Is it important to have a running goal? Some folks need to work towards a marathon, or a personal-best 5K time, in order to maintain the motivation to train.
I haven’t really felt that way in the five years since I started running with intention. But one benchmark goal has quietly wormed its way into the back of my mind since I noticed my 5K Parkrun event times gradually come down over the years. I’m working on achieving a sub-20-minute 5K.
The closest I got to reaching it was back in October 2025, at a Parkrun event by the sea on England’s south coast, in Worthing, with a time of 20:28.
A sub-20 5K? It’s kinda within reach, if I were to do a training block for it. But, to be frank, that doesn’t seem all that appealing. With short days and frequently awful weather in the UK at the moment, running has become a way to get outside whenever possible, for a mental health boost. And cobble together what meagre amount of natural Vitamin D production actually happens under cloudy, grey skies. Short and sharp sessions aren’t where I’m at.
Meet the Hypershell X Ultra: a robotic exoskeleton
I’m not talking about one of the best smartwatches, fitness trackers, or even efficiency savings via a pair of the best running shoes. Earlier in 2025, I got to try out a Hypershell exoskeleton, not that long after first bumping into the brand online. I’ve been for a short-ish hike with a Hypershell on, months ago, and while I did race a friend a few hundred metres, for fun, this was just two minutes after putting the rig on, when it’s at its most unnatural-feeling. It felt weird. Wrong, even.
But if you’re anything like me, you have to be curious about whether this Hypershell stuff actually works, even if you hate the idea of it being used in any form of competitive running scenario. So I asked the company if I could borrow one for a few weeks, to see if robotic leg assistance would help me shave 30 seconds off my time. And they said yes.
It’s probably about time we deal with how a Hypershell works. I have the Hypershell X Ultra, the latest and most powerful version of the exoskeleton. It uses a carbon fiber reinforced frame that sits over your legs, using anchor points just above your ass, and just above each of your knees.
Motors reside in the enclosures that sit roughly above your hip joints, used to generate the force that pulls your legs upward as you stride as you walk or run. You’re the puppet — pulled, not pushed.
The Hypershell X Ultra uses algorithms to judge when to apply force and how much of it is needed at any given millisecond. And what it needs to do on that front is going to change with your pace, your stride arc — all sorts of stuff — all the time. And as it can deliver up to 1000W of peak (not sustained) force according to Hypershell, getting this stuff right is important.
Don’t focus on that 1000W figure too much, though. If the Hypershell X Ultra were to output at 1000W, the 72Wh battery would last less than five minutes. But it’s obviously only going to hit anything like its peak power in certain modes, for a fraction of a second, during a certain point of your stride. The more important bit is this is the most powerful of Hypershell’s models, which it says can assist at a pace of up to 25km/h.
We should have plenty of headroom for our goal. At 25km/h, you’re finishing a 5K race in 12 minutes, and beating Joshua Cheptegei’s 12:35 world record for that distance. I’m looking for a modest 20.
Test 1: A local running route
But you know the real first challenge of a Hypershell X Ultra? Getting out of the door with one on. You don’t half feel self-conscious with this kit strapped in, and you’ll actually look worse if you put clothes over the top. Don’t even try to hide it, you’ll look ridiculous either way.
To steel myself for the proper attempt at a 5K PB, I ran to my local park for a taster session. And on the way there I got a kinda shocking lesson in quite how much the Hypershell actually does.
You can switch between Transparent (ie no assistance at all) and your currently selected mode by pressing the single button on the Hypershell X Ultra’s right motor housing. I had the “active” setting set to the exoskeleton’s most punchy Hyper mode — max power — and an accidental shift to Transparent while jogging was so jarring I almost face planted into the pavement. The shot of adrenaline this fired off made it feel like I was tasting gravel for the following 20 minutes.
Perhaps that helped the run, though, because the results I got when upping the pace I found genuinely surprising. Mildly stunning, even. This was just meant to be a practice run for the big effort, but my Garmin Forerunner 970 was telling me I was hitting kilometer paces well under four minutes. I cannot ordinarily run that fast.
And so I decided to carry on at a decent effort level, just to see what would happen. 19 minutes and 31 seconds later, I had a new 5K PB — one almost a full minute better than I’d ever achieved before at that October 2025 Parkrun (20:28).
The odd part was it didn’t even feel like I was truly going all-out. And this course was roughly based on my local Parkrun — which is rated as the 505th fastest course in the UK by Power of 10, while my actual non-assisted PB from October was recorded on the 25th fastest course in the UK, at Worthing.
I was kind of blown away by the difference the Hypershell X Ultra made. Even if running with it isn’t exactly a dream in all respects.
How using an exoskeleton actually feels
You never get away from the sense there’s a contraption attached to you, a 1.8kg one in the Hypershell X Ultra’s case, as it naturally moves about a bit as you run, and not in lock-step with your own body. Because it’s not part of it, we’re a ways off Robocop here, and it weighs heavily around your waist and hips.
But the actual assistance the Hypershell gives you quickly becomes near-invisible, only showing its face when the exoskeleton’s algorithms take a fraction of a second to adjust to a change of pace. A sudden downhill section can make it feel as though the Hypershell is launching you into the ground, and there were a lot of these in my initial trail-adjacent park-based route.
The next day or so also came with DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) the likes of which I haven’t felt in a while. It wasn’t all that intense, but the assistance the Hypershell gives is naturally going to alter which muscle groups are actually working the hardest. Your quads and glutes may feel it. Mine did.
My main takeaway, though, was that if I can score a 19:31 5K on a non-flat, awkward course, what could I do on a running track? Thankfully I live near Crystal Palace Athletics Stadium, which any old nobody can book access to, for as little as £2.45 ($3.26) an hour. So I did just that, with a slot on one Monday afternoon in December 2025.
Test 2: Track run
Was it a triumph? Absolutely not. My second, super-flat attempt ended up with a 5K time of 20:33, not even beating my previous unassisted best result.
But you know what? I don’t blame Hypershell for this one. It’s a reminder these exoskeletons are an assist. You still have to turn up with the base stuff for the job. And I didn’t.
It’s my complete lack of experience on the run track. It’s the weekend I spent partially inebriated (and not sleeping enough) before that Monday. It’s the 16km run I did the day before on Sunday. It’s perhaps that self-consciousness at wondering what the two hurdlers training at the same time thought of the idiot wearing the exoskeleton on the track.
Heck, it might even be the cortisol built-up having spent 30 minutes hunting through a labyrinthine sports centre trying to work my way to the run track. I also knew I was cooked the moment my Garmin Forerunner 970 gave me a “+1 Performance Condition” score part-way through the attempt. As any owner of one of the best Garmin watches knows, Garmin’s Performance Condition score represents a representation of your run compared to your average fitness level. A score of +0 is a baseline, +5 or higher is significantly better than average, and -5 or lower is significantly worse. A score of +1 represents minimal improvement.
Is using a Hypershell still cheating if you still need to be able to run well to make the most of it? Of course it is. My 5K PB remains 20:28. But there’s still a part of me that wants to have the stones to turn up to my local Parkrun wearing a Hypershell X Ultra.
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