Can you remember when you first saw the Nike Hyperboot? In the lead up to the 2024 Paris Olympics, LeBron James took to his Instagram, showing off some previously unseen, black-and-white Nike shoes that weren’t wholly dissimilar to the Air Mags from Back to the Future, blinking lights and all. Except Marty McFly’s power-laced kicks didn’t sound like a helicopter preparing to take off when activated. And were these boots…expanding? “Just got back home from training and slipped my [feet] right into these babies,” LeBron’s caption read. “I don’t play about my recovery process.” The wellness nerd in me was intrigued. What exactly was Nike cooking up here?
A month later, my question was answered. LeBron’s mysterious footwear wasn’t so much a shoe but rather a high-tech wearable created in partnership with Hyperice—makers of some of our favorite recovery tools, like the Normatec leg compression boots and the Venom 2 back wrap—and officially dubbed as the Nike Hyperboot. Now, what exactly do these boots do, and why in the hell do they cost almost a grand? We laced up and found out.
Sizes available: Small (men’s 6-8), Medium (men’s 8-10), Large (men’s 10-12), Extra-Large (men’s 12-14), Extra-Extra-Large (men’s 14-16)
Heat levels: Level 1 (111° Fahrenheit), Level 2 (118° Fahrenheit), Level 3 (125° Fahrenheit)
Compression levels: Level 1(50 mmHg), Level 2 (130 mmHg), Level 3 (210 mmHg)
Battery life: 1-1.5 hours
Weight: 3.7 pounds
What Is the Nike Hyperboot?
Incorporating Hyperice’s air-compression and HyperHeat technology, the boots not only sequentially massage your feet and ankles, but target both muscle and tissue with various levels of heat. And while LeBron was touting the boots for post-workout recovery in his IG story, they’re just as much intended to be incorporated into your warmup routine.
Mick Rouse
Mick Rouse
“While we’ve long known that recovery is an important part of any athlete’s journey, we’re hearing from athletes that the concept of ‘pre-recovery’ is equally as important,” explained Tobie Hatfield, Nike’s senior director of athlete innovation (and younger bro of Tinker), when explaining the development of the Hyperboots last month.
Do I Need the Nike Hyperboot?
While nowhere close to a pro by any means, I have spent most of my life playing sports—years of AAU basketball growing up; tennis three or four times a week still to this day—and working out in the gym. About three years ago, all that wear and tear caught up to me and I tore my ACL. It was an illuminating moment, a dawning realization that I was not invincible. That I was aging. That while my body wasn’t necessarily breaking down (I was only in my early 30s!), perhaps it could use some assistance in ensuring I could keep running and jumping and lifting and playing the way I was accustomed to. I started to look at recovery with the same attention to detail that I had training for so long. So when the opportunity to personally test out the Hyperboots presented itself, I jumped at the bit.
The first time I slipped my feet into the Hyperboots was Saturday, April 19. I remember specifically because I had just moved back to New York City. The boots arrived at my new apartment shortly thereafter, but quickly became swallowed up amongst the chaos of all the other boxes of books and pillows and lamps I had yet to unpack. That Saturday, though, I decided to take a break from setting up my new space and spend the day with friends. With no real plan, we started the day off with a bike ride down the West Side Highway to the West Village. That led to hours of unplanned moseying, from neighborhood to neighborhood, simply allowing the day to unfurl in a way that NYC is so singularly capable of. We powered up on burekas that we walked off in order to make room for coffees and pastries that we walked off en route to a nondescript spice shop one of our friends had been raving about. It was warm and sunny. It was a perfect day. And by the time I got home, my dogs were absolutely screaming. According to my iPhone, I had taken nearly 20,000 steps—just about 10 miles for the day.
Maybe my feet simply hadn’t acclimated back to the sort of mileage that one can unexpectedly rack up on a random 80-degree Saturday in the city. But about 15 minutes after massaging my feet on my couch with my hands, wondering if the first time I was actually going to fill my new tub was to soak my feet, I remembered the high-tech boots sitting amongst the piled-up boxes, tailor-made for this exact scenario.
How Do the Nike Hyperboots Feel?
When you first slip your feet into the Hyperboots and power them on, they automatically inflate to fit to your feet—not dissimilar to Marty’s aforementioned power laces. And while there are three different settings of compression offered, I knew well enough that my feet desired the highest level available. Following that same logic, I cranked the heat to its highest setting of 125 degrees. Whereas the compression level felt just right, the heat quickly became way too much for me. Feeling as if my leg hairs were about to be singed off, I quickly reversed course and switched the boots to their lowest temperature setting of 111 degrees and kicked up my feet on the couch. It was…glorious? For 20 minutes I sat there, just letting the Hyperboots sooth my tired feet, totally relaxed. And when they finished their automatic programming, I quickly reached down to hit start for another 20 minutes.