We’ve been asking Climatic questions since L Max launched and we’re still on the fence if its helped improve our performance but we have noticed it does help improve our breathing mid-session. Does that translate to better performance? Maybe. But with ingredients we understand, it helps clear our mucus and that’s promising.

Now Climatic is making its next move, and it’s less about the product and more about who’s standing behind it.

The brand announced its Performance Advisory Board, bringing together six of the most recognizable names in endurance sports, like Tim O’Donnell, Sara Hall, Matt Hanson, Kayla Jeter, Dan Plews, and Chris Chavez — to help push respiratory health into the same daily-habit conversation as hydration or sleep. It’s a smart move for a category still finding its footing: get the athletes who obsess over marginal gains to use it, talk about it and help back it.

Is breathing the most overlooked performance tool in the entire performance stack or is it just the latest thing to try and sell?

This time we skipped the science officer and went straight to the two people who can speak to why this board exists in the first place. We caught up with Allie Melnick, Co-Founder and CCO of Climatic, and Matt Hanson, Ironman champion, coach, and one of the six inaugural Performance Advisors, for an exclusive conversation on what this group is actually going to do, and why endurance athletes specifically should be paying attention.

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Climatic Health is sixty days in. What’s the reaction been, and what’s surprised you?

Allie: The response has exceeded expectations, and not just in demand — we sold out our first two runs in the first 10 days. What’s surprised us is the consistency of what people are telling us.

We launched thinking endurance athletes would be our earliest adopters, and they’ve absolutely embraced it. But the interest has been way broader than that. Runners, cyclists, people with seasonal allergies, urban commuters, vapers — we keep hearing the same thing: most people don’t realize how much they’ve adapted to everyday respiratory stress until they experience clearer breathing.

The biggest theme is that breathing is invisible until something gets in the way. Pollen, mold in your home, that moment you notice you’re breathing hard earlier than usual on a hill. Once people feel what clearer airways actually feel like, they start noticing all the moments that had quietly become normal — waking up congested, feeling the effects of smoke or pollen mid-workout. It’s reinforced our whole thesis: lung health has been an overlooked part of everyday wellness, not just athletic performance.

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Your advisory board spans a sports scientist, elite triathletes, media, and a wellness influencer. Are you worried about going too broad, or is that the point?

Allie: Every person breathes, so L Max has a genuinely large use case. We’re working on a real human problem, not serving a niche. The reasons your lungs get stressed might differ — training volume, pollution, allergies, wildfire smoke — but the biology behind it is remarkably similar.

We picked founding advisors who are broad on purpose, because they’re incredibly tuned into their bodies. If something helps them breathe easier or recover better, they’ll tell us fast. And they’ll tell us just as fast when it doesn’t. Honestly, the thing they push us on most is staying disciplined with the science. They pressure-test how we communicate results and remind us constantly that trust compounds slowly. That’s exactly the kind of feedback we want.

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You had a larger randomized controlled trial in the works. Where does that stand?

Allie: It’s wrapping up soon, and we’re still finishing the final analyses. While those results are outstanding, our recently published study with Mount Sinai Medical Center already showed more than a 50% improvement in mucus clearance from a single dose of L Max.

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Advisory boards are common in wellness, and sometimes they’re just a logo wall. What’s the real accountability structure here?

Allie: That’s exactly what we didn’t want to build — a logo wall. Our advisors are active in product development, research discussions, messaging, and long-term strategy. They’re also some of our earliest users, and their firsthand experience has shaped everything from the product itself to how we talk about it. Some of our strongest marketing and community conversations have come directly from stories they’ve shared with us.

We don’t think lung health should be a race-day hack. We think of it like sleep, nutrition, or recovery — something you invest in consistently because your lungs are exposed to environmental stress every single day. The benefits build with daily use, and over time that becomes part of how you feel in training and on race day.

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Does environmental stress change how effective L Max is — heat, altitude, allergy season?

Allie: We’re still learning here, but it’s one of the patterns we’re most excited about. Anecdotally, athletes tell us they notice the biggest difference during periods of higher respiratory stress — allergy season, poor air quality, altitude, dry climates, heavy training blocks.

One of our early trail runners in Colorado put it well, saying breathing feels much better on normal runs, with less congestion and more of a fluid feel, especially given how much dry air and dust he deals with out there. That’s not proof, but it’s exactly the kind of consistent feedback we’re hearing across very different environments. It also tracks scientifically — those are the exact conditions that place more stress on the respiratory system, and it’s part of why we started Climatic in the first place.

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$55 a month is another line item when athletes are already spending on nutrition, coaching, recovery tools, and race entries. Where does this fit in the priority stack?

Allie: I’d actually push back on the framing a little. If you’re already investing hundreds or thousands of dollars into training, nutrition, coaching, and recovery, it makes sense to think about the system responsible for getting oxygen into your body in the first place.

We’re not saying lung health replaces any of that — we see it as foundational. Athletes have spent decades optimizing muscles, fueling, sleep, and biomechanics, while the air we’re breathing has gotten harder to deal with, between pollution, wildfire smoke, and allergens. If you think of your lungs as your interface with the outside world, taking care of them stops feeling like another wellness trend and starts feeling like an obvious part of the modern performance toolkit.

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Matt. Thanks for taking the time to speak with us. You’ve raced at the highest level of long-course triathlon for over a decade. What’s the one thing about breathing you wish you’d paid attention to earlier?

Matt: Lung health is an area that’s largely been ignored. Traditionally, the belief was that transporting oxygenated blood through the system was the biggest limiter on performance. But with air pollution on the rise, we’re paying a lot more attention to how efficiently we’re actually getting oxygen from the lungs into the blood in the first place. I’ve dealt with seasonal allergies for a while now, and I genuinely wish this had gotten more attention earlier in my career.

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Walk me through how you’re actually using L Max during a training week.

Matt: I start every day with a dose, regardless of what the training looks like. On days when the AQI is high or there’s a lot of pollutants in the air, I’ll add a second dose after the session.

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Anything in your recovery data — HRV, sleep, how fast your breathing normalizes after hard efforts — that you’d point to and say, that’s probably the L Max?

Matt: My heart rate is noticeably lower during warm-up on days I use it beforehand. Breathing during the first couple hundred yards in the pool feels easier too. Starting a session with clear lungs just makes it easier to get rolling.

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You’ve watched a lot of wellness products cycle through endurance sports without delivering. What made you take this one seriously enough to put your name on it?

Matt: Plenty of companies have tried and failed in this space. Climatic did this the right way — science first. They could have made claims based on assumptions and rushed L Max to market, but they didn’t. They ran the validation studies before making any claims. That’s the reason I tried it in the first place, and it’s the reason I ended up on the board.