Guide · Compression
Around 80 mmHg for 20 to 30 minutes. That is the protocol used most consistently across the seventeen trials pooled in Maia et al.'s 2024 meta-analysis in Biology of Sport, and it sits inside the published range of every Normatec and JetBoots system sold today.
Pressure
~80 MMHG
Duration
20–30 MIN
Trials pooled
17
Participants
319
Maia, Nakamura, Sarmento, Marcelino and Ribeiro pooled seventeen trials covering 319 participants in Biology of Sport (2024, 41(4) 263–275). The included studies were rated fair to good on the PEDro scale. Across them, the protocol that recurred was twenty to thirty minutes at roughly eighty millimetres of mercury.
What makes this worth knowing is not the number on its own. It is that Hyperice's own guidance for the Normatec 3 and Elite Legs also says twenty to thirty minutes. The independent literature and the manufacturer arrived at the same session length, and almost nobody puts the two side by side.
Worth knowing
JetBoots PRO Plus is missing from that list deliberately. Therabody does not publish its pressure range, so we cannot tell you whether it reaches the band.
One 2025 trial of 48 trained athletes found compression at 100 mmHg maintained muscle elasticity better at 48 hours than compression at 25 mmHg. That establishes pressure as a real variable rather than a spec-sheet flourish. It does not establish that more is always better, and no trial in the pooled set tested the top of the Normatec Go's 200 mmHg range for recovery.
The honest reading: get into the band, stay there, and treat anything above it as unstudied rather than superior.
Soreness benefit peaks around two days out. Guo et al.'s 2017 meta-analysis of massage and delayed-onset muscle soreness, in Frontiers in Physiology, put the effect at SMD −1.51 at 48 hours against −0.61 at 24. Measuring how your legs feel ten minutes after a session is measuring the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Questions
Hyperice does not publish it. It publishes the range, 40 to 110 mmHg over seven levels on the Normatec 3 Legs, Elite Legs, Elite Hips and Full Body, but not the pressure each numbered level delivers, so published material gives you no way to map a level to a figure. The Hyperice X 2 Knee is the exception, with all five of its levels published.
They are different specs answering different questions. Hyperice publishes five gapless zones on the Normatec 3 Legs and Elite Legs, three on the Normatec Go and two on the Elite Hips; Therabody publishes four chambers on the JetBoots Prime. Neither brand publishes the pressure each individual zone reaches, so zone count tells you about coverage rather than intensity.
Hyperice publishes a single 40 to 110 mmHg range for the Normatec 3 Full Body, covering legs, arms and hips, and does not publish a separate recommendation for each limb. The zone counts differ, five gapless zones on legs and arms against two overlapping zones on the hips, but the pressure range does not. Comfort is the only guide the published specs give you.
No. The $379 Normatec Go covers 40 to 200 mmHg and the $899 Normatec 3 Legs covers 40 to 110 mmHg, so both reach the band without difficulty. Price buys zone count, runtime and body coverage rather than access to a pressure. The exception is the $549.99 JetBoots Prime, whose 25 mmHg steps have no setting at 80.