Where’s My Super Sports Bra?
Reading Time: 6 minutesWe Need to Fundamentally Change How We Think About Sports Bras, There’s evidence that a good bra can actually enhance performance., Best sports bra: A former Nike expert explains what women really need.
Boobs are back. Also, they never went away. This is part of Boobs Week—read the whole thing here.
Honestly, I’d rather not think too hard about how much money I’ve spent on running shoes. I have shoes for easy days and track workouts, long runs and tempo runs. I have a pair of trail shoes that were designed specifically for women, and, of course, I have a pair of super shoes, the same genre of carbon-plated racing shoes Eliud Kipchoge wore when he broke two hours in the marathon in 2019. (OK, I have two pairs.) I am neurotic about running shoes, you might say!
I bought the super shoes in 2021 and 2022, for two back-to-back attempts at qualifying for the Boston Marathon. These shoes, which cost about $250 a pair, have exploded in popularity in recent years among people like me, who care deeply about running and want to maximize both the quality of the experience and their performance. During both races, I wore my least-bad bra, the one that only chafes a little bit—not enough to bother me during a race, though usually enough to make me yelp in pain in the shower afterward.
I may have high expectations for running shoes, but the same cannot be said for running bras. A good sports bra is one I can ignore; a bad sports bra is one that’s painful enough to slow me down. The best I can hope for is … nothing.
Recently, though, I’ve come to believe that we can—and should!—ask more of our sports bras. We all should have sports bras that are actively nice to wear, the way we have shoes that do way, way more than simply protect our feet from the ground. According to a small-but-intriguing bit of research, a well-designed and properly fitting bra can even improve running performance. Enough with the super shoes. Where is my super sports bra?
Not long ago, after a 15-mile training run across New York City, Kelly Roberts came home to discover she was bleeding. A lot. ‘I chafed so bad it looked like I got shot—like, there was this giant blood mark on my shirt,’ she said. ‘I was completely unaware of how bad it was, because I’m always used to that subtle burning. I had no clue I was bleeding.’
Roberts is a running coach with a sizable following on TikTok and Instagram, where she regularly posts detailed reviews of bras she’s tried. She estimates she’s reviewed around 30 at this point, quipping about the performance and the aesthetics of each one. (‘If your nips are hard, it shows. That’s weird,’ she said of one bra in a recent review.)
When she was training seriously, she started getting tension headaches and pain in her jaw, to the point where it hurt to even open her mouth. Eventually, a physical therapist helped her connect those issues to her sports bra. ’My physical therapist was like, ‘Hey, your bra is ruining your life,’ ‘ she said. It’s possible for an ill-fitting bra to compress the muscles around an athlete’s shoulders and neck, which may reduce blood flow and lead to aches and pains like Roberts experienced.
But it can be difficult for women, especially those with larger breasts, to find a bra that doesn’t ruin their life. One 2015 study found that 17 percent of the 249 women surveyed reported that their breasts kept them from exercising, agreeing with statements like ‘I can’t find the right sports bra’ or ‘I am embarrassed by excessive breast movement.’
Even a bra that accomplishes the basics can be annoying to wear. In a study published earlier this year in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Olympic runner–turned–exercise physiologist Shalaya Kipp set out to quantify the effect of that irritation on performance. Kipp asked competitive runners to undergo a series of treadmill tests in three scenarios: once in their preferred size of sports bra, once with the band tightened, and once with the band loosened. Her results showed an improvement in oxygen consumption in the looser condition as compared to both the self-selected and the tighter conditions—as much as a 2 percent improvement between the tighter condition and the looser condition.
So, a tighter sports bra makes it harder to breathe. Yeah, no kidding. But it does help make the case for at least spending as much time considering your sports bra choice as you might your shoes, rather than just ordering something online and hoping for the best. Imagine going to a store dedicated mostly to sports bras, having a specialist evaluate your breasts, and then running around the store or on a treadmill a little bit to see how different options feel. This is how runners buy shoes, after all! The range of options for sports bras might still be a little lacking, but it would at least be a good start.
And Kipp’s study is exactly the kind of research that could be built upon to create—eventually— a performance-boosting bra. (Incidentally, Lululemon funded Kipp’s study.) Kipp has estimated that difference in oxygen consumption could result in a three-hour marathoner lopping three minutes off their finish time—reminiscent of the super-shoe manufacturer’s claim of a 4 percent oxygen consumption improvement. ‘This is basic science,’ Kipp says of her research. ‘This has the potential to help everyone on the playing field.’
(It’s not clear, by the way, that super shoes help everyone on the playing field. While it’s true that this technology has helped elite runners improve their finish times, the same might not be true for amateurs; despite my great love for my Alphaflys, the real benefit in performance seems to come when you’re moving much more quickly than my eight-minute marathon pace.)
When it comes to sports bras, even slight improvements could be enough to earn the ‘super’ moniker, says Laura Tempesta, a sports bra designer who was formerly Nike’s sports bra innovation director, and has consulted on design for other brands. ‘If we were going to design an amazing sports bra, it would solve all of these basic things that have not been solved yet,’ she said. Namely, it would improve sweat management and prevent chafing while providing comfort and support. ‘I mean, these are like basic, basic things, right? But no bra out there can say it has solved all of those things.’
There’s a reason brands haven’t created such a bra yet. ‘It takes lots and lots of money to make a really good sports bra,’ she said. But brands can’t charge as much for a bra as they can for a pair of shoes. ‘So in the hierarchy of things that they sell, in terms of how they’re going to allocate resources, bras always end up at the very bottom, because it’s just not worth it for them. The money is just not coming in for them there.’ Sports bras, which started out as two jockstraps sewn together, have certainly evolved over the years; today you can buy sports bras that have underwires, zip-front closures, adjustable Velcro straps, bras that are ‘seam-free,’ even one that holds a heart monitor. But it’s still very hard to find a bra that’s good. Tempesta believes most sports bra features advertised as innovations are mere gimmicks.
In part, it’s because of consumer behavior around bras versus shoes. Many runners hang on to sports bras for years. (My favorite bra is at least a decade old, the Nike swoosh mostly worn off by now.) But most runners replace shoes every 300 to 500 miles—around every few-to-several months, depending on your mileage habits. And you can really only use super shoes for about 200 to 250 miles; after that, the cushioning will wear to the point of injury risk. For that reason, it’s also not recommended that you do your everyday running in carbon-plated shoes. In fact, most elite and amateur athletes alike will show up to a race in an almost-new pair, typically worn just once before to break them in—I wore my Alphaflys a grand total of five times. The price per wear is extraordinary.
Currently, Tempesta is taking a break from consulting and is attempting to design a super sports bra herself, though she’s cagey about the details. In the meantime, both she and Roberts made mention of appealing to the morality of activewear brands. ‘What we need is a company to really dedicate resources to this for a long period of time and say, ‘We’re going to do this not because we’re caring about profits, but because it’s the right thing to do,’ ‘ Tempesta said.
It’s a nice thought, if not an altogether convincing one. (Capitalism, etc.) May I offer an alternate suggestion to athletic brands: Invest the time and money to create a great sports bra—one with straps you can fine-tune to your body, and that actually wicks sweat and actually doesn’t chafe—and pair it with a real, lab-backed claim of shaving precious minutes off my marathon time. Take advantage of the booming interest in women’s sports and make a big splashy deal out of someone like Emily Sisson or Keira D’Amato debuting it while smashing some women’s record. And then sell it to me and my high-strung runner friends, who will pay too much money for it and probably also believe you if you tell us it can only be used a few times—after which we’ll buy another.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2024/08/sports-bra-best-super-shoes-running.html
Ref: slate
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