Recovering Like an Athlete: My Honest Review of the Therabody JetBoots Pro Plus After Six Months of Hyrox Training in India
By Ankit Kataria, Hyrox Athlete, Bengaluru
I did my first Hyrox race in Mumbai a little over a year ago, and if you've done one yourself, you know the particular kind of wrecked your legs feel afterward. It isn't normal DOMS. Eight stations of sled pushes, sled pulls, farmers carries, sandbag lunges, wall balls, all bracketed by a kilometre of running each time — your quads and calves take a beating that regular strength training or running alone just doesn't replicate. Add Bengaluru's traffic between gym sessions and work, and recovery quickly became the thing I was worst at managing, not training itself.
For the first year, my "recovery routine" was foam rolling on a bad day and ignoring the problem on a good one. It caught up with me before my second race, when tight calves and cranky knees meant I was modifying my training block two weeks out. That's when a training partner who competes in strongman told me he'd been using compression boots between sessions and swore by them. I was skeptical — expensive recovery gadgets have a way of overpromising — but I started looking into it anyway, and that's how I landed on the Therabody JetBoots Pro Plus.
Why I picked the Pro Plus over the basic compression boots
There are cheaper compression-only boots on the market, including Therabody's own JetBoots Prime, and I seriously considered going that route first. What tipped me toward the Pro Plus was that it isn't just sequential compression — it layers in infrared LED and three levels of vibration on top, and it's fully wireless, so there's no separate pump unit to deal with. For someone doing this after a full day of work and training, less setup matters more than it sounds like it should.
I bought mine through WOD Armour, since they're the authorised Therabody partner here and I wanted the actual warranty rather than a grey-market unit with no local support.
What using it actually feels like
The first session is a bit of a shock if you've never used compression boots before — the pressure builds from your foot upward in waves, and at higher settings it's genuinely intense, not "relaxing spa" intense. I dropped the pressure down for the first week and worked up from there. The full cycle (inflate and deflate) is quick, somewhere close to a minute, which matters more than I expected — it means a 30-minute session actually gets through a reasonable number of cycles instead of two or three long squeezes.
The infrared and vibration are the parts I was most sceptical about, and I'll be honest, they're the hardest to judge objectively. What I can say is that on days after heavy sled work, running the combined mode on my quads and calves left them feeling looser than compression alone used to, and I slept better on nights I used it in the evening. Whether that's the infrared specifically or just the ritual of lying down for 30 minutes doing nothing, I genuinely can't tell you with certainty, and I'd be lying if I claimed otherwise.
Where it fits into a Hyrox training week
I use it twice a week now — the evening after my heaviest station-simulation session, and the day before a race or time trial. It's become part of the same category as my Theragun in my kit bag: not something I need every single day, but something I notice the absence of when a big training block is stacking up.
The honest downsides
This isn't a flawless product, and I'd rather say so than write pure marketing copy. It's not cheap — you're making a real financial call here, not an impulse buy. The boots have some bulk and weight to them compared to basic compression sleeves, so they're not something I'd casually throw in a gym bag for a same-day flight. And if you run all three modalities together for longer sessions, the battery does drain faster than Therabody's headline numbers suggest, so I've learned to charge between sessions rather than assume it'll always have juice. None of these are dealbreakers for me, but they're worth knowing before you spend the money.
Would I recommend it to another Hyrox athlete in India?
If you're training seriously — multiple sessions a week, racing regularly, and travelling for events — yes, I think it earns its place. If you're doing Hyrox casually once or twice a year, I'd honestly try foam rolling, sleep, and basic compression sleeves first before spending this kind of money. Recovery gear doesn't replace the fundamentals; it just gives you a bit more room when the fundamentals aren't enough on their own, and for me, training through a full Hyrox season in this climate, that extra room has been worth it.
I bought my JetBoots Pro Plus through WOD Armour, India's authorised Therabody partner.
