For many people, sports bras are missing from their underwear drawer since they’re often (always) not that pretty to look at and not seen to be an essential item. I can understand this reasoning – why invest in the latest sports bra technology when you could get some pretty frillies instead? Well since I started ‘exercising’ *shudders* I’ve really noticed a difference since I started wearing sports bras. I’ve never been much of a ‘sports girl’ – which I can hand-on-heart say is at least partially down to being ill equipped. I can remember clearly back in the days of Physical Ed. lessons when you’d strip down to your bra and knickers and slip awkwardly into some hideous nylon sports wear and run around in circles to the sound of violently blowing whistles, shouts and screams, strenuous stretching and aerobics routines – all desperately clutching your bouncing (painful) boobs to save yourself from embarrassment, humiliation, despair or a black eye.
I can’t offer miracles but I do love to be the bearer of good news: this experience can be greatly improved with a great sports bra. I wish I’d had one for all my athletic atrocities, basketball blunders and tennis terrors, but now I’ve discovered the difference that a decent one can make to the exercising experience. I’ve joined a gym (thanks Groupon), gone for epic bike rides in the sun, gone horse riding (you can’t hold yourself down AND hold the reigns at the same time – a lesson learnt the hard way!) and discovered that exercise can actually be enjoyable?
But don’t just take my word for it, the experts think so too:
Research has identified how the different parameters of breast movement distance, velocity and acceleration are linked to discomfort during exercise, The (London) Times reported. Joanna Scurr, director of the Breast Health Unit at the University of Portsmouth, who led the project, said, “Until now bras have been designed in a completely ad hoc way. It’s amazing that the science hasn’t been done before.” The study, published in The Journal of Sports Sciences, monitored the breast movements of 15 female volunteers with a D-cup bra size as they ran on a treadmill. Using infrared cameras, which monitored sensors attached to their chests, movement was tracked in 3D while the women ran without a bra, with an ordinary bra and with a sports bra.
The women then rated their discomfort on a 1-5 scale. “Up to 72 percent of women experience pain or discomfort either during or after exercise,” said Scurr. “Whether for elite athletes or once-a-week joggers, this can have a negative effect on your performance and can also deter women from taking part in physical activity.” “It was only the side-to-side motion of the breasts that hindered performance, suggesting that horizontal support was an important factor.” Now we enter into the rat race of the sports bra world with most big names giving at least one addition to this highly-competitive market.
There are two main things that you really need to know about sports bras:
There are two types of sports bra: compression and encapsulation. Both are pretty self-explanatory compression binds your girls down to prevent movement thus deceasing discomfort during exercise and encapsulation uses the shape and cut of the cups to prevent movement without pressing down the breast tissue. Different bras and brands offer different support levels for different sports and levels of exertion for example the Shock Absorber range comes in 4 different levels of ‘support’ With this in mind, I decided the best way to try out the sports bras on the market would be to try them out. And I don’t mean for a run down the stairs, I mean business.
