The best way to explain this is an analogy: Back belts are like a manager watching as you lift something heavy, verbally reminding you to lift with your legs and keep a straight back. They reduce your range of motion, but offer no assistance. Exosuits are like having a buddy who rolls up their sleeves and helps you lift the thing so there is less strain on your back.

In short, there is nothing in a back brace that does mechanical work, while our exosuit has strong elastic (rubber) bands that use leverage and gravity to actually do work in parallel with your back muscles and help you lift, bend, and balance.

Back belts only provide tactile feedback to remind people to lift with a neutral spine. But we’ve known for 20+ years that back belts do not actually reduce the strain or fatigue of your back muscles.  And it’s this strain that leads to overexertion injuries and back pain. (read up on the science here and here)

In contrast, exosuits have been proven to reduce back muscle strain and fatigue by 15-40%. (Lamers 2018 & Lamers 2020) Exosuits are more like artificial muscles that do a portion of the work so your back muscles can do less. By reducing back strain exosuits actually reduce overexertion injury risks (whereas back belts do not).