if you cool down the palms of your hands between sets, you can
get this enormous performance enhancement.
So. You could effectively do it
whether you're palm, you're cooling your palms or your feet
like that would be. It's just more convenient
probably to cool to cool the palms, but the same effect could
take place if you were cooling your feet.
Yeah, exactly. And you could cool the like your
forward etcetera as well. But as as you were alluding to
there, the reason why we kind of use palm cooling is it's
significantly easier to just grab something but have your
shoes off and step on something when you're in the gym or
whatever you're doing. So it becomes the more practical
out of the ones if you would get the better effect if you did
both at the same time. So, but that becomes
significantly impractical in the end of there.
And as I was saying, like the the first study they did on
this, there was trained guys doing pull ups 144% in six
weeks. That's what they did in that
study was that they did ten sets.
So it's a pretty high volume. And when you think about it like
if you do a higher volume, you heat up more so you get a bigger
effect. If you do less sets, less
repetitions, it's going to have, it's not going to have as big of
an impact, but it will impact pretty significantly as well.
They also have done a test. This is not the same thing or
like a study per SE, but they had an NFL player in guy called
Greg Clark who played tight end for San Francisco 49ers.
He heard about this because he used to play football for
Stanford before and he came into the lab and they were like, he
feels like I want to test this and they're like, what, what are
you good at? And he's like, I'm good at dips.
So they had him do dips rest 3 minutes, dips rest 3 minutes and
like up to five sets. He was like, I'm done, I can't
do anymore. And he checked out 102, which is
a pretty good for for five sets. Yeah, pretty.
Respectful #3 days he came back. Three days later he came back
and they did the same. And he cooled the palms of his
hands first. He did 42 first instead of 40
the first time. So he upped a little bit.
And then the second set he did eight more.
And then he continued to do significantly more for five
sets. So at the end of it, he done, I
think it was 135 S, 31% increase in three days for a guy in peak
condition like an NFL player. Like, I mean, he's in top
physical condition and, and what was it the better was that he of
the five sets, he was like, I'm not tired.
He could continue. So he did nine sets and he
pretty much doubled his total work output.
Wow, and he's doing this like he's cooling the palms of his
hand intra set or like after each set or how?
How's that structured? So he does it between the sets
because you kind of, if you, if you do an exercise where you use
your hands, you are likely going to grab everything so tightly.
So even if you could kind of somehow apply palm cooling here,
you would get basic constriction in your hands when you do it.
If you think about you like you're grabbing a dumbbell or
like you're doing dips, like you like your hands, the palms of
your hands going to be white, which means that you have basic
constriction, meaning the blood vessels kind of close and and
that becomes makes it Contra productive.
So to speak. Got you, Got you, So you.
You do it between sets, and that's also like significantly
more practical for for all exercises you can do.
Have you have you followed up on any of the studies regarding
like cold therapy in the form of you know, cold plunges?
Like cold plunges have gotten super popular as of late, it
seems and a lot of people have been incorporated into their
recovery routine. And one of the, the pieces that
I found interesting was that they don't advise doing the coal
plunging, you know, immediately post workout as that would have,
as that would minimize the acute inflammation that you're
actually trying to garner from a training session.
So as to, you know, have more micro tears in the muscle and
give your body reason to grow. I'm assuming that would not so
much be the case with a palm cooling technique because you're
not really minimizing the micro tears from a muscular
standpoint, you're just simply signalling to the kinase that
you are fully recovered as the work at is ongoing.
Yeah, exactly. And and obviously, so when it
comes to this, there isn't any kind of like studies etcetera
around that. They haven't done that much on
the spectrum. But if you think about it from a
logical perspective, the only thing you're doing is kind of
not making sure that you heat muscle doesn't overheat.
So that that would kind of decrease the because in the end
of the day, you're doing more work.
So to one extent, you should have a higher amount of mini
tears in your muscle to then repair.
And that just because you maintain you don't let your
muscle really go really high in temperature that that would
impact the inflammation Sounds unlikely to me without, you
know, 100% saying that this is the case.
But that doesn't sound logical. Yeah, that makes.
Sense whereas like, yeah, if you jump in an ice path, like you
actually bringing down the temperature of the muscle
significantly below its normal temperature, but with palm
cooling you are limiting it increasing.
So it's a very different type of mechanism in in it.
So from a logical perspective, I don't think you would have that
negative impact on it. So palm cooling is kind of like
the equivalent of putting like ample, ample coolant in your
vehicle's engine, whereas cold plunging would be like putting
it in the shop for a week. Yeah, something like that.
I would say like it. It's a bit like maybe it's a
comparison like if you have, if you're.
So if we cannot bring it back a bit like as I was saying the the
Reese or that we have this enzyme that is heat sensitive
and the reason for this is evolutionary.
We like, we're mammals, we should supposed to be around
like 9899°F, about 3736 Celsius. And if we just reach 104° or
something like that, we go to hospital.
Like it's a very narrow spectrum that we operate in.
Like if we go a bit too much, we're in a really bad place
really quickly. And, and nature has put in a lot
of defense mechanisms to ensure that we don't overheat.
If you think about it like if you're, it's, let's say it's
8090°F outside, you're by a beach, etcetera, you feel like
you don't want to do anything. You just want to lie by the
beach and not do anything. And, and, and that's nature's
very clever way to tell you, dude, don't go and run a
marathon now, because if you do, you are going to overheat and
that's dangerous. As soon as you in that situation
jump in a pool or cold water, you wake up right away because
all the sensors on the body feel that, oh, it's cold.
I don't need to be worried for overheating.
So that's why you just like get refreshed so quickly if you just
jump in a pool with that. And So what the heat overheating
kind of does as well. When your body temperature goes
up, you're, you feel more fatigued because the body is
afraid of overheating. So we have like, it's a defence
mechanism to avoid us pushing ourselves to overheat.
That makes sense. It's a very impressed system.
So how does this look? What what is the most practical
manner of implementing this currently?
Like are people like? Is there a device that you would
use in between sets or or what? What is the recommended protocol
here? So first of all, obviously, so
it's like I'm talking to you, I'm the founder of Prime
Science. One of the reasons why we're
having this conversation is that I have developed a product for
this. I would say that that is one of
the most, the easiest and the most functional.
The studies that were made with it or done is a couple of guys
at Stanford, as I said, they have created a glove where you
put your hand in and it kind of circulates water etcetera.
It's a little bit, I have never tested that one because it is
$1500 for one hand. So when I first wanted to kind
of try this out, I was like I didn't want to spend 3 grand on
it, sounded cool, but three grand was a bit too much for
that. So what I actually did it first
in that situation was that I put my hands in water and just
maintained the right temperature.
Because what is important here as well is that you keep a
temperature around 1516°C, so about 45 ish Fahrenheit.
Because if you go colder, so like I can't just sit with a
block of ice because once again I get basic constriction.
So that doesn't become, so you should have kind of that range
of temperature too cold and it, it becomes counterproductive,
too hot that it becomes less effective, so to speak.
So you could use their glove. I said it's $1500 for one hand.
I did a DYI solution first with my hands in water, brought ice
to the gym, had a little rod in it to make sure that I had the
right temperature, etcetera. And I, I just want to test this
out and actually through that, I mean, I was 4, just turned 40
when I did that and I increased some lifts 48% by that in five
weeks, which is the best gains I've had since I was a GUB.
So, so how did you like, how did you structure that over the
course of five weeks? So you were bringing bringing
this water DIY solution to the gym And what were you using as
like the the procs like a bench press or or what what movement?
So, so I, this was a shoulder press.
I used partly I, I, I did a bit of pull ups as well, but I
didn't increase as much in the pull ups.
It's also, it was a lower Rep range.
So as I was saying before, like you see a better impact the
higher the Rep range was, the higher the Rep range is simply
because, yeah, the more reps you do, the more you're going to
heat up your body. And so I think in I had about a
2527% increase, I think it was in pull ups, which is still
pretty significant for for someone that's 40 and spent 15
years in the gym. Would you notice a similar
effect if you're doing a movement in which you're not so
much gripping a bar or like a like squat?
For instance, if you're doing like a barbell squat and you've
got the weight loaded on your back, is is the palm cooling
just as effective there because you're regardless of where
you're applying the the cooler temperature like it's sitting,
that's sitting throughout the entire musculature of your body.
Yes. The way I would express that is
that, yeah, everywhere in the body, it will be more effective
the bigger the muscle group you train.
If you think about it from, like if you do what's called curls,
bicep curls, you're not going to sweat that much because it's an
isolation of a small muscle. But if you start doing dead
lifts and squats, you sweat significantly more, the same
rest and reps and everything, because you use so much more of
your muscles. So the more you heat up, the
more effective it's going to be, regardless of muscle, which
muscle you're working. Gotcha.
OK, that makes total sense. So what?
What is your device now that you've created?
Is it like a like a bar? Or how is that structure?
Yeah, exactly. So we, I've created what I call
the peak performance bar and it is a metal bar which you fill up
with water. And then we also have a thermos
with ice sticks that you can take from home like and put them
in so you get the right temperature for your entire
workout. And as I said, I kind of started
with this pants in water. It was very, very unpractical.
When you have a little bucket of water that you carry around the
gym and you have an ice, a bag of ice right next to you,
etcetera. It was, it was not this
something that I could continue doing.
So yeah, I, I've tested a lot and done a lot of like kind of
what works, what doesn't work, what's practical and so forth
and come to this solution which works fantastically well to be
honest. You just have that one with you
in your gym bag. I put the ice sticks in the
thermos in the morning when I had to work and I can their
person in there for the entire day.
Whenever I go to the gym they're ready to be used and put them in
there in regardless of the temperature of.
The water in your gym, etcetera. You can use it.
So you put the so you put the ice sticks in the thermos to
keep them cold, and then you put, when you get to the gym,
you put the ice sticks in the bar with water.
Yeah, exactly. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
And it maintains that 55°F throughout the entirety of the
workout. Yeah, exactly.
So we also have on on it. I have a little a thing that
measures you can see the temperature roughly.
So you know which temperature range it is and throughout the
workout you kind of take out the melted eye sticks because
they're plastic and put them in. It comes with a little little
bag and then you just take new ones and it lasts.
You have enough cold sticks in there for a bit over an hour
workout depending on little bit on your intensity.
And, and do you recommend people just like in between sets just
grab that bar for a prescribed length of time or how do they
how do they do that? My recommendation is always to
try to hold it as much as possible and this kind of goes
outside. Obviously we have created this
device that is super effective, but this goes outside this as
well. Like my recommendation would be
try to keep as cool as possible in your workouts.
So I would not wear a beanie or big pump cowers, etcetera,
because that heats you up. And with the knowledge we've
been talking about now obviously that's going to be
counterproductive. So I would recommend holding
this one every opportunity you have and even outside as I was
saying, like try to keep as cool as possible when you're at the
gym. That's going to be that's going
to have a positive impact on your performance and how you
feel. Yeah, this is super interesting.
What what about, you know, I've, I've read a little bit about
sauna post workout, which is obviously going to be heating
the body up and yet heat shock proteins as a way to increase,
you know, there's been studies that Tao that it increases, you
know, growth hormones significantly.
Would there be any conflict there?
Or would it be a similar situation as to the, the cold
plunging and that totally different scenarios.
And if you do them in isolation, shouldn't have an impact on one
another at all. Yeah.
No, I can't see that having an impact on each other because
what you do like so when you use the palm cooling during your
exercise, what you do is that like you're avoiding your muscle
during the exercise to fail because of overheating rather
than muscular failure. And so you can do more reps,
more sets, etcetera. If you then go and do a sauna
after the workout, that's a completely different mechanism,
like you have already done all the work that and you have been
actually been able to pushing yourself further than you would
have done without the palm cooling.
So actually adding someone on top of that should probably just
be like a stack, so to speak, and these ones accentuate the
benefits of each other. Gotcha, gotcha.
Now this, this is super interesting and I'm assuming you
mentioned that it it's best if you do both palm cooling and,
you know, foot cooling if possible.
Like I've, I've got my own gym, I'd train barefoot more often
than not. I could in theory the in between
sets stand on something cold and grip the bar in between sets and
that would that would be the optimal approach.
Actually, you shouldn't stand on something cold.
You should sit down then and have your feet because if you
stand you get basic restriction because you have so much
pressure on your foot. OK.
And, and that also goes when you hold the bar or anything like
you shouldn't, you shouldn't hold it too tightly.
You should just hold it like very carefully.
Like for example, if you, if you take a glass and you hold it
tight, you're going to see on the inside that the palm of your
hand is going white. And that's basic constriction.
So like you're trying to avoid that to have the most blood flow
in those surfaces. I would say that I mean like for
a great majority of people, I think palm cooling is very much
enough. I from because the way they came
up with this was actually they were were looking at how they
could help people like firemen, etcetera to get colder quicker.
And then they realized there was a performance kind of
enhancement part and that has become a big thing.
But so they kind of checked or or or tried to no did a did a
study of how quickly cool body temperature goes down if you do
cooling palms, feet and face. And you do get a 25% increase or
something like that when you add one more of them in terms of
body heat extraction. So, but that it kind of doesn't
double, so to speak, if you do both hands and feet, if you see
what I mean. Yeah, totally, totally makes
sense. Is there a length of time you
should wait after you stop gripping the cold bar prior to
gripping the barbell? Like should you let your your
hands return to room temperature?
No, not really. They're they're they're because
they it, it isn't that cold or anything like the the only thing
would be like if you, I mean, if you're going in doing like Max
lift, etcetera, you need to probably choke your hands a
little bit and stuff like that. But there isn't anything I would
say that logically would mean that that would make a
difference. Gotcha.
What is interesting, you said as
well that you had heard about this a little bit about from a
recovery perspective and that is a super interesting area.
The mechanism isn't really known why, but it has a very
beneficial impact on delayed onset muscle saunas.
So for example, if we take the guy I was talking about, Greg
Clog earlier, the NFL player, like so he first did like, yeah,
five sets, 103 reps or something like that.
Then he came in three days later, did 130, some 35 or
whatever it was in the same and he did four more sets.
So a total work increase by almost 100% with, with, with all
of it. And as many would say in that
situation, he was like, I'm going to be sore tomorrow.
Didn't feel nothing almost. Interesting.
And and I have felt this myself, like, I mean, I always attested
it. Like I never get sore.
Like it doesn't really matter what I do.
Like, you know, when you shift around you workouts, you go from
one Rep brains to another one, you do those things.
And I always used to be sore if as soon as I made one of those
changes and it was kind of like, yeah, this just happens.
But these days, like it doesn't matter what I do, I just don't
get sore. And and as I said, like
mechanism of why that is the case isn't known.
They are trying to establish that.
But anecdotally it it just, it makes a huge impact on your
recovery in that sense. I would imagine there's some
correlation between the, the muscle heating up and you know,
11 individual reaching their, their, their lactate threshold
and then increased circulating lactate is going to be a pretty
significant driver of muscle soreness the following day.
So if that is correlated with the the muscle heating and
that's reduced significantly, that would make sense to me.
Yeah. No, logically that would
actually make a lot of sense as well.
When you when you, when you put it that way, interesting.
I am. Sorry, no, go ahead.
Yeah, I I am in contact a little bit the emailing with Greg
Heller, the guy who came up with this to get a follow a bit
before they're released up and then but so far they hadn't
haven't really fully established but it, but what you're saying
there is actually makes a lot of sense.
So that could could definitely be the reason.
So how would this translate for someone that's doing like an
endurance sport, like running an ultra marathon, for instance?
Because that would be an instance in which very high
repetition, very high volume, that would have a a heating
effect on the muscles for sure. How would somebody apply this in
that setting? So from actually at the moment
there isn't a lot of like so because the guys who came up
with this and done muscles studies of using a glove, there
isn't a lot of like endurance studies done on it.
They have done one on treadmill where people could walk I think
25% longer when they were cooling the palms of their hands
before they kind of cut out. And when you cool down, when you
use palm cooling and cool down your body, your heart rate goes
down, which is obviously very beneficial if someone does any
kind of endurance event. I also, I actually had a, so I'm
not a runner myself. I'm, I like to lift weights and
that's kind of what I do. But I had, I shared a, one of
our bars with a guy at the gym who is more of a runner and he
ran on a treadmill with it. Just first started running, got
his heart rate up to 175. Then he put his hand on it,
maintained the same pace and his heart rate dropped to 155 with
the same pace he took. He took his hand off it and his
heart rate slowly went up again. Put his hand on it again, heart
rate dropped to 155. And he did that a couple of
times. And then at the end of the
workout when he was cooling down, his heart rate normally
drops about 20 beats per 30 seconds.
While holding it, he dropped 40 beats per 30 seconds.
That's a pretty significant decrease for sure.
Yeah, I, I, I mean that that is very significant.
So my analysis of what happens is that one of the main reasons
why we need to pump so much blood through us is to make sure
we don't overheat, because that's how the body cools down
the muscles. That's one of the functions
obviously transport oxygen and and a number of other things.
But one of the core things in this is that it needs to cool
down the muscles, but because the blood then gets cooler, it
doesn't need to pump as much to cool down the muscles.
So you can go for longer or just keep on pushing.
Run faster with the same heart rate when you're cooler.
Do do you see this making like in in the setting of weight
training? Obviously this makes a lot more
sense if you're doing higher Rep repetition sets, but if you are
doing like a single Rep set, is there going to be as noticeable
use case scenario there or is it pretty much just in the high Rep
sets? So I, I think it will, it will
obviously like when you look at it from a percentage perspective
and, and just because you cool your pumps, you don't
necessarily go get stronger. But what you can do is that you
can do more repetitions with the same weight and that will
obviously lead to conditioning affected the long run.
And then you from that perspective, if you are like a
powerlifter, they do 1-2. There will still be benefit of
this first of all, from a recovery perspective, you will
be able to train like more frequently and so forth.
But also what one of the things that powerlifters do is that
they go and do 1-2 and then they wait until their heart rate
going down etcetera. And as we were talking about
just now, it speeds up your stabilizing your heart rate.
So it will have benefits from those perspective you can, you
can go on quicker again after and you will have a improved
recovery. Gotcha.
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so they wouldn't have to
spend, you know, 10 minutes between sets like a lot of
proletar do. Exactly, they might spend 7
minutes and in the end of the day like that makes a pretty
decent difference in how much workout you can put through.
Yeah, totally. They certainly wouldn't be
taking up the gym equipment here as long as they do.
Exactly, and everybody would be happy.
Yeah. Now this is super interesting.
How does, out of curiosity, how does this play into consumption
of cold fluids intra workout? Like has there been any research
around that? Like should if someone is
training, should they consume colder liquids to have a similar
effect or is there an effect there whatsoever?
Yes. So there hasn't been studies on
on that specifically. So the if you think about it
from the perspective that like your body overheating or heating
up is one of the most limiting factor that you have for your
physical performance. So drinking cooler drinks to
keep your body temperature lower has a benefit impact or a
positive impact, especially throughout your workout.
It will most likely unless you drink a lot of cold water, it is
not going to have as immediate impact because just because of
how the the blood from the palms goes straight to the heart and
then out to the working muscle. Whereas the drinking cool water
kind of cools you down from the inside and it doesn't go
straight to the muscle. Does that kind of make sense
that it has a cooling impact on your body but it doesn't has an
acute has an acute impact on the working muscle from a gym
perspective? So much more of a delayed
response time basically. Yeah.
So like if you think about it, you do an hour gym session, if
you drink very cold water, it's going to mean that you are not
as warm at the end of that workout as you were would have
been otherwise, which then has a like you will feel less fatigued
and you will have more power in your muscles because they will
be further away from from overheating.
Gotcha. That makes total sense.
So how would you recommend so someone listening to this and
they want to like just put this to a test.
What's a very practical, actionable way that someone
could, you know, measure this like like a push ups or, you
know, pull up something that pretty much anybody can have
access to? What would be a way to structure
that to be able to see a pretty tangible difference in the
shortest amount of time possible?
So actually to see the biggest impact, then you use fairly like
short rest periods. So if you like go maybe
two-minute rest periods and try to cool the palms of your hands
for 90 seconds of that and chunk a bit higher reps is where
you're going to see the bigger benefit.
If you wanted like like I kind of did when I first tried it
out, Yeah, higher reps will be and slightly shorter rest
periods. The the more your body heat up,
the more impact you will see on this.
Gotcha, so someone could do like one number of push ups to Max,
set of push ups to failure, and then wait you know, three or
four days till they're fully recovered and then try and cool
their palms and do the exact same thing to see how many more
repetitions they would get. Yeah, exactly that that that
would be and and that's kind of what I did, but with with my
hands in in water. And just very like, like
anything, if you want to really see a difference, you have to
track very dill into what you're doing.
Like this will actually be a thing that you sometimes if you
really think about it, you will feel less fatigued as well.
But obviously if you want to really see a difference, like I
mean, if anybody want to see a difference of taking creatine,
you have to really track your lifts.
Like otherwise you're not going to just like it's not like
you're going to walk into the gym and suddenly be Arnold just
because you're taking a bit of creatine.
Yeah. No, that's a, that's a good
point. Totally.
A bit of a tangent, but with creatine, have you noticed any
significant change over a long enough period of time with
creatine? I I don't, I'm too scientific to
say that because there has been, when I have been on and off
creatine and stuff like that, there's been too many other
things I would say in my life. Yeah.
Like just like I've been out drinking and things like that,
that has had an impact. That's that's probably negating
any kind of thing that has to do with creating or from my own
personal perspective, like too much of a recreational on that,
which is why I find this so interesting because I could
really, really, I guess I did it more scientifically than I ever
done because I was like, you know what, I'm going to try to
really repeat what they did in these studies as much as
possible. So, so this has given me more
significantly more than any great engine or anything like
that that's ever, you know, shown for me.
Yeah. No, I'm, I'm super intrigued by
this because it would not really be, I mean the barrier to entry
is relatively, you know, negligible.
I mean, you would just simply cool your palms between sets and
if you're taking a rest set anyways like that, that is not
really taking up any more time. I often times superset my lifts
so I don't really have time. But on my primary compound
movements, I do not superset those.
So I can easily cool my palms during that rest period.
And I've been tracking everything pretty diligently,
especially on those primary movements for the past, you
know, six months or so. So I'd be able to have a pretty,
pretty accurate feedback to see any tangible difference between
the palm cooling versus not. So this is this has got me
intrigued. Yeah.
What I find super interesting about this, and this is going to
go a little bit on a tangent here, but is that if you think
about it, I think so. Like I'm a huge advocate for
this, as you hear. And I'm like, but I think this
is going to completely revolutionize so much in the
exercise industry because if you think about it, all studies that
have been done on how much muscle, how much strength you
gain is without palm cooling. And that means that every time
someone does one set, the second set they will be overheated.
Third set, they will be overheated unless they wait.
Do it like strength lifters and wait 5-6 minutes.
Everybody's overheated after the first set.
So if we remove that, it can throw everything we know about
exercise Physiology out because every single.
Test subject in most subject in most of these studies have
actually overheated after the first set.
Yeah, now it makes sense. And I, I, I prefer lifting
relatively quickly. Like I, I don't like taking
extremely long rest sets. Like my, my rest sets pretty
much the length of time it takes me to get a drink of water.
So in that setting, it's very likely that my muscles are
pretty on the, on the spectrum of being overheated upon going
into that next set. So if I can mitigate that and
see a tangible increase in, you know, not even necessarily the
reps that I'm performing, because I'll, I'll typically
increase the weight with each set.
But if I'm able to increase the weight and then get the same
number of reps without hitting failure, that's going to result
in some pretty tangible improvements.
Yeah, exactly. And, and I mean like, I'll be
honest with you. Like I'm, I'm 43 now and I'm
hitting PBS. I, I've almost spent 20 years in
the gym like, and I'm in where I don't have niggles because I'm
43. Like I'm stronger than I ever
been because of this. And you practice what you
preach. I'm assuming you're, you're
always bringing the bar to the gym and you're always using it.
It's just kind of is your your daily protocol now, right?
Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. Every time, like I, yeah, for,
for me, knowing what I what I know and what I have seen from
my own tests and everything, it's a bit like, it's a bit like
trying to go to the gym without sleeping.
No one would do that. And so so why would I go to the
gym without my bar? It's like I take it on holiday.
I take it everywhere, like it's just for me.
Yeah. You 100% practice what I've
reached on that one. And how long?
I mean, I know you said that you, you know, you don't need to
wait any significant length of time between, you know, letting
go of the bar and then grabbing the barbell.
But, and everyone's getting a little bit different, you know,
length of time between sets. But when you're training, how
long do you typically try and grip your cold bar between sets?
I, I try to cool as much as possible simply because like
with the logic knowledge that the more I heat up, the quicker
my energy production, my ATP production and the muscle goes
shuts off. Well, so the more I cool, the
better it's going to become. So, but then obviously, like I'm
also, as I said, like I'm practical.
Like I don't set my entire workout out.
Like it's just that, you know, unless I'm doing something,
changing weights or something, I hold the bar.
That's what I do. And OK, I go from one machine to
another, one station to another. Obviously I can only to carry my
little stuff with me, but I have the bar in the other hand.
Yeah. That's what I do like, but I
also don't, you know, overdo it because I, I wanted to be
practical and I don't want to be in the gym for two hours.
It's just too cool. Cool, cool.
Right. Well, if nothing else, it would
absolutely get people off of their cell phones between sets,
and that would be a huge win. 100 percent, 100%.
I'm one of those guys who still like I have, I have the probably
12 years by now of written hand. Like I take all my lips in a
handwritten and stuff. No one can read that stuff
except me. But that that's me, so I I'll
stay off my hand in my cell phone as well.
No, that's good. That's good.
You, you mentioned a good point. So like, if you are, you know,
moving weight on the bar or you, you're grabbing your gym bag,
walking over to a new piece of equipment, you're only holding
the bar in one hand. I'm assuming that would not be
as optimal as holding it with both hands, but you're still
getting some benefit there. Is that like a unilateral thing
like is only like if you're holding it in your left hand, is
your left PEC going to be more prepared to do a a bench press
than your right PEC? Or is it pretty much like
universal to the entire body regardless of you know, if you
have both hands on it or or one? How does that?
Work, yeah, it's universal because it goes to the heart and
then it goes out from the heart and then it kind of distributes
from there. So that would be wouldn't make
any impact if it's left or right hand.
Gotcha. And the benefit would just be
you would cool faster if both hands were on it.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, then you get basically
double the effect. That's what I would say is like,
I, I don't know, maybe you, you get, yeah, pretty much double
the effect. Like, but also, you know, what I
do there is that I go from one machine to another.
So then it's going to have less of an acute impact in it because
I'm, I'm, I might not even do the same muscle group.
And that's the way that like we were talking about before.
What can people really do? Well, if you think about this.
So I've restructured my workouts completely.
I don't do three chest exercises right after each other.
I do a chest and something else, let's say back because that
gives my pecs a bit more time to cool down than if I do 3 pecs in
a row. Yeah, and that makes sense.
And and also like if you do legs, like what I do is that I
do like squats, then I do triceps in between.
So I do squats and then I do like tricep pull downs or
something like that because I heat up so much when I do any
leg exercise. So do putting in like a bit of a
small upper body in between gives me more opportunity to
cool down and then I can hit leg press significantly harder than
if I go straight from the from squats to leg press.
Yeah, no, that makes total sense.
I'm typically doing like a full body routine at the moment, so
I'm only doing one exercise per body part per training session.
So I'm not ever doing multiple exercises for, you know, legs
back-to-back to back. So, so that would that would,
you know, translate pretty well there.
If you're doing something like a like a quad extension, in which
case your hands are more or less, you know, free, would it
make sense to grip the bar with your hands while you're doing a
quad extension, or is that not necessary?
I like it. It could, I mean, logically if
you do a chord extension, it could make an impact.
I guess I'm strong enough so I need to hold myself down when I
do a chord extension. So like, like in anything, make
sure that you do the exercise to the full extent and then try to
fiddle with the other things. But it could have a positive
impact if you hold the bar while you're doing squad extensions,
yes. Gotcha.
Interesting. Interesting.
But there is no studies or anything like in that the area
that that's just putting logic to the thing.
So like we've heard since we were kids, you know, you, you
lose a lot of heat through your hands, your feet and your, and
your head. That's why like when you're, you
know, the young kid, you got to wear gloves, boots and A and a,
you know, hat. Is it more so the face then?
Not so much the top of the head anywhere there's no hair
follicles. Yes, exactly.
That is the area. So from the beard line and then
females have, even though they're not beard, they have the
same kind of beard line and up to the, yeah, obviously we have
our eyebrows etcetera. But the rest of that area is
where we have glabrous skin. So it wouldn't make sense to try
and wear like a a a hat with ice packs in it because that would
still be over top of your hair and it wouldn't really be
practical to cover your face at all times with cold packs.
Like the hands is pretty much the most user friendly,
practical way to go about it. Yeah, 100% that.
And and that's why we kind of like, that's what we we call it
pond cooling. You could cool any of the other
of these, but yeah, it becomes significantly more practical in
in most settings. I'm trying to think where I had
heard about it and originally and I I think it may have been
that same Huberman podcast. Do you remember when that was
released? That is just 2021.
I think somewhere he did two. I listened to it.
I think somewhere in the summer, autumn 2021, I think the first
one and then the other one a couple of months later.
Interesting. And you just took that and ran
with it, huh? I, I, I, I literally did like,
I, I'm interested in silence and stuff like that.
And as I said, like I like to improve performance, but I'm not
going to jump through 10 hoops to get the 5% increase.
But when someone says like, yeah, you can increase, you pull
up 144% in six weeks. And I, that gets me listening.
And when you hear an NFL player increasing his dips by 201
percent, which was of the five weeks, I that also makes me
well, this is this is not like the normal stuff you hear about.
And, and I, I, I couldn't really help myself.
I just had to test that one. The guys, the PTS in in my gym,
they just laughed at me when I sat there with my big bucket
with water and ice in it, the road, etcetera do.
You get a lot of questions in the gym with the with the cold
bar, people asking you what it is.
The the bar I I've had a few questions here and there, but
not nearly as many questions as when I was sitting with a bit
big ice back or water bucket. I got more questions then.
Well, I mean the the bar, I've seen a picture of it, it looks
pretty sleek. I mean, it looks like you're
almost holding a water bottle. Yeah.
And that's the thing, like for me when I when I developed this,
it was like it needs to be nice, easy and practical.
Like this is as easy as holding a water bottle.
Like you don't. Yeah, it it's and it can very
easily be used between sets etcetera.
Like it's not a hindrance in in your workouts.
And what what's, what's the material of the bar itself?
Is it like a titanium or like a aluminum or something like that?
Aluminum. Gotcha.
Aluminum, yeah, that has one of the highest heat transfer
abilities. I started engineering as at uni,
so had geeked down a bit into the thermodynamics of of those
things and making sure that we have the kind of the right so we
can maintain the temperature and tested a lot of things around
that as well so. It's not gonna be very heavy
then either. Obviously it's illuminated
pretty light and then the water in there is not gonna weigh that
much either. Yeah, no, it I, I think fully,
fully loaded, so to speak, it's like 6-7 hundred grams or
something like that, but it doesn't weigh much at all.
Nice well, I'm, I'm curious man, I'm I'm definitely going to have
to put this to the test. Like like I said, I'm always
super skeptical, but I've got the the metrics that I can
easily, you know, measure against.
So I'll be able to know pretty pretty realistically and
definitively if it's working or not.
So I'm. Happy to send you a board map,
you can try it out and interesting to see what you
think. Yeah, no, I'm super curious
because I'm in the building phase right now, so I'm trying
to just, you know, take whatever advantage I can to improve all
of my lifting metrics. So if I can simply hold a bar to
improve, you know, thermal regulation of my muscle tissue
and cool down between sets to increase overall peak
performance, that makes total sense to me.
Yeah, I'll send you one afterwards.
Sure. Awesome, awesome.
Well, what else you got Cookie man, are you?
When did the business launch? I guess if you'd just heard that
podcast in 21, this is a relatively new business.
Yeah. So we, we just launched,
launched the peak performance bar like 1-2 months ago or
something like that. And as I said, like I've been
interested in the cold space. So we do have a, another product
for more weight loss, which I call the calorie burner vest,
which is simply a vest you put over your shoulders and it cools
down your body and you burn calories.
I've tested it with in a lab and I increased my calorie burn by
two 100% without moving. I still have my laptop in my
lap. You can you can watch Netflix
and become a colorary Burning Machine I.
Don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing though.
So many people need to just embrace working out more.
But that I ain't going to argue without saying at all.
Then again you have the benefit of like because it becomes less
of AI Guess for me as I'm I'm not a big fan of cardio.
So like having a way to burn calories that is not cardio?
I see it pretty positive but yes IA 100% agree with you.
A lot of people should not have that kind of thing.
They should just go out and move rather than anything.
Else so. So what does that look like like
for you? For instance, what do you have
any idea what your maintenance caloric intake is roughly?
Actually, I have never tested that in that sense.
We just did a test with with this one specifically to kind of
see like what like I sat down and they measured my gallery
burn at that point in time and then I took on the West and
thought it like pushing the intensity with that one.
So I actually don't know exactly my gallery burn in that sense
unfortunately. And it increased expenditure by
what percentage? 202. 100% over baseline.
Yeah, over baseline. Yeah, that's pretty significant.
I mean, my, my maintenance intake is roughly 3000 calories.
So 200% would be 6000 calories. So if I'm burning 6000 calories
with the vest on, it's that's pretty pretty insane.
Obviously, you need to think about it like you would only do
that well, while you're wearing the vest and kind of in that
state, you wouldn't, that wouldn't extend through the
entire day. It would be during the, you
know, time when you're wearing it.
So, but still it would, you know, increase your need
significantly, which could be of huge benefit.
And you do have because you cool down your body as well.
You do have an increase in brown fat and all the benefits that
comes with that. And then you don't have the same
food benefits as doing a cold plunge and with dopamine
increases and all these type of things.
But you do have the conditional impact on that makes sense from
a brown fat perspective. Yeah, I guess the 3000 was a was
a bad representation because that's total caloric intake for
the day and. Maintenance, I guess someone.
'S burning, you know, like treadmill and they're burning
150 calories. If they could burn 300 calories
via the same amount of time by wearing the vest, that would be
a better use case. Scenario example for sure.
Yeah, exactly. Because well, as you're saying,
like if someone just walks on a treadmill or something like
that, but don't do any intense cardio, the calorie burn isn't
that huge from a pure calorie perspective.
And this could lead to fairly similar without or.
And I mean like I use this one when I'm at work sitting and
sitting in front of my laptop and doing work, etcetera.
I've even had it on conference calls just but I like I have a
hoodie over it so no one sees it.
Have you noticed that you are hungrier if all things else?
If all else is equal and you wear the vest, you burn more
calories. Do you notice that your hunger
increases as a result of that additional expenditure?
Not hugely. It obviously depends a little
bit on how much I'm pushing it like, but it's not like just
because I use it for like an hour or two that I then feel
significantly hungrier. So it doesn't seem to have
exactly the same. Like if you would go and do a
jog for or burn 500 calories, your body has a tendency to tell
you that you're hungry and you you eat the same amount unless
you really control that. It doesn't seem to have really
that impact, but not tested that it to huge extent.
But that was my kind of my own anecdotal way.
Oh, interesting, interesting. This is, this is super
fascinating. I definitely want to try the bar
out because like I said, I'd be able to test that relatively
scientifically given the data that I've collected thus far.
So yeah, I'm, I'm super intrigued by that.
Well, awesome, man. Where do people go to find out
more about you, to learn more, to dive into the studies, to
learn about the bar and just kind of dive deeper into your
world? Yeah.
So if if you wanna like hit me up or we can, you can either
e-mail us via our website, whichisprimescience.co.uk or
Google prime Science or you can find me on Instagram.
Either Prime Science help, which the company went on or he may
harm on fitness. If you want to talk about palm
cooling, I am all for it. I'm can talk to that until the
cows come home and super interested in sharing this
because I honestly think this is going to revolutionize the
exercise industry. I think that in 10 years time
we're going to look at body temperature as an as important
component to performance as we do sleep today.
Well, that, that's the thing that that's, that's a good
bridge to, to, to cross right there.
Because like I said, I'm super sceptical about all things.
And if it sounds too good to be true, it normally isn't true.
But when I've learned what I've learned about Thermo regulation
as it pertains to sleep quality, like that has opened my eyes to
Thermo regulation in general. So Thermo regulation as it
pertains to exercise performance, like that's not too
big a bridge to gap to me anymore.
No. And, and, and, and when you
understand the like, like if you think about what we're talking
about earlier, it's like, Simply put, there is an enzyme in every
single muscle that controls the ATP production.
When the heat goes up, the ATP production goes down.
Then when you think about that, you're like, well, that will be
a huge limiting factor. Totally, totally.
Well, I'm super intrigued. I will definitely, definitely
put this to the test and I will let you know what I what I
learned in in doing so. But yeah, if you if you're able
to increase my my markers by 20. 30 or 50?
Percent, that'd be. Awesome, the ATP production is
just shut off because of overheating.
Yeah, no, this, this is cool. This is cool.
I'm excited, very excited. Well, Timmy, I'm, I'm gonna link
out to everybody, make it easy for people to find you.
And I will definitely keep you posted on what I learned in my
own self experimentation. But I really appreciate you
taking the time to to enlighten me man.
I I had no clue that we'd be able to fill an hour's time
talking about palm cooling, but I feel like we only scratched
the surface. Yeah, no, definitely I it's been
a very interesting conversation. Really happy that you had me on
my hair, Robert. My pleasure, my pleasure.
We'll, we'll, we'll have to do a follow up two round two after I
put this to the test for sure. Oh yeah, I'm very, very
interested in doing that well. Thank you very much Sir, and
until then man, you have a good one and take care.
You too. Cheers.
Thank you. Cheers.