The dumbbell-shaped workout tool is backed by a USC study—and it's not the first time we've seen the hot/cold technique touted
Therabody has officially launched its latest device, the CryoTherm Palm, as it looks to evolve from post-workout recovery toward mid-exercise performance.
Priced at $399.99, the handheld tool delivers rapid heating, cooling, and contrast therapy directly to a user’s palms during breaks in training to help fight off exhaustion and maintain grip strength.
The launch marks a continuation of Therabody’s recent strategy to branch out from standard percussive massage guns into hyper-targeted wellness gadgets, following last year’s release of its TheraFace Mask Glo red light face mask.
A different kind of recovery
Unlike standard percussive massage guns that you use after a workout, the dumbbell-shaped CryoTherm Palm is meant to be used mid-workout. Users rest their hands on either end of the device for one to three minutes during standard rest intervals.
Therabody is leaning heavily into the science of palm-cooling for this release.
It notes that the skin on our palms contains specialized blood vessels that rapidly exchange heat with the rest of the body. And by cooling this area, the device aims to slow the rise in core body temperature during heavy exertion, thereby delaying the onset of central nervous system fatigue.
Pro-level testing
To back up the high price tag, Therabody partnered with the University of Southern California to test the device on Division 1 track and field athletes during heavy strength-training sessions.
Athletes were asked to complete four sets of overhead presses at 85% of their one-rep max. When using the CryoTherm Palm between sets, the athletes managed a 28% increase in total training volume and churned out 58% more repetitions during their final, most exhausting set.
The compact device features three levels of both heat and cold therapy and can also be customized for contrast therapy, with one side hot and the other cold, to boost circulation.
It also includes an anti-roll design to keep it steady on gym benches, an integrated stopwatch to time rest periods, a travel lock, and a maximum battery life of 120 minutes.
The Wareable take: A blast from the past
While dropping $400 on a handheld cylinder might raise some eyebrows, the underlying science is intriguing—and a continuation of what we first encountered nearly a decade ago.
Researchers at Stanford have championed palm-cooling for years as a legitimate, legal performance enhancer, proving it can drastically delay muscle failure by managing hyperthermia under load.
However, this latest Therabody gadget actually brought to mind an old MIT experiment on thermal interfaces from around a decade ago—one that eventually gave rise to early localized temperature wearables like the Embr Wave.
When I interviewed Embr’s founder way back in 2017, they described how applying heat or cold to specific, highly sensitive nerve zones can completely manipulate the brain’s perception of overall physical strain and homeostatic comfort.
And so by pivoting into thermal manipulation, Therabody is stepping into the broader biometric-hacking territory popularized by sleep-tech giants like Eight Sleep.
Just as smart mattresses use temperature shifts to optimize heart rate variability (HRV) and autonomic recovery during sleep, the CryoTherm Palm attempts to stabilize physical thresholds under acute stress.
For a brand that built its empire solely on pounding sore muscles with the Theragun, this is a clear sign of evolution. Whether the average gym-goer will swallow the steep price tag is up for debate, but it’s a clever, research-backed expansion of the brand’s ecosystem.
