This column first appeared in the Men’s Health email newsletter. The Optimized Man is a biweekly series from our editorial director as he tries out the latest, greatest, and weirdest health and wellness innovations so you don’t have to. Sign up here to get the next one.
THIS IS WHAT happens when you strap into the Hypershell X Ultra exoskeleton.
You buckle a small, hard lumbar pack around your waist—the battery lives there, along with your body’s center of gravity—and two motorized discs the size of dip cans sit on your hips, each connected to an articulated brace that extends down to just above your knees. You strap the braces in place, power up the device, and take a step into the semi-bionic future of your boyhood dreams.
And your legs move—fast.
Not dramatically. Not comically. Just enough that your brain pauses and goes: Wait, what? The resistance you’ve spent your entire life calibrating against, that quiet friction of lifting your body against gravity, has been dialed down. From there, as you walk, sensors track your gait in real time—how your hips are rotating, when your foot is leaving the ground—and the motor responds by applying a small burst of torque at the hip as your leg begins to lift. (It also softly whirs, like a drone, which is more charming than annoying.) It’s not dragging your leg forward; it’s assisting at the exact moment when your muscles would normally have to do the most work, making it feel like a literal spring in your step. You control the whole thing via an app, which lets you switch settings on the fly. (There are Eco and Hyper modes, offering increasing levels of assistance, and also a Fitness mode that adds resistance instead of removing it—an attempt to turn the device into a training tool rather than a shortcut. Turn it on and you’re walking through water.)
Hypershell markets the device as a new category of consumer performance gear—a kind of e-bike for your legs, designed for supposedly fun endeavors like hiking, cycling, trail running, backpacking, and climbing. The pitch is straightforward: Wear the exoskeleton and go farther, climb more, fatigue less. The underlying idea isn’t new. Versions of this tech have existed for years in rehab and clinical settings, helping people recover mobility or maintain the ability to walk independently. What’s new is that it’s now being marketed to people like me—someone who can bike or hike perfectly well, just not particularly well. And for those of us who do this stuff precisely because it strains our muscles and makes us fight through the suck and earn the sweat, why would we use a machine that makes all of that easier?
I decided to find out. I started small, strapping it on to walk my dog, switching between assistive modes (which didn’t do much on flat gravel terrain other than make me feel ridiculous) and Fitness mode (which turned it into a mildly humbling workout; I lasted about four minutes). I tried it on my treadmill, dialing in incline after incline—2 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent—scaling up the assistance levels, and clocking a remarkable lack of difficulty the steeper I went.
Then I took it into the wild.
I’m lucky enough to live within driving distance of Bear Mountain, a rugged stretch of the Hudson Highlands north of New York City, where the trails are short, steep, and engineered—intentionally or not—to make you question your life choices about halfway up. I made my way to Popolopen Torne, a rocky climb with about 600 feet of vertical gain packed into less than a mile, the back half of which turns into a series of scrambles. It’s not Everest, but it’s enough to make you pay attention.
The first section is a normal climb: dirt path, switchbacks, the kind of steady uphill my 10-year-old can handle without much complaint. I left the device in a low assist setting and tried to ignore it. The hike was slightly easier, I guess, but nothing transformative.
Then the trail pitched up. The dirt gave way to rock, and I found myself using my hands. My upper body leaned forward, my palms pressed into the stone, and my legs did the heavy lifting of moving my body through space. I searched for footholds, shifted my weight, pushed myself up from the bottom.
I switched into a higher assist mode, and the device quietly took over the repetitive, grinding work of lifting my legs, giving each step a small but noticeable boost. Instead of thinking about my legs—where to place them, how hard to drive through them—I found myself focusing almost entirely on my hands. My upper body. Balance. The part of climbing that feels more like problem-solving than exertion.
At one point, on a steeper scramble, I realized I was no longer worried about whether I could get my leg up—I just had to decide where to put it.
By the time I reached the top, I felt good. Not euphoric, not depleted. Just good. My quads weren’t wrecked. My calves had that familiar tightness you get from climbing, but nothing dramatic. It was, objectively, an easier ascent than it would have been without the device—which is both the point of the Hypershell and, depending on your perspective, the problem.
On the way down, the device flipped the equation. In downhill mode, instead of assisting movement, the leg braces apply a subtle braking force, so I didn’t pitch forward on the steeper descents. My legs felt steadier and more controlled, like someone was lightly holding me back from going too fast—which, in my case, was less about safety and more about not wanting to fall on my ass in front of strangers.
I don’t hike every day. I don’t need help walking to work. And part of the appeal of being outside—of doing something physically demanding—is the demand itself. The feeling that I’ve pushed my body, that I’ve earned where I end up.
But as we get older, the equation changes. Joints ache a little more. Recovery takes a little longer. The gap between what we want to do and what our bodies are willing to tolerate starts to widen. And in that gap, something like the Hypershell starts to make a different kind of sense.
For some people, it will always feel unnecessary—they’ll smirk at weekend warriors like me who need a little boost up the climb. For others, it will feel like the difference between making it to the top and turning back halfway.
The Hypershell won’t turn you into a better hiker or biker. It will, however, make you feel like one. And sometimes that’s all the optimization we need.
Richard Dorment is the editorial director of Men’s Health and Women’s Health.
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