Compression clothing — snug-fitting socks, shorts, tights, or shirts — has been shown to improve performance during exercise and speed recovery afterward, according a new analysis of studies.
But that research also raises interesting questions about whether the garments really help people to exercise better or whether it’s because users expect that they will because of a placebo effect,
The New York Times reports.
“The garments supposedly increase blood circulation and thus oxygen delivery for improved sport performance,” said Abigail Stickford, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who led the new research of compression clothes.
The clothes also are thought to refine someone’s sense of how the body is positioned in space, which could improve the efficiency of movement and reduce the number of muscles that need to be activated, making exercise less tiring.
But for the new research, published in The International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, Stickford, tested the use of compression gear in 16 competitive male distance runners, some of whom regularly wore and swore by compression clothes.
The result showed no statistically significant differences in their running efficiency or biomechanics when they wore the gear and when they did not.
Other studies of compression clothing have produced similar results, The Times reports
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