Dave Asprey wants you to live longer and healthier. He wants this so much that he’s worked with scientists to bring you fitness equipment used by pro athletes and astronauts. There are things you’ve never heard of before—like the Vasper cold high-intensity interval trainer, the Cheat Machine, and an atmospheric cellular trainer—and a few things you might already know about if you follow the leading edge of fitness trends. These are things he swears by for his own physical and mental well-being, including cryotherapy, virtual float tanks, vibration plates, oxygen and hypoxic training, and neurofeedback to train your brain.
Asprey is the founder of Bulletproof Labs as well as Bulletproof 360, the umbrella company behind the popular coffee and health supplements. You get the feeling he’s just beginning with his product offerings, even though they are already significant. He got his start in Silicon Valley, but back then, he weighed close to 300 pounds and had been through two knee surgeries in his twenties. Now, at 44, he’s slim and focused and just as jazzed about hitting his new percentage of 12.7 body fat as he is about seeing if he can lengthen his telomeres (and the fact that he can actually track that).
If data is one of your passions and you don’t have 2 hours to spend in the gym every day—but want the energy you used to have—Bulletproof Labs might just be for you. The first venue of its kind, launched this week in Santa Monica, Calif., Bulletproof Labs aims to help members improve muscle tone, brain health, fat-burning, bone density, and more, beginning with your cells—all in short bursts that range from 20 seconds to 33 minutes. This is all part of Asprey’s go-to philosophy: biohacking. Get better, more significant results in less time.
The longest session is recommended for brain health: 33 minutes of neurofeedback, which can help you train your brain to kick into creative mode, focus mode, or reach a theta-wave meditative state. Cryotherapy is a 3-minute session in a minus-230-degree chamber that will spur fat-burning, help reduce inflammatory markers that many scientists believe are the root cause of aging and disease, and boost endorphins.
The Atmospheric Cell Trainer Photo: Courtesy Bulletproof Labs
The atmospheric cellular trainer looks like the cockpit of a fighter jet, and inside the air pressure changes in steady waves, juicing up your mitochondria—those little batteries that power cellular function and stem-cell production. You feel your ears plug as the pressure takes you from sea level to 4,000 feet, back to 2,000, then up again. As you train over time, eventually you can virtually be taken up to elevations as high as Mt. Everest. Sipping water helps clear your ears, and a two-way radio allows communication with your personal trainer in the event that it’s just too uncomfortable—but it wasn’t. It’s a 5-minute session. Low intensity, and you’ll sleep better, too.
You barely even break a sweat on the Cheat Machine, which is a resistance trainer. You can do lat pull-downs, bicep curls, a chest press, and just about any upper-body exercise you do at a gym. But with this machine, you can do a week’s worth of strength training in one 15- to 20-minute session.
The virtual float tank uses sensory deprivation as well as binaural beats and shifting LED lights to help your brain drop into a meditative state—but without the hassle of getting wet or rinsing off salt. The cold HIIT machine, which is like a seated elliptical, allows you to get a 2-hour interval-training workout in the span of 21 minutes. The seat and foot pedals use cooling technology with 47-degree water running through the seat; the compression cuffs wrap that around the biceps and quadriceps—all helping to cool skin and move blood back to your core. It allows you to push past your limits and still recover faster. NASA is currently testing it for space flights to Mars.
It may take some time to really see the effects and accurately measure the cellular changes in your body, but the immediate effects include a powerful sense of well-being and energy levels reminiscent of a 25-year-old’s after using just a few of the 15 technologies available. That alone may be worth a membership.
The lab offers its own quirky currency of “bullets” that can be spent on each machine (machines cost one or two bullets each). Packages begin at six bullets for $285 and go up to $1,080 for 24 bullets. Monthly memberships start at $510 and go up to $1,440 for platinum level.
