Short version: one person, a few weeks of real use, a notebook, and the manufacturer’s spec sheet. No lab. This page explains what that means for the reviews you read here.
What a review is based on
Each product is used by Martin Wood at home, in normal conditions, for at least three to four weeks. Mattresses are slept on every night over that period. Recovery tools are used after actual training sessions. Shoes are run in. Notes are taken along the way: what works, what is annoying, what breaks.
Those notes are then compared with the manufacturer’s claims and with what we could find in published reviews and user feedback. When something in the spec sheet contradicts what we saw, we say so.
What we do not have
There is no laboratory, no pressure-mapping mat, no calibrated sound meter and no team of testers. Where a review quotes a number (a noise level, a battery life, a temperature), it comes from a phone app, a stopwatch or a kitchen thermometer, not from certified equipment. Treat those figures as rough indications. Earlier versions of this site claimed otherwise; that was wrong and has been removed.
How the score works
The score out of ten is a judgement, not a formula. It weighs whether the product does what it claims, how it held up over the test period, what it costs compared to alternatives, and who it is clearly not for. A product can be well made and still score low if the price makes no sense for most readers.
Why mattresses and supplements are on a sports site
Because sleep and recovery decide most of what happens in training, and because readers kept asking. Supplements are handled with extra caution: we describe what the research says and we do not give dosage advice. Reviews of contested products (grounding sheets, for instance) are published to say plainly what the evidence does and does not support.
Affiliate links and partner content
Most reviews contain affiliate links. If you buy through one, we earn a commission; the price is the same for you. The commission has no bearing on the score, and we publish negative reviews. Partner content is a separate thing: it is paid, it lives in its own category, it is labelled, and it never appears in our rankings.
Pictures
Product images are supplied by the manufacturers unless the caption says otherwise.