NormaTec MVP Boot vs. Recovery Pump Boot

Triathlon Forum
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I am just curious if anyone has had a chance to try on both of these products and if they might be able to offer any comparisons?

I tried on the Recovery Pump Boot at IM New Orleans 70.3 and really liked them. I wondered how it compared to the NormaTec MVP?

I would also be interested to hear from anyone who owns a pair of the “Recovery Pump Boots” and what they think of them.

Normatec http://www.normatecsports.com/

Recovery Pump http://www.recoverypump.com/index.html

Any thoughts or insight would be appreciated.

Thanks!

2

I have a set of the Recovery Pump Boots, and cannot speak directly to the NormaTec, but I must say I have been nothing but happy with the Recovery Pump. It is nice that you are able to use Flex Spending to purchase them since they will require a Rx, a great way to spend some of the left over cash at the end of a year if you so choose. From personal experience, I am feeling much fresher between workouts having used the boots. They are also a good way to get ready for a workout.

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I’ll throw my 2 cents in the ring - hopefully it will help atleast a little. Recovery Pump sponsors our team so I am fortunate enough to try out the system at a generously discounted rate. Having said that I would invest the cost of the system in these now that I have tried them if they weren’t being so kind and generous.
I use the Recovery Pump as my training recovery tool. I also use the system for a warm up when I have the time. Here is what I like:
-As a warm up tool I am able to use the boot for 15 min. and I feel I can progress into my higher intensity work faster than I can when I don’t use the R.P. system before a workout. Might be a sign of old age (almost 40) that I am requiring more and more warm up, but I am thrilled with the results from the RP system. I have not used the NormaTec system for this and can’t speak to their use in this capacity.
-As much as I love them for warm up I love them 100x more for recovery. I can’t tell you what 20 min. post workout (I am lucky enough to work from home so I hook them up after a workout and work on the computer) and an hour at night does for my next day’s workout. Again, might be a sign of old age but I have been taking longer and longer to bounce back from the longer and harder workouts and I find when I am diligent with my RP system I don’t get that sluggish and heavy leg feeling on my next day’s run or bike that I used to. I haven’t used the NT system for workout recovery either so I can’t speak to how they work or feel.
Where I have used both the NT and the RP system is post-surgical. When I was in the hospital post-hysterectomy I was on a NT type system (Peristaltic pulse type) system. As soon as I returned home I was able to use my Recovery Pump (sequential compression) system. As far as surgical recovery I thought my RP system was heads above, especially in comfort. With the RP system your entire leg is getting the compression for a longer period of time. For my particular recovery with leg pain and swelling the sequential compression was much more effective in reducing pain and swelling. Since I am not a doctor I won’t even touch which one is better, but I will say that the RP system was much more comfortable for me and after having abdominal surgery comfort was one of my #1 concerns!
Both websites have GREAT information, recovery pump has added a lot of research and information to their site recently.
(you do need to have an RX to get the RP system and have it covered as a FSA but my Dr. gave me full support, I brought in some printed info from the RP site and he was in full support!)

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Thanks!

5

I will start by saying that I am currently sponsored by Recovery Pump, and had previously been sponsored by NormaTec. I understand that my perspective may appear to be biased, however, I hope to offer useful feedback based on my experience with both companies’ products.

The primary difference between the two products is the type of compression: peristaltic (Norma) vs. sequential (Recovery Pump). In a nutshell, this means that the Recovery Pump will hold pressure on each chamber as it progresses up the leg, while Norma will release (compressing only one chamber at a time). From a more scientific standpoint, the Recovery Pump compresses the entire leg for more than 30 seconds, and, therefore, there is a much greater absorption of fluid and “flush” of the muscle per cycle. Norma only has 8-10 seconds of compression on any one part of the leg, so the osmotic absorption rate is 2/3 less.

This being said, the practical standpoint - and my personal experience - tells me that Recovery Pump is more effective at aiding with recovery. Recently I went through an injury to my lower leg, which resulted in fluid build-up around my tibia (and posterior tibialis muscle). I could literally see the Recovery Pump working - after 45-60 min in the boots, my the swelling was visibly gone, and it felt looser and better.

I could go on and on about how the Recovery Pump helps me get ready for workouts, and how it speeds up my recovery time, but to summarize quickly - it’s well worth the money!

Let me know if you would like some more specific information, as I am happy to share it with you. Send me a PM, and I’m happy to elaborate.

Michael

6

Michael:

What is the cost difference between the two products and are they both “roughly” the same from a size and logistics of use standpoint?

Thanks,

Bob

7

There is a significance difference, as Michael alluded to, in the technology of each. However, Michael’s explanation was not entirely accurate.

NormaTec uses a patented waveform cycle (which is adjustable in both pressure and on/off duration for each of the five cells in the boots). This what NormaTec calls “peristaltic” pressure from the word “peristalsis.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peristalsis) The key is that peristalsis is basically a support of the natural flushing that your body supports on it’s own. NormaTec just gives it a “boost.” NormaTec is short for “NORMAl recovery through TEChnology.” The key here being that you are simply supporting your body’s own natural recovery process. The founder/creator of NormaTec, Dr. Laura Jacobs, is an MD-PhD physician specializing in rehabilitative medicine. She pioneered the peristaltic pressure system used by the NormaTec in her own clinical research and practice.

The Recovery Pump is basically just a high pressure compression boot. Think of it as a really tight compression tight. That’s it. It’s technology that has been around since (IIRC) the early 40s. It’s somewhat effective, but quite crude.

NormaTec was supposed to release a model last summer that offers that same patented peristaltic pumping action, but with less adjustability, but a flood in their warehouse destroyed almost all of their product and set them way back. The product should be released this summer, along with an update to the current NormaTec MVP system that is about 1/2 the size and even more easily adjustable.

To put it in terms this forum can understand, the Recovery Pump is the equivalent of a welded aluminum round tube frame. It’s useful, cheap, and practical. But it’s not exactly “high tech.” The NormaTec is your wind-tunnel developed, carbon, lightweight, latest technology TT frame. It’s a significant leap forward. Is it 5x as good (it costs ~5x as much)? No. But it is a significantly more advanced - and effective - product.

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Ahh, battling sponsored product shills! Who am I to believe?!?!?!

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Well, you can look at what Lance chooses, what a significant number of NBA & NFL players use, and think about the fact that NONE of them are paid to use NormaTec (and many of them actually just paid full $ for their systems), and I think it’s pretty clear.

The Recovery Pump is old tech. It’s fine for what it is. But it’s certainly NOT a competitor the NormaTec.

Keep in mind that the Recovery Pump was a purpose built CONSUMER product. The NormaTec MVP is a commercial (sort of) version that’s a derivative of a DME product designed exclusively for rehabilitative medicine.

Spend some time reading about how each product actually works. The difference is clear. Then just make your own decision.

Doesn’t matter to me which you choose. Just want to be clear on what the actual facts are in each case.

EDIT: one thing I forgot to add - the NormaTec “holds” the two (or one if it’s the ankle pulsing or none if it’s the foot) cells below the currently pulsing cell to avoid pushing fluid down into the leg (as opposed to back to the heart). So that’s an important distinction from what Michael explained about the NormaTec pulsing only one cell at a time…

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I choose elevating my legs and drinking chocolate milk. Of course, neither of those are going to get anyone paid (aside from dairy producers I suppose).

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I choose elevating my legs and drinking chocolate milk. Of course, neither of those are going to get anyone paid (aside from dairy producers I suppose).

Fair choice. I wouldn’t try to steer you towards doing anything else. If you wanted to try something else, I’d certainly offer my best advice, but I’m definitely not here to tell you that you need a NormaTec to recover properly. You don’t. Does it help? Yes. Is it a lot of money? Yes. But I’ve long learned that valuation is something for individual people to determine for themselves…

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Thank you for your insight, I appreciate it.

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Jordan,
Thank you for your response. I was pretty sure from the start of this post that Normatec would probably be a superior product, just look at the pricing. Your explanation gives me a better idea of how the two different products work.

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As I said above, with no experience with the NormaTec, I cannot speak to it directly, but I know I came from having used 2XU or Zoot Compression tights and CEP socks prior to using the Recovery Pump and can say without a doubt it does more than any clothing I have used by a long ways. I do think there has been a significant amount of research that has gone into NormaTec, just as has gone into Zipp etc. You have other companies such as FLO designing wheels that are very competitive in benefits at a fraction of the cost.

As with most things in this sport, it seems as you can save a chunk of money going with something that will get you most of the benefit. It may boil down to the point where for some people, the added benefit will give them that extra edge that they are looking to find.

The reason I say RP has been so good for me is when looking at most clothing articles, you are going to get anywhere from 18-30 mmHg of compression, something like the RP allows you to go up to 80. Although you wouldn’t want compression clothing to always be that high, that is where these products excel because of the flushing motion to clear out your legs quicker.

15

Well, you can look at what Lance chooses, what a significant number of NBA & NFL players use, and think about the fact that NONE of them are paid to use NormaTec (and many of them actually just paid full $ for their systems), and I think it’s pretty clear.

The Recovery Pump is old tech. It’s fine for what it is. But it’s certainly NOT a competitor the NormaTec.

Keep in mind that the Recovery Pump was a purpose built CONSUMER product. The NormaTec MVP is a commercial (sort of) version that’s a derivative of a DME product designed exclusively for rehabilitative medicine.

Spend some time reading about how each product actually works. The difference is clear. Then just make your own decision.

Doesn’t matter to me which you choose. Just want to be clear on what the actual facts are in each case.

EDIT: one thing I forgot to add - the NormaTec “holds” the two (or one if it’s the ankle pulsing or none if it’s the foot) cells below the currently pulsing cell to avoid pushing fluid down into the leg (as opposed to back to the heart). So that’s an important distinction from what Michael explained about the NormaTec pulsing only one cell at a time…

Rappster, I don’t think you have a complete understanding of what Recovery Pump is, which is understandable considering you don’t work with them.

Recovery Pump was not built as a CONSUMER product. It is a rebranded version of Lymphapress, which is also a DME product designed for rehabilitative medicine. I’ve heard that medical patients find it’s actually much more effective than NormaTec, because it does more than just mimic the natural flushing of your legs. I have not heard of any comparisons by athletes though.

Also, Recovery Pump is not like a really tight compression tight. It compresses from the foot and grows the compression up the legs and then releases all at one time. It then repeats this process. Just holding tight like a compression tight would be ineffective. I could understand your “old tech” comment if you thought that was what it did. That’s not the case though. The studies that I have seen say that this is more effective at flushing your legs than what NormaTec does.

In regards to your Lance, NFL and NBA comment, Recovery Pump just entered the sports market in 2011. These athletes have been with NormaTec longer than that and were never give the choice between the two boots. NormaTec had no competitors last year so what athlete wouldn’t take a sponsorship by them? I don’t believe Recovery Pump has even started to pursue the big sport pro athletes.

I respect that you are defending your sponsor, but I just want to make sure the everyone is clear on the facts here.

(Just making a late edit here. Read this: http://recoverypump.com/use.html under the “Other Important Information” section. It clearly states the advantages of Recovery Pump’s sequential compression system vs NormaTec’s peristaltic compression system.)

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Not to flood this thread with more sponsored athlete posts… but I just want to add my $0.02.

I got sponsored by Recovery Pump through Team Trakkers/Rev3 this year and have been using the boots for about two months now. My first impressions were huge.

I’ve trashed my legs during a full day of spring skiing in thick mashed potato snow and came home to spend an hour in the Recovery Pump boots. The next day, my legs felt AMAZING. There was almost no lagging soreness at all. They obviously aren’t magic and can’t rebuild muscle tissue, but I definitely feel undeniably fresher the next day and help me be able to put more hard efforts in without feeling more and more drained after each one.

And I’ve had the same results after hard track workouts or interval sessions on the trainer. An hour or so in the Recovery Pump boots post workout and I feel much fresher the next day.

We can debate the millions of differences in how the boots inflate for years, but this is the one that does it for me. Recovery Pump can be paid for using your FSA for a reason. Because it is born from the medical industry. It is highly regulated and requires scientific results to back it up and justify insurance to cover the cost for people who need it to recovery from non sports-related industries. I care more about what the FDA says about a product like Recovery Pump than Lance or any NFL athletes.

17

The obvious solution to this puzzle is for NormaTec and Recovery Pump to each send me a system to trial. I will thrash myself for one week and wear one system on each leg (consistently) for recovery during the week. The system worn by whichever leg feels better obviously wins! I will document and share my findings with all of you.

Sponsored athletes - for the pride and benefit of your sponsor company, make it happen!

18

I’ve used and often Rx (and use for post-op recovery) the Gameready pumps/cold therapy. GREAT for recovery for sure. Cost? Yeah, $$$. Been using since 2003, so nothing new!

http://www.gameready.com/

This is the system that team Radioshack uses (as well as several NFL teams and others).

@ Jordan - “Lance” and the Shack are with Gameready, Garmin-Chipotel (and Dr. Lim) now with Normatec.

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Rappster, I don’t think you have a complete understanding of what Recovery Pump is, which is understandable considering you don’t work with them.

Recovery Pump was not built as a CONSUMER product. It is a rebranded version of Lymphapress, which is also a DME product designed for rehabilitative medicine. I’ve heard that medical patients find it’s actually much more effective than NormaTec, because it does more than just mimic the natural flushing of your legs. I have not heard of any comparisons by athletes though.

What I lacked, at least in this case, was control over my vocabulary. My apologies for an inartfully worded reply. What I meant by my reference to NormaTec being DME is that it was designed for use in a rehabilitative/post-surgical environment. NormaTec specifically was designed for this. The “consumer” version - the MVP - is virtually identical to the “regular” (medical) NormaTec. Dr. Jacobs designed the system based on what she saw as limitations/failings with traditional lymphedema pumps. That was genesis of NormaTec. The consumer version came about because there were numerous athletes, usually recovering from ACL/MCL/other typical leg injuries that felt so good using the NormaTec during rehab that they continued to use it just to recover from normal training. The Recovery Pump is “old” technology - lymphedema pumps - that has been re-packaged as a recovery aid. My opinion is that they saw the success that NormaTec has had, so the “creators” (using the term loosely) of Recovery Pump simply took the technology that NormaTec was designed to supplant, and made a consumer product version of it. I.e., NormaTec is a new technology that happened to be applied to a consumer product. Recovery Pump is a specific consumer version of an old technology. Hopefully that’s more effectively worded. To analogize, NormaTec is like the original QR wetsuit - a similar, but distinct, product designed specifically for a given application (swimming). Recovery Pump would be like O’Neill deciding to push their surfing wetsuits to triathletes for triathlon.

Also, Recovery Pump is not like a really tight compression tight. It compresses from the foot and grows the compression up the legs and then releases all at one time. It then repeats this process. Just holding tight like a compression tight would be ineffective. I could understand your “old tech” comment if you thought that was what it did. That’s not the case though. The studies that I have seen say that this is more effective at flushing your legs than what NormaTec does.

My reference to it being “like a compression tight” was meant to highlight that both are simply graduated compression. One is obviously active and the other is obviously passive, and yes, that is certainly a big difference. But compression garments are designed to provide graduated compression, which is what the Recovery Pump also does. Of course the pumping action makes a difference. But likewise if you are active in your compression tights, it’s perhaps not so dissimilar. My point was, simply, that both compression tights and Recovery Pump offer ONLY graduated compression, not the peristaltic pumping action of the NormaTec. As far as “effectiveness at flushing your legs,” do you have links to the studies to which you refer? I’ll see if I can get copies of the studies. In my own conversations with Dr. Jacobs and the NormaTec team, I have heard the exact opposite, though the specifics were with regards to blood flow (Dr. Jacobs’ current theory is that the pulsing appears to stimulate the release of nitric oxide, which is a vasodilator). And there was a study (not published that I’m aware of) undertaken at the USOC that examined muscle elasticity after various recovery modalities and found NormaTec superior to all, including massage.

In regards to your Lance, NFL and NBA comment, Recovery Pump just entered the sports market in 2011. These athletes have been with NormaTec longer than that and were never give the choice between the two boots. NormaTec had no competitors last year so what athlete wouldn’t take a sponsorship by them? I don’t believe Recovery Pump has even started to pursue the big sport pro athletes.

That’s true. But lymphedema pumps have been around for a long time. That hearkens back to my earlier point. NormaTec was a medical tool that ATHLETES took into sports, and NormaTec basically shrugged and said, “well, if they think it helps, then we probably should consider that.” So the choice has been around. You think these athletes couldn’t have gotten a DME prescription for a lymphedema pump? Or that if they felt that a lymphedema pump helped more than just post-surgery, that they wouldn’t have continued to use it?

I respect that you are defending your sponsor, but I just want to make sure the everyone is clear on the facts here.

I agree. And I apologize for my poorly written reply earlier. But I don’t believe that your “correction” of my post was entirely accurate.

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Come on, Jordan - step up for NormaTec and have them ship me a demo unit for early June… I can guarantee HUGE exposure!