Whether you're looking to lose a couple of pounds to take yourself from fit to toned, or you're looking for any advantage you can in a major bid to lose weight, you'll probably take all the help you can get. Weight loss is a numbers game; you need to burn more calories than you're taking in. Sometimes, though, a small difference is enough to make a large result. Just a little more exercise is one thing, just a little less food is another, but why not try the third route? There are a variety of exercise enhancers on the market.
Among those enhancers is the exercise or thermogenic gel. Now, before we start recommending products, we need to acknowledge that there are two different kinds of products called exercise gels.
The first kind of product is an energy supplement. These products are essentially energy shots, a gel you consume out of a packet, packed with sugar, caffeine, electrolytes, and other nutrients that give you a boost of energy and help you work out harder and longer.
The other kind – the kind we're talking about here today – are topical gels. These gels are applied to the skin and are meant to enhance your workout by stimulating sweating, infusing your skin with caffeine, and even giving you some extra collagen to restore your skin all the while.
It's an open question as to how much those effects actually help from person to person, but you know what? It doesn't really matter, does it? As long as you believe they're helping, and as long as you can see tangible results, that's good enough. Besides, we're not here to judge the product category, just to recommend to you the products on the market. Let's get started!
Precautions
Before we recommend any specific products, one thing you should be aware of is that these are all topical creams with a variety of exotic ingredients. They're generally meant to heat up and stimulate the skin, which means they have chemicals in them that create a hot sensation on the skin, similar to a therapeutic hot cream or an IcyHot-style patch. They don't use chemical reactions to create heat, however; the heat comes from stimulating the skin and is part of your body's reaction.
That said, it will feel hot, and if you have anxiety about heat or burns, these may not be good products for you. They should never be hot enough to actually damage the skin, but there's always the chance that you have an allergic reaction to some compound in one of the creams listed below.
To prevent any sort of damage or irritation, always test a small amount of cream on a small, out-of-the-way area of skin. We recommend the inside of the wrist; it's sensitive enough to react if you're going to react, but out of the way enough that it won't be too irritating if it does.
Just remember to exercise due caution and you should be fine, no matter which cream you choose to use.
Sweet Sweat from Sports Research
This workout gel comes in stick form, similar to a stick of deodorant. That makes it easy to transport, easy to apply, and easy to put away, all without needing to clean the gel off your hands, use an applicator, or otherwise make a mess before you work out. Just roll it onto your target area before you work out, and give the workout your best.
This particular product comes in four scents: sweet mint, tropical, coconut, and original. You can buy sticks directly from the company, or from their Amazon store, where they have a 4.5-star rating with over 27,000 reviews. Not bad, right?
You can also get their gel in a jar for bulk use, or you can get travel packets to take with you when you head abroad. A single box gives you 20 single-use packets of gel.
Ignite by TNT Pro Series
Ignite is one of the more popular thermogenic gels on the market today. Their product works equally well for both men and women – as do most gels – and it focuses on increasing circulation and sweating in the targeted area. It's easy to use; simply apply a generous amount of gel to a target area on your abdomen, arms, legs, or elsewhere, but only partially rub it in for the best effect. Proceed with your workout as normal.
TNT generally recommends that you use one of their waist trimmers to help with your workout. No, they aren't hair trimmers; a waist trimmer is just a tall, thick belt that forms a barrier between your skin and the atmosphere, encouraging sweating. Does it help? You'll have to try it to find out.
Sweat Ignition by TC1
TC1's gel is similar to most; it's a topical gel you apply to the skin, often with a waist trimmer belt as an added accessory, and then you proceed along with your workout. In this case, the gel uses a combination of the soothing coolness of aloe vera with the thermogenic properties of capsaicin to stimulate the skin. This increases your circulation, promotes sweating, and keeps muscles relaxed and loose while working out. This gives you more power and more flexibility during your workouts while reducing the time needed to cool down or recover from your workouts.
This particular gel formula is a bit on the more expensive side, but many reviewers say it's well worth it. TC1 also has a gel called Sculpt, which is a collagen-infused gel aimed at restoring the structure and health of your skin. Feel free to give either or both of them a try, though they don't recommend using them both together.
Slim Cream or Hot Sweat Cream from ELAIMEI
This is one of those new-style brands that doesn't exist outside of Amazon. They have no website, just a series of optimized product pages on Amazon with their various products available for sale. In this case, they have two (at least) different varieties of thermogenic creams you can try out.
Slim Cream is a cream meant to target major weight loss, rather than small targeted zones or infrequent workouts. It comes in a tube rather than in a jar or a stick, making it easier to apply in controlled doses. Meanwhile, the Hot Sweat cream is a series of single-use packets. It's unclear whether or not they're both the same gel inside, but the packaging is different enough it seems to indicate it's not.
This company also has a dozen other skin creams and supplements aimed at restoring skin, from reducing scars to rejuvenating skin to cellulite removal creams. Not all of them are top-tier products, but you can feel free to browse their store at your leisure.
Hot Cream by Honeydew
This is another brand that exists solely on Amazon, as well as on your local Walmart store shelves. Honeydew hot cream is a thermogenic skin cream that includes restorative ingredients such as collagen and vitamin E to help limit any skin effects it might have while enhancing sweat and encouraging targeted weight loss.
Some of the reviews for this product indicate that you should use it with a waist trimmer or with plastic wrap to keep it in place, rather than allowing it to soak in and evaporate like it will if you put it on by itself. Other people recommend using more than one layer, to make sure you're getting as much out of the gel as possible. We don't really have an opinion here; do whatever works best for you.
Hot Slim Cream by 'Murara'
This cream is meant to be used on its own rather than as an exercise enhancer, which might be a little questionable, but it's up to you to try it out and see if it works for you. The trick with products like this is that every person is different, and different people react to different products in different ways. Maybe it doesn't work for us, but it might work for you, and as long as it works, that's all that matters.
This cream is meant to be massaged into a targeted area until it is completely absorbed, unlike other hot creams and gels. Once it is absorbed, you're supposed to wrap the area in plastic, to encourage sweating. It heats up on the skin, so be careful not to burn yourself, and always test cream on a small area of skin to make sure you're not allergic to it first.
Slimming Cream by RtopR
What is there to say that hasn't already been said by this point? This heating cream works in much the same way as all of the others on the list, though the list of fruit-based ingredients varies slightly. In large part, the main difference you'll experience between this cream and many of the others on this list is the scent.
This particular gel is strongly mango scented, so be aware of that if you're not as much of a fan of the tropical fruits as others are. It also uses ginger to enhance both the smell and the effect on your skin. They recommend using it on arms, knees, calves, thighs, and abdomen. You can also use it on your glutes and sides, though it might be harder to rub into some areas. Just make sure to test it first, as always.
Of note is that this is another brand that seems to only really exist on Amazon. Normally we're pretty skeptical about these brands, but at least they have a proven record of actually shipping their products, unlike some modern shady sellers. Still, it's better to buy from a seller you trust, to use your own best judgment.
Slim Extreme 4D from Eveline
This is one of the most intense products on the market, so much so that it is labeled as a liposuction cream, which of course isn't actually a real thing. This cream isn't going to spontaneously perform surgery on your torso, after all. What it does, however, is it creates a powerful heat effect that stimulates the skin into purging weight.
Eveline has a variety of ingredients for this cream, including things like caffeine and ivy extract. It also includes L-Carnitine, Gingko, and collagen, plus other ingredients that can be beneficial. Perhaps not all of them actually work on the skin (some of them are best used when ingested, but you absolutely should not ingest a skin cream), but many of them do. Give it a try!
Workout Enhancing Balm by SweatZone
This is another cream that comes in stick form, making it easier and more convenient to apply than many of the other options on this list. It's available online from their website, from Amazon, and from Walmarts around the world. The cream is pretty standard for a workout-enhancing cream, using the usual array of capsaicin, vitamins, and plant extracts to stimulate the skin into sweating more.
This product has a few negative reviews, mostly relating to the quality of the packaging, not the product itself.
Quema Lonja Gel from Bella All Natural
We couldn't end this post without recommending our own product, could we? Obviously, we're a little biased, but we think our gel is among the best on the market. A tub of our gel can help you enhance your workouts with increased sweating and higher energy levels, and it includes vitamin E to soothe the skin and reduce inflammation, as well as collagen to reinforce the skin itself.
So there you have it; our list of the best workout gels on the market. There are more out there, but frankly, you can get away just fine using our gel (or, if you must, one of the others on the list.) That said, if you have a gel product you've tried out and you want to recommend, let us know in the comments.
What are your thoughts? Do you feel that exercise gels are suitable for your needs?
