Halo Neuroscience REVIEW: Good in theory but I have to WARN YOU

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- Morning trainiacs!
Working out erryday in the pain cavern.
Got a bit of a moderately sized workout today.
Think it's gonna be about a 70 minute bike workout,
and then I was supposed to do a run
workout later in the day,
but I said to Coach Pat,
"Uh, dude, I think I'm doing most of my run workouts
at night, in the morning as a brick workout."
Bonus pain!
And who remembers these, the Halo Neuro Sport headphones?
I think I know my opinion about them.
I'll give them to you today.
(upbeat music)
So yesterday, I started reading this book.
This is "Running Rewired" by Jay Dicharry?
Dicharry? Dicharry.
Jay is the physiotherapist, trainer, something like that,
like the "let's make sure you're healthy" coach
for Linsey Corbin, and he helped get her
through her stress fracture and come back
and actually PR on the run course in Kona.
I just started reading this last night,
and right at the start of the book,
it says that to become a better runner, yes,
you may need more miles, but more importantly,
you need to run more efficiently
with proper form and a strong body,
and the key to that is training your body
with neuroplasticity, being able to rewire
the firing patterns that your brain sends to your muscles
so that you can move in a more efficient way
than your body naturally wants to move,
and the whole big, hairy premise
behind these things is all about neuroplasticity.
So I'm gonna give them another shot,
and we'll talk about them right after this workout, okay?
(inhales) Oh, it's gonna be something.
It's gonna be something.
(upbeat music)
This day calls for the stinkiest of hats.
(upbeat music)
(exhales) Okay, that was a 25 minute run after a 102 bike.
Bike had a lot of heavy gear work,
and the 25 minute run was 2.85 miles, uh, 4 1/2 kilometers,
and I ended at 9.3 miles an hour for 30 seconds.
Patrick Lange does that for an entire marathon.
Okay, so let's talk about these
Halo Neuroscience headphones.
I've had these since just after Kona.
Really interesting premise.
Tim O'Donnell uses it.
Sarah Piampiano uses it,
and the premise behind it is that these pods here
activate the motor cortex of your brain,
which is in between the ears, coincidentally,
and it primes your motor cortex to fire quicker,
to have more feel of your running stride
or quick movements that you're doing.
I looked it up, and there are, legitimately,
studies that say that transcranial direct stimulation,
which is the technology in this,
does actually improve motor function.
Your reaction time is quicker.
Your body awareness is quicker.
Your balance is quicker.
However, what it also says is that the voltage,
or like the tuning of what you actually activate
in your brain is really, really specific.
Now some of the reasons that I didn't really know
what I wanted to say about this are
because there aren't that many studies
that actually link this to improved performance.
The studies that Halo has on their website
are very clearly Halo-funded and Halo-designed,
so it's not like there were independent studies
that I could look to and be like,
"Oh, yeah, like this is totally legit."
And that said, because these are $500,
I wanted to really confidently say,
one way or another, what you should do.
Now, a couple of things about it, specifically as well,
that made me go like, "$500? Really?"
is you have to connect it to your phone
via Bluetooth to actually make it work.
Okay, fine, dandy.
It's very tough to connect.
It ends up disconnecting.
You gotta reconnect, and you end up
with Halo Sport Neuro something listed
like six times in your Bluetooth connections on the iPhone.
It doesn't necessarily connect to your head very well.
You've gotta make these things
like absolutely soaked to get a good connection,
and then you've gotta really press it down
to the point that it's hurting
to get that connection in your phone
to the point that you can start it.
However, if you hold that down really, really hard,
then hit start, and then close the app,
you can release it, and it's a lot more comfortable,
and it'll go through the entire 20 minute cycle,
and you're all good, no big deal.
The last thing that was a real piss-off was
you gotta connect it via Bluetooth,
but you can't actually listen to music via Bluetooth.
You have to listen with a cord.
I didn't like that.
That just bugged me,
but "Does it work?" is the big question.
I would say that if you were looking for
the tip of the spear, the absolute most sophisticated,
technologically advanced gear that you can get,
yeah I'd go for it.
I do find that when I do, say, one-legged drills,
my balance is a little bit better.
I do have a feeling, could be the placebo effect,
I've a little bit more body awareness
when I'm on the treadmill like I was today.
You do that 20 minute priming session,
and apparently for 60 minutes after that,
these effects are going to help you,
and then because your body is firing
in that neuroplasticity kinda way
where your brain is ready to accept new muscular patterns,
that is going to then translate into better form
when you're out on the racecourse,
and apparently it's going to solidify
those connections between your brain and your muscles
so you have less chance of bonking.
But was it like I put these on and all the sudden
turned into a superhuman and could confidently say,
"You guys have to try this. It's phenomenal."? No.
So for $500, I really struggled for a lot of months
with what I was gonna do with these.
To be perfectly honest, they said,
"Hey, we wanna sponsor you. Can we sponsor you, Taren?"
I said, "Well, let me try these out,"
and I'm actually giving up a fair bit of money
because I can't recommend these so heavily.
That really willingness to sponsor
also sends a bit of a red flag
that maybe a bunch of the people out there
have their opinions sponsored for.
I'm not saying that's the case.
I'm just saying, "I gotta watch out for you guys."
Give them a try. They're not awful.
Just...
I don't know.
I'm sorry, Halo.
I like you guys; you were nice too.
Later, trainiacs.
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Halo Neuroscience REVIEW: Good in theory but I have to WARN YOU

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