Apex Cool Labs Revolutionizing Athletic Performance: The Narwhal Palm Cooling Technology with Ariel & Evy - Episode #231

Episode #231 promises to transform your understanding of athletic performance and recovery through the cutting-edge device, the Narwhal. Learn about Apex Cool Labs' palm cooling technology with co-founders Evy Lyons and Ariel Paul. Sparked by a Huberman Lab podcast, gain exclusive insights into how this remarkable tool is optimizing the game for elite athletes, including NHL player Zach Hyman during the Stanley Cup Finals.

Evy and Ariel share personal anecdotes and the iterative process that refined their product into a game-changer for exercise recovery and performance. The potential of palm cooling is undeniable, with real-world applications enhancing interval training, CrossFit, and even the gruelling Firefighter Challenge League.

Beyond traditional sports, learn how palm cooling is meeting the unique needs of athletes in adapted sports and those facing extreme conditions, like firefighters. Discover optimal usage times, benefits for heart rate reduction, and the supportive, competitive spirit within the firefighting community. Don’t miss this chance to revolutionize your fitness routine with insights directly from the innovators themselves!

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Other episodes you might enjoy:
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Never the moment, never ordinary at Bet365, but what is Zach Hyman doing anyone?

Speaker 2: 0:07

You just made the best decision in your life because you tuned in to the 231st episode of the Athlete's Podcast today, featuring the Apex Cool Labs team. Evy and Ariel Join the show to share a bit about palm cooling. If you're not familiar with this yet, you should be, because every athlete in five to 10 years will be using some form of palm cooling technology. Today we get to talk about the Narwhals from Apex Cool Labs, If you haven't heard of them yet. It's a nice sleek copper piece of equipment that allows you to cool your hands. You may have actually seen a video of Zach Hyman doing this, the Stanley Cup Finals leading scorer, currently cooling his hands mid game. Now, I know it seems a little quirky, but I promise the performance benefits are incredible and we go into details during this episode. But we should also talk about the fact that the Oilers are down 0-2 in the Stanley Cup Finals. As of this recording, Caitlin Clark got snubbed from Team USA's Olympic roster. That's crazy, in my opinion. I cannot believe it.

Speaker 2: 1:10

And the third thing that we should all be aware of is the fact that Perfect Sports now has Canadian maple protein back in stock. If you have not heard me talk about it yet I've not been doing my job properly. Use the code AP20. Try this protein out. I promise it will be the best flavor that you ever try, and if you don't like it, let me know and I'll question your taste buds. But either way, this is the 231st episode of the show. We get to talk about all things palm cooling, creatine, performance, firefighting. In this episode there's a ton jam-packed. Clearly the protein wants me. I want you to listen to this episode. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get to the episode here we go.

Speaker 3: 1:48

You're the most decorated racquetball player in US history, world's strongest man, from childhood passion to professional athlete, eight-time Ironman champion. So what was it like making your debut in the NHL? What is your biggest piece of advice for the next generation of athletes, from underdogs to national champions? This is the athletes podcast, where high performance individuals share their triumphs, defeats and life lessons to educate, entertain and inspire the next generation of athletes.

Speaker 2: 2:17

Here we go no, uh, the stanley cup final has been good. The oilers have seemed slightly under I don't know the best way to describe it. They haven't performed up to the standard as which that we became expected to over the first three rounds, and I think that's also because Florida is a really dang good team.

Speaker 1: 2:36

What I notice is their defense. Florida's defense is just brutal.

Speaker 2: 2:41

Yeah. So Paul Maurice is an incredible coach. I like start by saying that he's had a ton of experience in winnipeg, now transferring to florida, I think the other aspect is like florida has really good management. They were there last year. They were hungry, they just missed the cup and so those guys got a taste of what it was like and they really want to make sure that they get back and they win that thing. They weren't touching that eastern conference trophy and they're hungry for it.

Speaker 2: 3:06

Barkov's one of the best in the league, most underrated players. They also have Luongo at the helm, which is why I'm wearing this jersey. Team Canada. I struggle because I want to see a Canadian team win the Cup, but I also want to see all of the individuals on Florida who deserve a Cup get that W. We're just happy we get to see good hockey being played, apex Cool Labs being used during the Stanley Cup finals. That's got to be a pretty dang cool experience for you two. Why don't you start off by introducing yourselves and then sharing a bit about palm cooling, how the narwhals are taking the NHL to the next level?

Speaker 4: 3:39

Sure, yeah, I'm Evie Lyons. I'm co-founder and CEO of Apex School Labs, and this is Ariel Paul.

Speaker 1: 3:48

And I'm the co-founder and CTO of Apex School Labs.

Speaker 4: 3:52

And he invented the device that we have, which is called the Narwhals, which is a palm cooling device that is used to enhance performance, improve recovery in all sorts of different sports and training environments. We can dive into that, but one of the main use cases of the day is the use case for accelerated recovery in between periods during the Stanley Cup finals.

Speaker 2: 4:20

How the heck does something like this come about Because I'm holding this right now for those watching on YouTube the narwhal comes in a nice case. We got our protective aspect too. It's great because we brought this to the hockey rink a couple days ago with the Street Fighters is our beer league team name, actually and we got a couple of AHL guys on there Devante Stevens, michael Regish, amongst other individuals and you know we were. I took full, full criticism. I didn't get the the narwhals frozen completely, but we did get the premise and the boys were excited about being able to use it for the rest of the season, and I'm excited to use it in the gym. Where did this kind of come about? Because it's not just firefighters, which we know we're going to talk about, and it impacts positively. It's not just for athletes, but it's for gym goers, weekend warriors. This is a tool that everyone can use realistically, right.

Speaker 4: 5:16

Absolutely yeah. The basic premise of palm cooling is that in the palms of our hands, the soles of our feet and also our cheeks, we have what's known as glabrous tissue, and in this tissue we have special vasculature called arteriovenous anastomosis, which are direct connections between arteries and veins, and what this enables is an extraordinary blood flow, especially when we are working out, when we are hot, and so what you're really doing by cooling your palms is cooling your blood, which runs through your circulatory system and has systemic effects on your performance. So there are a couple main benefits that are going to happen here. One core body temperature highly correlated to your heart rate, and so by cooling down your core body temperature via your palms, you quickly reduce your heart rate, which is important in breaks in competitions whether that's basketball, hockey, any sport that has a break you can quickly accelerate recovery and take the court or ice stronger. It's also cooling down your muscles. So, Ariel, maybe you want to explain a little bit what happens in our muscles when we're working out and why heat becomes such a problem.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Yeah, so your skin, your fascia, your muscles themselves are actually great insulators. So what's very interesting about our perception of heat is our conscious perception of temperature. We only have conscious access to the periphery of our body, our skin surface. So you can actually be quite warm internally within your muscles and not know it in a sense. So if you're doing, for instance, a set of pull-ups, till failures, locally internally your muscles can get quite hot and that heat is difficult to get out because all those layers are insulatory. But when that internal temperature of your muscles starts to reach about 102 degrees Fahrenheit, you have an enzyme known as muscle pyruvate kinase which is responsible for the local production of ATP within your cells and that enzyme gets inhibited by heat. One way to think about that is a bit of a safety mechanism, since you have no internal access to that internal temperature of your muscles. Your muscles can actually get cellular damage if they start to cook themselves, if they get too hot. So what happens is, as your muscles get hot, that enzyme starts to degrade. It shuts off that local production of ATP and that's one of the main mechanisms in that feeling of failure.

Speaker 1: 7:57

Oh, I can't do another rep Because you know if you do something like a set of push-ups or bench press or pull-ups till failure. If you wait some time you can do a whole another set. So by cooling our blood that runs through our muscles, we're able to take out that heat quite effectively, kick in that ATP production sooner and then be able to perform better in terms of volume, being able to do more reps on our next set. So there's that. Where that big performance benefit comes in in the gym is that if we're intercept palm cooling, if we're cooling between sets of exercise, we can basically perform better with more energy on the next set.

Speaker 2: 8:42

Ariel, so you just explained all of this. You talked about ATP. I know some of the benefits there. I'm curious, though could I not just throw some ice on my body to cool down my muscles? What makes the narwhal so amazing?

Speaker 1: 9:00

Yeah, I mean really the secret sauce to palm cooling. Like we said, you're trying to cool your blood. So if you hold something that is too cold, those arteriovenous anastomosis are going to vasoconstrict, they're going to shut down. Your hands will turn white. So if you hold ice, it's too cold, you shut down that effect. You're no longer transmitting that beautiful blood flow through your palms and so you're not cooling your blood. So the secret sauce is to be holding something cool, not cold. And since heat flows from hot to cold, you want to be holding something as cool as you can without causing vasoconstriction, and that temperature is kind of in the low 50s Fahrenheit.

Speaker 2: 9:42

Okay, the low 50s Fahrenheit Okay. And then I read your paper on your website around creatine versus palm cooling. Creatine maybe five to 10% increase in performance. Apex Cool Labs Narwhal is up to like 37%. Is that correct?

Speaker 4: 10:00

So in that study or in that blog post, what we were doing is comparing research that's been done on creatine and there's a lot of it, so it's a very well-understood supplement and the research done on palm cooling in terms of strength gains.

Speaker 4: 10:14

And what we talk about there is that in the creatine studies they talk about how you can expect roughly a 12% increase in strength over roughly six to eight weeks. This was a meta analysis using creatine. So if you just take creatine and you continue doing your normal workout you know lifting program you should be about 12% stronger than if you did not take creatine. When we then looked at some of the studies on palm cooling specifically, there was a study out of Stanford where they were doing a sub-maximum bench press protocol. So they had participants doing six sets of bench press using about 50, I believe 50% of their one rep max to basically AMRAP, am rep every set to am rep over five weeks, and what they found was the participants there gained 37% strength compared to the non palm coolers who are gaining 17% on that protocol.

Speaker 1: 11:39

There is a lot more research to do and we're not saying creatine. Like you know, they claimed better than steroids and the problem with that is if you frame it exactly the right way, like in terms of recovery and some of these things. But the way people think about steroids is hypertrophy and you can look there are some crazy studies. Jeff Nippard, who is a Canadian bodybuilder influencer, has a great summary of this on one of his YouTube channels. There are studies showing that if you just take steroids and do no exercise, there are outliers that gain like 12, 14 pounds of muscle. I mean just crazy amounts of muscle hypertrophy. So that's where that's. Just a bad comparison is that if people talk about, oh, palm cooling is better than steroids, what people think about is hypertrophy and from that point of view, it's just not. It's just clearly not better than steroids. But creatine, which one, is one of the most studied, safest supplements and the beauty is you can take creatine and palm cool and get the benefits of both.

Speaker 2: 12:40

So uh, you mentioned the, the palm coolers, and I and I now imagine people referring to mouth breathers and non palm coolers now in the future, as if, like you know, those people who aren't taking care of their health right. And you know, I mouth tape at night, I use VO2 tape. That has been a game changer for me. I now palm cool and I didn't think that was something I was going to be doing 5-10 years ago. I think I told you guys before we started recording. I used to just grab the bar to cool down my hands at times, but definitely not getting the same benefits as the narwhals, and I guess I'd be curious. You've only made a few hundred of these products. You're doing all hand-making yourself. You're in the middle of raising funds. What's that process been like? Different iterations of the product Can you share the founder upbringing story? I think this would be a super interesting aspect for our listeners to learn about and see where the origin story is two years ago, ariel and I did not know each other.

Speaker 4: 13:43

We both heard the same podcast, a Huberman Lab podcast on the topic of palm cooling, and in that podcast they talk about the benefits that you can get from palm cooling, but not they don't really explain how to do it. One of the benefits they talk about was this incredible gain in pull-up volume like 144% gains in pull-up volume in six weeks and as an avid weightlifter, I, who had been stalled in her pull-ups for many years I was like I've got to get my hands on this technique, and so I tried to hack it with a bucket of cool water in my garage gym and I tweeted a sort of embarrassing video of me doing this and asked the universe am I doing this right and was very lucky when Ariel found my tweet.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Yeah. So as I've described, you know, on this podcast they really described the results but not how you do it. So it's all published research. So my background's physics.

Speaker 1: 14:38

I went out, read the papers to try to understand the parameters you'd want in a cooling device Like what is that ideal temperature range? And so the first thing I did was I went out to the local hardware store, got some plumbing parts and basically built a cooling loop which you know you'd is made out of copper which has good thermal conductivity, so easy to flow heat from your hands, cool water running through it at the right temperature kind of that low fifties and that's having the nice effect of breaking up any thermal barriers. If you were just to hold something filled with cool water, you'll quickly locally heat it up. So this actually gets into some of the secret sauces of palm cooling, where you want to be holding something that's the right temperature, you want to be holding something that's going to flow heat well from your hand and some sort of mechanism for breaking up that thermal barrier where any kind of local heating is getting dissipated quickly, whisking away that heat. And so when I first tried this device it worked so well that I got curious are there other people trying to do palm cooling themselves?

Speaker 1: 15:47

Because at the time Stanford was selling their device, the CoolMit, but it was a wait list. You couldn't even buy it and it was quite expensive at the time. So I found Evie's tweet, realized she was only about 45 minutes away. I said why don't you come over and try this device? So her and her husband came over. Her husband and I soldered up one of these while she did pushups and pull-ups in my basement. She can tell you about that experience.

Speaker 4: 16:15

Yeah no, I did. I one of these while she did push-ups and pull-ups in my basement. She can tell you about that experience. Yeah no, I did. I did more push-ups and pull-ups than I'd ever done in my life and I could really. What really, um, shocked me was just this sense of recovery between sets, like I normally you would expect. You know, set one 20 reps, set two 12, and this like decline, and what I noticed was that the the plateau in that session was much higher, and so that's also kind of gets to sort of how is palm cooling making you stronger? It's not magic. It's what it basically is doing is allow you, allowing you to do more volume in a session, and that volume over time quickly adds up to strength gains. So I was hooked. Ariel sent me home with the prototype version which I had connected to a Yeti filled with the right temperature of water in my garage gym and use that for months.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Yeah, and so that was all working. But I realized that's not really practical to bring to the gym. I have lots of friends who are pretty elite climbers and I was curious could I make something that I could take to the crag or take to the gym and it would be portable? And this was all just a passion project. So there were many iterations and for months my freezer was filled with different materials to try different phase change materials until I kind of hit on the solution and we got to the device you see today I brought a set of those to Evie because she'd been such an amazing field tester. We'd stayed in contact, she basically since that first early device. She's never lifted basically without palm cooling since then. So I brought her this device and she was like you need to sell these and, like I said, my background's physics.

Speaker 4: 17:57

Evie's a marketer, so I thought, well, maybe we should sell these, yeah. So basically we, we launched it was a year and a half ago, um and we thought we'd be selling to people like us fitness enthusiasts who wanted to, you know, triple their pull up volume or whatever, and very quickly. This was last year. Now we were in the hands of four of the Stanley Cup playoff teams last year and we were kind of blown away by this interest in, um, basically, uh, athlete recovery, in game recovery, and this idea of helping people who are heavily insulated cool down without taking off all their gear, which obviously ties into not only hockey but the firefighter use case as well. And so that was one of the first moments where we were like, ok, you know, there, there is something here that is a little bit bigger than what we thought originally.

Speaker 2: 18:49

Yeah, I think of even like race car drivers now having to wear insane amounts of gear and then cooling that off Like uh, ariel, you, just what'd you have thinking there Got the wheels turning.

Speaker 1: 19:00

Well, one of our customers is a very high level moto GP racer so motorcycles and they use the narwhals consistently and the way they use them is sort of in between lap recovery, because they're wearing a lot of gear, they're heavily insulated, it's hot and apparently there's this effect. It's an Italian racer, so his trainer I think they call it like sleepy arm, like that inner arm when they're turning, gets kind of numb and the narwhals, for whatever reason, that palm cooling effect helps take away some of that numbness and helps recover better between laps. So I think, especially during like I don't know fully the format they race in, but definitely in practice they use these extensively.

Speaker 2: 19:49

Yeah, we're heading down to Salem at the end of this month to or next month, I guess to to meet with amber belkin, who is a uh race car driver out of winnipeg, canada. Here we like to represent our canadians, have that national pride, but I just imagine I'm like anyone that's geared up, that's, you know, sweating extensively, that's getting hot, theoretically would benefit from this. I'm like hyper hyperlysis I believe that whatever that term is where you sweat a lot and I'm like I know that I would benefit from these. I have will continue to speak about the benefits, but can you share any insights, testimonials, other individuals?

Speaker 2: 20:24

I know there's conversations that are occurring literally in hours about you know future partners, but what it's been like to have multiple teams in the Stanley Cup finals using your product Like, did you imagine this a year and a half ago when you launched? Obviously now fire departments taking this on other athletes, high performers it's kind of, you know, in line with the athletes podcast. Everyone's an athlete, everyone is a high performer, everyone should be benefiting from stuff like creatine, palm cooling, mouth, nasal breathing, like these are little things that you can theoretically make drastic improvements in your life by introducing. Obviously, there's a cost associated with some of these things. But where do you guys see this going now, I guess, having gone from two years and now being in NHL dressing rooms across the continent?

Speaker 4: 21:15

Yeah, I mean it was. You know, when we first launched, we were both working our jobs, full-time jobs. I was working, you know my job was the chief marketing officer of a software company. It was very hard to pull off two things at once. But when we started to get glimpses on TV broadcast, they pan to the locker room and you see the product that you're bringing to market in the hands of pro athletes. You're like okay, something's going on here and that was certainly the impetus to go jump full in full time. And obviously I personally never thought that this was where my life was going to go. I think Ariel was also surprised by this turn of events.

Speaker 4: 21:55

But yeah, we have been really honored to work with some of the most elite athletes out there. We were fortunate to be connected with the South Carolina Gamecocks, the women's basketball team, and they were using the Narwhals during their undefeated season, including in their final four national championship win. We have athletes across so many different sports using the narwhals in different ways, whether it's for heat stress mitigation or training, whether it's college pro Olympians, whether it's college pro Olympians. It's really exciting to see. You know, everybody is hungry for that edge and anything. You know, everybody knows that it's not like one thing that's going to make the difference. It's stacking all of these little optimizations, and palm cooling is another tool in the toolkit.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Yeah, I think you know we really we firmly believe that. You know, these days no serious athlete would not consider their hydration and electrolyte balance right. You know how important that is and getting the right amount of electrolytes in during a game, during training, and we feel like this is just going to be the same sort of thing that in five to 10 years basically no one's even got. People would look at you like, well, why aren't you considering your thermoregulation by by some kind of palm or soul cooling or some sort of tool like that? Because it's just such an obvious edge, it's such an obvious benefit.

Speaker 1: 23:30

You know, one thing we'd love to see is a cultural shift in the NHL where they're all using it. You know the teams that use them use them in the locker room right now, but they're using them more and more and more and more guys are using them, for instance, in the NHL. We would love to see where it becomes such a ubiquitous thing that they get used to using it on the bench in between shifts, because that would be even more of a game changer, because you're not getting that recovery that you could be getting on the bench. But there are just logistics there, but once it's a cultural buy-in. Once the coaches and the players are all like, well, we'd be foolish not to be doing this, I think you'll start to actually see people using these kinds of tools right on the bench.

Speaker 2: 24:12

Yeah, I mean, there's no reason why you can't be sitting next to your water bottle and as you go grab a squirt of water, you go palm cool right, like it's. It's not something that you need to have strapped on for 510, 1520 minutes, I think of like a Norma tech and I think when people look at new modalities to recover, they're like, oh, I need to be using this for an extended period of time, but, like, one of the benefits of palm cooling is it doesn't take too too long either. Right and like I don't know to me, I see it happening and that's one of the exciting parts about hosting a podcast like this is we have this conversation in june of 2024 and then in five years, when we look back and every nhl player is reaching down to squirt their water bottle and then grabbing a palm cool narwhal, on the other hand, like that's what's going to be exciting to play this clip back and showcase hey, yeah, you were right, ariel, and every single team, whether that's mlb, nfl, nba, nhl is now adopting some type of palm or soil cooling. I guess, like out of curiosity, is there one sport or you know one area that you've seen it really impact?

Speaker 2: 25:11

You mentioned the pull-ups. If I'm a CrossFitter, should I be adopting this? If I'm a High Rocks athlete, who should be using this and when should they be bringing it on? And because there's such a big athletic boulder community, I figured this is probably the best place for you guys to be starting it, so we'll have to get down there and test it out with some of the athletes down there as well. You guys to be starting it, so we'll have to get down there and test it out with some of the athletes down there as well.

Speaker 4: 25:33

Yeah, absolutely, I mean I palm cooling could benefit any athlete in any sport. It really depends. There's probably different sports are going to be better for in game usage versus training. Um, you mentioned high rocks. Um, I actually just flew back last night from the high rocks world championships in Nice, france. Fantastic experience Obviously not a sport where you're going to palm cool during the event, but for training.

Speaker 4: 26:00

It was a huge game changer for me. So I use palm cooling in interval work. So if I'm doing a track workout, for example, I'm running Norwegian 4x4s, I get three minutes of rest between my run intervals. I'm cooling, I'm getting my heart rate down so that I can go hard the next time and maintain that intensity over time. If you're a CrossFit athlete, you need muscle endurance and you're going to be working a lot on your gymnastics, on your kipping pull-ups, on your muscle-ups, your handstand walks. All of that in training is perfect, the perfect type of training to use palm cooling. So what CrossFitters need to sort of? I think elite CrossFitters are training very differently than your average CrossFit class.

Speaker 4: 26:46

Of course, so, they are bringing in rest right. They're treating their training much like a weightlifter would, with proper rest periods. So that's another thing that's important to talk about with palm cooling is how long do you need to hold on to the device? And there definitely should be more research into this so that we can start to really narrow that down into precise prescriptions, for example. But the science points to at least 90 seconds in order to get that heart rate benefit. 90 seconds in order to get that heart rate benefit.

Speaker 4: 27:18

Two hands cooling two hands is about 1.6 times as effective as cooling one hand. So if you're short on time, having a narwhal in each hand is beneficial. But if you have more time, you can certainly do just one hand. If you're, you know hydrating and you're eating, you're doing other things. Just one hand. If you're, you know hydrating and you're eating, you're doing other things. If you are doing heavy compound sets, heavy lifts, you should be resting anyway at least two, three plus minutes, depending on your sport and what you're working on. But that's again that's an ideal time to be palm cooling. If you are super heat stressed, that's a different sort of use case and they're, holding on to a palm cooling device for longer is advised, and that's like five, 10 minutes, like that's. That's when you're really trying to bring your core body temperature down because you are heat stressed.

Speaker 1: 28:09

And and a really interesting use case we're actually just about to send a set to one of the premier leaders in this in terms the US something people may not think about as much, but a use case. We learned about elite athletes in adapted athletics. So we're going to be working with the wheelchair basketball team and what we didn't realize. It does make sense, but I wasn't aware that if you, for instance, have a spinal cord injury below the level of your injury, you don't sweat because your body is not sending you know. Your sweat glands are innervated, so if you're not getting that signal to sweat, you don't sweat below there. So thermal challenges if you have half your body that's not sweating and you're working hard, those thermal challenges are very difficult to meet and apparently these athletes overheat easily. So heat stress and thermal regulation is very top of mind for their trainers. And that's something we're really excited about is working with that set of elite athletes that face this different set of thermal challenges with that set of elite athletes that face this different set of thermal challenges.

Speaker 2: 29:25

It is so crazy that you mentioned that because I actually witnessed it firsthand at the under 23 basketball championships that were held in Toronto, probably three, four or five years ago.

Speaker 2: 29:31

I was there with Professor Corbett and I was a doping control officer or doping control chaperone, I should say, and that was one of the things that was talked about was the heat stress and I, being a recent grad from a sport management degree with no real knowledge of the body and kinesiology, was like oh wow, that's interesting and you know I had no way to cope with that. But now I'm like that makes total sense and these athletes could benefit, cope with that. But now I'm like that makes total sense and these athletes could benefit. Joe Delagreeve, who's a member of Basketball USA, was on the pod a while back and I'm like anything that, to your point earlier, that athletes can do to get their hands on, to make them a little bit better, they're going to do so. It's only a matter of time before narwhals are in every athlete's hands across North America. I'm sure of that. Tell me about this Firefighter Challenge League.

Speaker 1: 30:20

So the Firefighter Challenge League is basically a obstacle race course for firefighters where they're simulating what they would do in gear. So when they're individually racing they are in full gear in their SCBAs on air and they're basically racing up a tower with a hose, packing up uh hoses up to that tower, running back down the tower, doing a simulated forcible entry with a sledgehammer, running an obstacle course, grabbing a fully charged 240 pound hose, running it down, shooting it at a target and then carrying 175 pound rescue mannequin and I don't know if you've ever tried this, I picked one up at the last challenge like that dead weight and carrying it backwards. And what's really cool about this sport is men and women do the exact same course and we happen to know one of the elite women competitors and she beats most of the men at this course. I mean it's really, really cool to see because it's firefighting, it's the same standard for everyone, and so it's just a really impressive sport to see. It's really cool to watch how quickly people can run this course.

Speaker 1: 31:35

And if you're there at the competition, it's very different than most competitions in that during the competition people are racing each other. They're racing hard against each other and afterwards they're giving each other feedback oh, here's a technique you could use to do this better. It's sort of super competitive yet super collaborative, because the nature of firefighting is they all want to do better. So it's just a really, really neat environment. It's just not only inspiring to watch people sort of give it their all. I mean they end this course. They call it the toughest two minutes in sports. They end this course like people are pulling off their gear. They're kind of like woozy coming off the course. But the collaborative spirit, the competitive spirit that you watch there, it's really really impressive. So that's something that we're now an official partner with. We'll be going to a bunch of the competitions and helping people reduce their heat stress when they're coming off this course.

Speaker 2: 32:39

Yeah, it's important. I've got to hook you guys up with Mitchell Hooper, world's strongest man, up in Barrie Canada. This product also is the way you were describing the firefighter community, is identical to the way he described the strongman community and obviously the benefits of palm cooling would benefit these insanely large individuals who are lifting ridiculous amounts.

Speaker 1: 33:02

We work with a strong man, actually, who happens to be a firefighter and competes in something else called World's Strongest Firefighter, where they do things like shoulder press, fire hydrants and things like that. It's crazy what they do.

Speaker 2: 33:15

So we had Joe Paonessa on the the show a couple years ago, when we originally started, and he, uh, was a top fire firefighter strong man as well. Uh, I don't know, he might have won it my memory is failing me. But either way, these are individuals. We'll go through the list of uh 230 past guests on the athletes podcast and hopefully introduce you to a couple, because they would all benefit from this right, and especially when they're lifting obnoxious amounts of weight and then having to perform throughout an entire day, like these are just little increments that will make massive changes, and I know for a fact that, uh, you know, those athletes are looking for every edge they can get as well. Right, and when you've got a thousand pounds that you're having to pick up, every little bit helps.

Speaker 2: 33:57

So, uh, yeah, just I, I'm excited. This is cool. This is a great product. This is. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where, five years, almost five years after starting this show, we get to chat about these incredible new inventions and hopefully impact athletes around the world in a positive fashion, kind of like what you did, abby. You know that you just throw out some stuff on the internet and see what hits, right.

Speaker 4: 34:18

Yeah, yep, it might change your life.

Speaker 2: 34:22

It will Only positives that come from it, because you get yourself out there, you're putting it out there and you know what Good things come to people who put in good work. So I always like to give an opportunity for our guests to share a little piece where people can find them on socials if you want to leave our guests with anything. In particular, I want to say thank you to both of you for coming on here sharing a bit about Apex Cool Labs, what you're doing in the space. It impacts me in a couple of different ways between the athletes, the individuals we're chatting with on a weekly basis here on the show, but also at Expert VR, and the firefighters, the first responders that are impacted positively by this. So I want to say thank you First off, foremost, thank you for the set of narwhals. I've been using those frequently and I want to open the floor here for you two to share a little bit before we let you go and anything else we should leave Apex Cool Labs or Ariel and Evy with.

Speaker 4: 35:14

Absolutely. So this is new. This is a little goofy. On our blog, we do explain how to hack this on your own if you want to just try it out without investing and there is a blog post at apexcollabscom You'll find it that explains the parameters for palm cooling, which we've covered over the course of this podcast. But I like to talk about them as the four C's podcasts.

Speaker 4: 35:36

But I like to talk about them as the four C's, and that is you want something cool, not cold. You want something that's conductive. You want cooling that's continuously whisking away the heat from your body and you want to make sure you have the right contact time. So 90 seconds to three minutes is most people's sweet spot, and you can absolutely hack this with an aluminum water bottle filled with the right temperature of water, as long as you're willing to shake it up as you're holding it, and so we explain this on our blog. It's a great way to test it out, see if it works for you, if it makes sense to invest in the tool. So I just want to shout that out. There's also other resources on the blog. If you're interested in the science, we do our best to summarize the science that's out there in an approachable way.

Speaker 1: 36:15

Yeah, and I think where we're at right now we hand build these at my house. Our price point we recognize, for the average consumer is high and that's something that we're well aware of. We're in the phases of not only we've been raising money but we have completely redesigned in our walls to set them up to be scalable for manufacturing and we do expect in the future, as we increase our volumes with that more manufactured device, to be able to bring a more consumer-friendly product to market. Right now the people we've been selling to for the most part these elite athletic teams or these professional firefighting services are okay with the benefit they're getting for the price point.

Speaker 1: 36:59

But we do recognize that that's a place where you know if I were going to say the value prop, how much do you spend on creatine and supplements? This is a supplement in a sense, that you could use over and over and over again for years. So that's where I mean Evie and I have been using our personal sets for basically nearly two years now. So that's where there is quite a lot of value there. But you know we get that it's an investment for the average person that. Try it out first with something simpler. Try it out hacking it, have some fun with it and then, if you want to step up your game to a professionally built tool, try out the narwhals.

Speaker 2: 37:38

Yeah that's what it's all about. This technology is brand new, like you said, and it does take time. And you know what? The automatic AI cameras that are being used now on fields that are keeping track of kids and athletes that are playing without anyone manning that camera used to cost tens of thousands of dollars and now they're nominally priced. Too right, they also got 20 million injected.

Speaker 2: 38:00

There's four companies all doing stuff like that, but you know, all that being said, these prices come down over time and when the benefits are there, people are going to use it right and to your point, it's an investment. I think it's what? 400 bucks right now and you spend creatine, a couple years worth of that it ends up being the same price. All that being said, it's a worthwhile investment when it impacts your health positively and you can't put a price on performance. Honestly, at this stage in society, you need every step you can get and I just want to thank you both for coming on impacting athletes positively. It's going to be fun to clip that from five years from now and watch all these athletes using Apex Cool Labs all over. And where can people find you on socials to make sure that they follow along the journey? Apex Cool Labs everywhere.

Speaker 4: 38:46

Apex Cool Labs everywhere.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Heck, yeah, heck, yeah. Thank you guys so much for your time. Thank you folks for listening. Hope you have a great rest of your day. Just want to say thank you to Evie and Ariel for coming on the show, apex Cool Labs for sending me this incredible product that I've been using in the gym and will continue to use on the ice and as well as everywhere else that I bring this health fitness wellness podcast across the country of Canada as we drive.

Speaker 2: 39:10

At the beginning of July We'll be at Canadian Track Nationals at the end of June, down in San Diego, los Angeles, over the next week or two. So if you're around, if you see me, if you want to get in touch, hit me a note on Instagram, at Dave Stark one, twitter, wherever else, you find our podcast at the athletes podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. Be a part of this. Don't forget about our athlete agreement as well. As you know, this isn't free, so all we ask in return for you watching is that you hit that subscribe button. So I didn't mention it at the start, but I'm mentioning it at the end. Thank you for tuning in. Hit that subscribe button. We'll see you next week for another new episode. Bye.