The many amazing benefits of wearing a good sports bra for runners

Running is healthy for the body and mind, but good preparation is important for preventing injuries. To improve your athletic performance. For example, a good sports bra not only protects against all kinds of diseases, but also makes you run faster.

again Movement study Better breast support in female runners appears to cause more stiffness in the knee joint. This changes the biomechanics of the lower body, which has all kinds of positive effects.

pain in chest
For both men and women, good running shoes are probably the most important thing for preventing injuries. For example, old or poor-quality shoes cannot adequately absorb the shocks of running on the asphalt, which can cause, for example, your shin splints or your knee joints to suffer. For women, there is also the fact that they can get sore breasts from running. This is so bad for some that they no longer work at all.

Low oxygen consumption
Previous research has already shown that a well-fitting sports bra provides better breast support. As a result, the breasts move less and athletic performance improves as well. So you will run faster and further through it. Good breast support is associated with lower oxygen consumption and better movement technique. American researchers from University of Memphis I delved deeper into the impact of wearing a good sports bra. “The biomechanical processes responsible for improving running performance with good chest support were largely unknown. So we set out to find the best strategies for women to reduce running-related chest pain. Almost half of all women have this disease,” says researcher Douglas Powell.

Rigidity is positive
He and others have studied differences in knee joint stiffness with poor breast support, good breast support and no breast support. The more rigid the knee joint, the more efficient the movement and the lower the risk of injury. Twelve recreational runners with a B, C, or D cup had to run on a treadmill in three different ways: without a bra, with a loose-fitting bra and with a high-support sports bra. The stiffness of the knee joint and the movement of the breasts during running were measured and calculated. Their running motions were meticulously analyzed using reflective stickers on different parts of the body, cameras and a complex biomechanical computer model.

Better performance, fewer injuries
In the end, it turned out that a moderately supportive bra leads to 2 percent more stiffness in the knee joint and a strongly supportive bra produces 5 percent more stiffness. From this data, combined with the results of previous studies, the researchers concluded that a good sports bra improves running performance by an average of 7 percent. “Our study shows that breast support affects not only breast movements, but also changes in motion throughout the body,” Powell said. “Poor breast support leads to decreased athletic performance, increased risk of injury and even increased risk of developing chronic back and chest pain.”

Not just any piece of clothing
The importance of a sports bra is often underestimated. “There has been relatively little innovation in bra design over the past 50 years. Our research builds on previous research and shows that a sports bra is not just a piece of clothing. It is an indispensable part of women’s sports equipment, which not only improves performance but also reduces infection risk and can play an important role in a woman’s overall health,” Powell concludes. So it is definitely worth buying a good copy.