Have you heard of this stuff? The titanium bracelets that golfers, ballplayers and other athletes are taking to the fields, courses and trails? There are a couple of debates among these accessories. There is the ever present performance enhancing debate that exists as well as the debate that these items even work at all. In a nutshell the purpose behind them is that they create a type of energy that helps your body with peak performance.

The Power Balance accessories promote that they increase flexibility, balance and strength while the Phi-Ten products promote that they increase power and endurance. Anyone can purchase these bracelets, necklaces, pendants and even apparel that claim to be lined with titanium. While some argue that they create a placebo effect, some claim that they actually work to increase your performance. This is difficult for me to write about because, I do have a pretty disciplined training regimen. For this reason, it makes it hard for me to be objective in regards to what helps and what does not.

What I can tell you is that I use them both. Although the physical act of putting the item on your person may help with the placebo effect, I am pretty sure that they do work and here’s why. I am going to do something “different” here so bear with me. In the effort to not promote any product over the other, I will simply refer to them as product one and two. Product one I had first and would constantly wear for one particular type of workout pattern. Product two would be worn in other circumstances. One day product two was put on and the workout routine completely switched. I remember thinking to myself, “I guess we’ll se what happens.” I had one of the best workouts in a very long time.

This still could have been attributed to the placebo effect due to the fact that I remembered, “Hey, I have the wrong one on.” but it is hard to tell. I am sure that there are more and more studies going on into whether or not these things really work but, for me they do. Placebo or not, wearing one during a half-marathon decreased my time by 20 minutes. Yes, thats a lot. It could have been the route but, when one compares elevation changes between one race and the other, the argument  dies. It could be the training. More than likely but, it is still a piece of equipment that I do not workout without.