How your sports bra could be the secret to running faster

SPORTS bras make you run faster, study shows.

The right support improved women’s running times by 4.2 seconds per minute, researchers found.

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They used cameras to track their movement on a treadmill to see how it changed as they wore two types of bras or wore none.

When wearing the more supportive underwear, runners improved their performance by 7 percent.

dr Douglas Powell of the University of Memphis said: “Sports bras should be viewed not only as clothing but also as sports equipment.

“They can both improve performance and reduce the risk of injury, which plays a role in women’s health.

“The breast support not only influences the movement of the breasts, but also that compensations take place throughout the body.”

Almost three quarters of women suffer from chest pain when running and so put some of the sport and exercise off.

Previous research has shown that sports bras not only limit movement and pain, but also increase athletic performance.

Prescription bras were worn by the lionesses during their successful Euro 2022 campaign.

The latest study, published in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, looked at how wearing a sports bra affects women’s biomechanics when running.

Twelve runners between the ages of 18 and 35 with bra sizes ranging from B to D cups were filmed running using a 10-camera motion capture system.

Compared to running without a bra, women wearing a low supportive bra ran with 2 percent stiffer knees because they didn’t have to cushion their movement as much.

Wearing a high-support bra increased stiffness by 5 percent.

Taken together, the team estimated that this would increase the performance of world-class marathoners by about 10 minutes.

dr Powell said, “Over the past 50 years, bra design has made limited advances.

“The biomechanics underlying improved running performance with greater chest support are not well understood.

“We wanted to identify strategies to reduce activity-related chest pain in women — a group that makes up about 50 percent of the population.”