A new study assesses the technology worn by race winners
When it comes to endurance performance in hot, humid conditions, cooling is always a hot topic—pun intended. The rise in extreme heat events, such as the sweltering 2021 Tokyo Olympics or the 2023 Ironman World Championships, has led to a growing interest in pre-cooling strategies. One such innovation is the Omius headband, a device designed to cool your forehead, promising to keep you comfortable while pushing your limits. It sounds cool (literally), but does it actually work?
I first spotted the Omius headband during the 2019 Ironman World Championships, where both the men’s and women’s winners wore it. Since then, I’ve seen it pop up on the heads of top-tier athletes, including marathon icons like Eliud Kipchoge and Olympic champion Sifan Hassan. These sightings piqued my curiosity—if elite athletes are using it, there must be something to it, right? Or is it just another flashy accessory in the ever-expanding market of performance gear?
How Does the Omius Headband Work?
The Omius headband amplifies cooling by increasing the surface area available for evaporation. When water or sweat evaporates on the skin, it absorbs heat and cools the body. The Omius headband takes this effect further by using specialized cooling pieces that provide five times more surface area for evaporation. Water is absorbed into the cooling pieces, where it transitions from liquid to gas on the surface of the graphite, pulling heat from the inside of the cooling pieces, which are in direct contact with the skin, thereby cooling the skin.
Because the cooling effect is powered solely by water evaporation, it will continue indefinitely as long as the cooling pieces remain wet and have airflow across them. The cooling pieces themselves are made of highly thermally conductive graphite, coated with a hydrophilic layer that optimizes water absorption and evaporation, which powers the cooling effect.
(Photo: Omius.com)
The Data on Cooling and Performance
I’m always skeptical about relying solely on anecdotes, so I was intrigued when I came across a study looking at the Omius headband's impact on performance. The question: does it really help cool you down and, more importantly, improve your running performance?
Researchers took 10 trained male athletes and had them run for 70 minutes at a steady pace in a toasty 35°C heat with 56% humidity. They wore either the Omius or a placebo headband during two separate trials. After that, they ran a 5-kilometer time trial (TT) to test performance differences between the two conditions.
(Photo: Journal of Thermal Biology)
The results were interesting but not as game-changing as the headband’s hype might suggest. Forehead temperature did drop with the Omius, and the athletes reported feeling more comfortable during the submaximal run. But when it came to the all-out 5K TT, performance was essentially the same whether they wore the Omius or the placebo headband. And crucially, there was no significant difference in core body temperature, a key marker for heat stress in endurance events.
The Challenges of Cooling Strategies
One of the biggest hurdles with cooling strategies is that they often feel better than they work. The Omius headband, for example, reduced forehead temperature and improved perceived comfort during steady-state running, but when the athletes shifted to the high-intensity 5K TT, the performance benefits disappeared. This suggests that while you might feel cooler, your body is still working just as hard—at least at race pace.
And there’s the rub: core body temperature didn’t budge with the Omius, meaning the deeper mechanisms that affect endurance—like cardiovascular strain and muscle fatigue—weren’t improved. It’s a case of the forehead feeling cool while the body keeps overheating.
Reflecting on My Own Experience
Armed with this knowledge, I decided to test the Omius headband myself at this year’s Berlin Marathon. Looking like a modern-day Julius Caesar, I can’t claim it transformed my race performance, but I did notice a slight increase in comfort during the run. However, as the study suggested, the headband’s benefits seemed to taper off, especially towards the end of the marathon. Throughout the race, I regularly splashed water on the cooling units to maintain the cooling effect, which added another layer of consideration to using this technology effectively.
So, will head-cooling devices like the Omius become a staple in every endurance athlete's toolkit? Hard to say. The headband certainly offers some comfort, especially at lower intensities, but without any clear performance boost at race pace, it feels more like a niche luxury than an essential. If you’re facing long, hot endurance events and tend to overheat, the Omius might be worth a look. But for the average runner, it’s unlikely to replace the old-fashioned (and much cheaper) strategy of dousing yourself with water—something I found myself doing alongside the headband during the Berlin Marathon.
At over $200, the Omius isn’t exactly an impulse buy, and the price invites a fair question: does the cooling it provides really go beyond what you’d get from a water bottle and a well-timed splash? Ultimately, while I may not have “veni, vidi, vici”-ed my way through Berlin, the Omius did make things a bit cooler—at least in the forehead department. And maybe that’s reason enough for some of us to give it a try.