The Athletes Podcast
The Athletes Podcast is a leading source of information, inspiration, and education for anyone interested in optimizing physical performance, maintaining good health, and living an active lifestyle. Join David Stark as he interviews some of the world's biggest athletes and fitness professionals, The Athletes Podcast provides practical advice, expert insights, and real-world strategies to help listeners achieve their health and fitness goals.The goal is to entertain, educate & inspire the next generation of athletes!
The Athletes Podcast
Cooling Your Palms Could Be the Edge You're Missing in Training
Evy Lyons from Apex Cool Labs explains how palm cooling technology is revolutionizing athletic performance by cooling blood and muscles during intense activity.
• Palm cooling accelerates recovery in competition and training by utilizing hands as the body's natural radiators
• Our palms get 10 times more blood flow than other skin areas when we're hot
• Cooling your palms helps lower core temperature, accelerate heart rate recovery, and extend muscle stamina
• Heat inhibits performance, but we lack internal temperature sensors to detect when our muscles are overheating
• Optimal cooling temperature is 50-60°F (10-15°C) - ice is actually too cold and causes vasoconstriction
• Athletes using palm cooling can add extra quality volume to workouts, leading to compound performance gains
• Evie doubled her pull-up max from 7 to 14 in eight weeks using palm cooling between sets
• Narwhals devices are now used by elite athletes across all major sports leagues and in the Olympics
• Beyond athletics, palm cooling provides critical benefits for "industrial athletes" in firefighting, construction, and manufacturing
• Heat is the number one climate-related killer globally, making cooling technologies increasingly important
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What is going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Athletes Podcast, episode 264. Today we have an awesome interview for you. A couple weeks ago Dave and I were out in Denver at the Cook-Stark Management Mile High Summit where we brought a bunch of our top, high level women's hockey players down to Denver, had them do a mini training camp, did a bunch of stuff. We did a Red Rocks hike. We did a a rockies game probably the craziest baseball game I've ever seen 17, 16 walk off, two run home run for the rockies after a 9-1 first inning that we missed crazy stuff. But evie from apex cool labs was kind enough to come down to one of our skates, bring some for narwhals with her, let the players try them. They absolutely loved them and dave was able to sit down with evie for about 10 minutes.
Speaker 1:You're're going to see the interview here. It was fantastic. Lots of great stuff in there about the narwhals, the creation of it, what they do, the importance of palm cooling, how it can help you recover. All that great stuff. You're absolutely going to love it and we will have some future stuff for you about the Mile High Summit. We got so much good content at this summit. It's going to be awesome. You're going to love it. So stay tuned for that. Keep your eyes peeled. To be awesome. You're going to love it, so stay tuned for that. Keep your eyes peeled. One last thing before we get in here, I need you guys to check out Perfect Sports. They've got the best supplements, the best protein powders. All their stuff is awesome. You are going to love it, I promise you. And if you head to their website to buy some product, make sure you use the code AP15 at checkout. It's going to save you 15%. It's going to help us keep doing what we're doing here.
Speaker 2:So 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. 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 3:Here we go you got a sim card, you're good, okay, uh, mile high summit cook. Stark management here with apex, cool labs, and we have evy lions here on the podcast we're calling an impromptu podcast we have the narwhals, the new and improved second generation. I've been training with them for the past six months since you guys sent me them, and what two years now total since we had you on the podcast originally I think it's about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely and I can't say enough good things about them. I was telling the gals before they stepped on the ice that they're gonna love being able to use them during the session in between when they're skating. But people don't really know what palm cooling is still, so maybe break it down for us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. Palm cooling is basically a way to accelerate recovery in competition and in practice. So the way it works is that our palms are the radiators for the body. We actually get 10 times more blood flow here in our palms than in other skin areas when we're hot. So if we can cool our palms, we can cool our blood, and that is going to have a whole bunch of really great benefits in terms of enabling us to push harder longer. So that's really the short of it. By cooling your palms, you're able to cool yourself down, accelerate heart rate recovery and extend muscle stamina over the course of a game or practice.
Speaker 3:I was telling Ryan before even I am mad when I don't have these during my workouts, and you actually posted a little bit on LinkedIn afterwards and it's. I can't even explain the feeling, other than I don't have the same kind of capacity or energy to perform when I don't have them. Is that basically the gist of it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, heat is going to inhibit our performance, and what's kind of wild is that we don't have any internal temperature sensors, right, like we don't know when we are getting hot, other than we feel sick, for example, all of our temperature perception is external. So when you are skating really hard or you are back squatting, your glutes are actually getting incredibly hot inside and you can see this on infrared cameras. But what's really cool is so, if you can cool your blood, you can cool your muscles, you can extract some of that heat, and so then that heat is no longer inhibiting your energy production to the same level. So, people who really know their bodies, if you cool between sets, you will absolutely feel this sort of like, extended like this, this stamina that, like you didn't have before. Or if you're lifting, you'll really feel this like this speed, this bar, kind of speed that you didn't have. And what that enables over time is you can add extra quality volume, and it's through that extra quality volume that palm cooling enables you to get stronger, faster.
Speaker 3:Now I have a bit more of an understanding, because I feel like people still are trying to find that next bit of edge, and these are. You know, if you can do an extra set every single time you go to the gym maybe two, three, four sets that's obviously going to pay dividends over time. Everyone knows the power of compounding. Can you speak to it like in your own personal use maybe?
Speaker 4:Absolutely so. When I first learned about palm cooling, it was through some of the Stanford research specifically on pull-ups. At the time I had been plateaued at seven. Pull-ups for years could not break that eight, Couldn't get to eight. So I was using one of our early prototypes, one of the early prototypes that my co-founder, Ariel Paul, created.
Speaker 3:The Japanese soup can.
Speaker 4:No, it was actually pre-Japanese soup can. It was plumbing parts connected to a Yeti with the right temperature water and a recirculating pump. Wow, and I replicated the Stanford study. I did it a little bit differently. I actually did less work than they did, but I basically did 10 sets of max effort pull-ups with three minutes of cooling between sets. I did that once a week for eight weeks and I went from seven to 14. And my overall volume across those 10 sets increased 50, 50, five, zero percent. I've since you know I've repeated that again I've done it with pushups. I've gone from 20 to 42 pushups in eight weeks. I train with palm cooling. Every time I lift any compound lift, I'm cooling between it.
Speaker 3:I originally came across your stuff because I was in the firefighting space to some degree, obviously with the athletes as well, but it impacts everyone. I think that's the other like obviously we're focusing here with athletes, here for the Mile High Summit, but firefighters benefit. World's strongest men are benefiting from these. Is there anyone that couldn't benefit from palm cooling?
Speaker 4:If heat's not a problem for you, then you probably don't need to be palm cooling. But heat is a problem for a lot of people, whether you're an athlete and you want to perform your best in a game or you're competing outside in the heat and that heat, that external heat, is inhibiting you. Or you're training hard and you want to add extra volume, or you're an industrial athlete, so you know firefighters, or you work in oil and gas or construction or in your manufacturing and you're in very hot environments and heat is a problem. Palm cooling is actually one of the fastest ways to cool off the body.
Speaker 4:The thing is you can't just hold ice, and I think that's where people get this wrong is that this vasculature in your palms is very sensitive to cold, so most people will vasoconstrict if they hold something that is under 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 degrees Celsius. So ice is too cold. You have to hold something that is in that range and our narwhals they maintain that 50 to 60 degree Fahrenheit range for a couple of hours and they also have a mechanism for avoiding thermal barriers. So, without getting too technical, you just you got to hold something that's the right temp, that's going to be able to continuously pull that heat away from you.
Speaker 3:And it's the glabrous tissue that's in our hands and our feet that allow for this to occur. Right, it's the absorption. I am always trying to explain this to friends, family, people who are like curious when I they see me they just holding these things in the gym. I'm like to be honest you just have to try it to experience the benefits, and most people don't ever get the opportunity. So the, the, the makeshift model, is like more like a what was it? An aluminum bottle with some ice cold water in it to start. Hopefully that's like in that range of 50 to 60, so that you can try and see the benefits right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you could take a single walled aluminum water bottle. You can probably get one on Amazon for like five bucks. Fill it with ideally like 45 degree Fahrenheit water. That would be ideal. Usually the water like fountain in a gym is going to be kind of around this temperature. So fill it with that water and then what you want to do is just make sure you're moving the bottle in your hand so you don't want to form a thermal barrier. If you're just holding a can, like you're going to hold your can of beer right, you're going to warm that up really fast. So same thing here. You just got to make sure you move it around and in a gym it's probably going to last 15 minutes before you'll want to refill it. But it totally works and it's a great way to try it out.
Speaker 3:I remember distinctly trying it once. I noticed the benefits and I was like OK, I need my new set because my old ones got stolen. You guys graciously sent me another one. I can't thank you enough. I'm like I'm not kidding, these are my favorite gym equipment accessory to bring, and it's a conversation starter. You know I'm sure you've got stories. Yeah, absolutely, I mean Zach Hyman using your stuff to the Oilers. That's got to feel pretty cool when you've got pro sports teams taking on this stuff.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, when I saw the narwhals on TV in the Oilers locker room, that was the first time I'd seen them in the hands of pro athletes. We knew they had them, but to see it was kind of next level. And since then we've been lucky to catch them in the Olympics, in many pro sports, every major league sport in the US and Premier League and they're everywhere and I think a lot of elite athletes. Everybody's looking for that edge and palm cooling is definitely gives you that edge, because everybody thinks about hydration. Today Nobody's going to train without their electrolytes, right? Well, tomorrow it's going to be thermoregulation. You got to have hydration and you got to have thermoregulation and you have to have your fuel right, Like that's the trifecta.
Speaker 3:I feel like last time we were on the podcast I don't remember the exact quote, but I said in five years everyone is going to be aware of and using palm coolers to some degree. I feel like we're halfway to that mark and I feel like at that point you guys had sold four or 500 sets. Do you have rough numbers that you can share now? Are you allowed to? I know some details. Maybe you can't go full into, but I know you had some crazy cool investors become a part of it who are testing things out in the sauna, which I was very interested about as well, but maybe like a company Apex Cool Labs update for those who are interested.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean things have definitely been taking off because, like as you mentioned before, we had our V1 out there and we were selling a hand-built version for over two years and that took 15 hours for two people to build a set, so it was like really tough to grow that way. In January, we released what we call the next gen narwhals, and so now we're able to go a lot faster right. And where we're seeing definitely demand is obviously in elite athletics, but absolutely in occupational heat. Stress. Like this is where you know I don't know if you're aware of this, but heat is actually the number one climate killer. It is not hurricanes, it's not tornadoes, it's heat, and so people are facing extreme heat stress all over the world, especially in occupational settings, and so you know that's where we're definitely seeing a lot of demand, as in you know, from these large organizations, like I said, oil and gas, manufacturing, construction. These are places where, like heat, solving the heat issue isn't just a performance issue, it's a safety issue.
Speaker 3:I love to hear that too. I'm in the safety space. I sincerely appreciate you coming bringing these narwhals to CSM's Mile High Summit. I'm excited to get this into the hands of our pro athletes and get their feedback. Thanks, so much Hope.
Speaker 1:You guys all enjoyed that episode of the Athletes Podcast. I know it was a quick one, but it was a really interesting conversation with Evie. Again, you can learn so much about that stuff and pump cooling is so fascinating. So please look into it. Look into their company, apex Cool Labs. Who knows? You might even like them, might even want to try them. Like I said in the intro, stay tuned for more content from the Mile High Summit. Dave and I got lots coming in the works and you have one obligation when it comes to the Athletes Podcast, and it's to like, subscribe, share with your friends, find us on all social media platforms. It really lets us just kind of keep doing what we're doing. Keep having awesome people like Evie on the pod and it's really going to, you know, help us move forward and have more guests that you want on and just keep doing what we're doing. So again, please like, follow, subscribe, share, whatever you can do. It all helps, thank you.
