Black Friday is only a month away, and runners must be buying shoes, clothes, watches… With the coming of winter, runners will also consider buying something that can protect them from the cold and make them feel better ——-Compression pants.
Why wear compression pants? Can compression pants improve athletic performance? What can runners actually achieve by wearing compression pants?
LLCG (Lower Limb Compression Garments) is first applied in patients with chronic venous insufficiency. By generating gradient pressure from bottom to top and from the distal end to the proximal end, it can improve venous circulation, promote venous blood return and reduce Lower Limb swelling so as to prevent thrombosis.
Compression of fabric with an elastic gradient creates a physical pressure that promotes blood and lymphatic flow in the body. It was then suggested that since compression pants help lymphatic return, they might also improve performance in sports by improving blood circulation.
As a result, all kinds of colorful compression pants, compression socks and functional sports equipment began to become popular in the selling market, do they really have what publicity said so? Compression clothing manufacturer answers this question for you.
Sports Medicine, an international sports magazine, the articles of this magazine are all the review papers written by famous sports scientists. The so-called literature review refers to the comprehensive analysis and description of various studies involved in a topic by scientists, so as to help readers quickly understand the cutting-edge progress of this topic.
An essay on Sports Medicine analyzed whether LLCG can improve motor ability was from five aspects:
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Athletic performance
After statistical analysis of a large number of literature, it was found that there was insufficient evidence of a positive effect of LLCG on exercise performance.
The effect of using LLCG has not been proven in 50m-400m, 800m-3000m or 5000m races, so it can be basically concluded that compression pants have no significant effect on athletic performance. If there is an effect, it is due to psychological effects.
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Vertical jump height
Studies on vertical jump height showed no significant difference in LLCG between all experimental and control groups.
So in competition, it’s all about personal preference and habit, and you can’t expect them to help you jump higher.
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Maximal oxygen uptake
VO2Max test results showed that wearing compression pants did not significantly improve VoMax, as it is known to us that VO2Max reflects the working potential of the body’s heart, lung and body in the extreme state, it is also a classic indicator to evaluate cardiorespiratory endurance.
This shows that compression pants can not improve the human body in the extreme state of sports performance. On the contrary, runners wearing LLCG also showed a decrease in VoMax compared to those wearing traditional shorts. And the reasons for this phenomenon need to be further studied.
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Blood lactic acid concentration
The conclusion of all the tests was consistent. LLCG had no effect on blood lactic acid concentration during exercise, which was also consistent with the conclusion of previous studies.
Blood lactic acid is a product of anaerobic decomposition of sugar, the blood lactic acid accumulation represents the human body from low-intensity aerobic exercise to high-intensity anaerobic exercise, the more blood lactic acid generated explains the high intensity.
The greater the accumulation of blood lactic acid in the body will also lead to fatigue, if putting on compression pants helps reduce blood lactic acid level, then it can help delay the onset of fatigue, Unfortunately, scientific research has not seen such results.
Interestingly, studies have shown that LLCG actually causes lactic acid to remain in the muscles, possibly because compression pants may actually reduce blood flow to the muscles because they compress blood vessels, preventing the bloodstream from carrying lactic acid away quickly.
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Subjective fatigue
Though experiments showed that LLCG did alleviate fatigue sensation, the difference was almost negligible, especially during high-intensity exercise or prolonged exercise, there was almost no difference in subjective fatigue sensation between the experimental group and the control group.
Simply put, wearing compression pants doesn’t make you any easier.
To sum up, from the existing research, LLCG is not as obvious as we expected in the improvement of human exercise ability. Although LLCG has been riding the popularity of running in recent years and showing a trend of increasing sales, it is favored by the majority of runners, but its actual effect is not as advertised by the brand.
So why wear compression pants for fall and winter running? What it really does boil down to is one thing — running freely.
Here we can define the word “freely” as convenient and free of restrictions or words you like to describe the feeling.
When autumn and winter come, runners can not run like spring and summer with shorts and short sleeves, in order to keep warm and prevent cold they will always be appropriate to wear more.
But wearing too much, on the one hand, will be hot and on the other hand is also very burdensome, for example, wearing traditional loose sports pants, is not comfortable.
Besides, pants legs will stick on your leg which feels bad after sweating.
At this time, the emergence of compression pants brings convenience to run. Tightly wrapped leg, compression pants, let you have a sense of feeling the integration of clothing and body so that you will feel particularly convenient when running. Here convenient means do not affect your movement, no sense of bondage, but also let you feel warm and lightweight.
Common sports tights or compression leggings? Don’t know the difference:
common sports tights are stretchy pants or leggings made of stretchy material that covers the entire leg. Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, and other brands offer stretchy pants.
Stretchy pants are characterized by equal elasticity in all parts, which basically provides the same pressure to all parts of the lower limbs. The manufacturing process of elastic pants is relatively simple and the cost is low, costing $50-60 per piece. But actually, if you do the wholesale, for example, seamless leggings wholesale, it won’t cost too much in bulk.
But the disadvantage of common sports tight is that after wearing and washing, the elasticity will significantly be decreased, compression pants slowly become loose long Johns……
The real compression pants must provide gradient pressure, that is, the greater the elastic force toward the calf, the less elastic force toward the thigh. Just because of this, compression pants are often difficult to wear, and of course, with a complicated process, the price is more expensive, often costing hundreds of dollars.
If you want to ask which is better, which is more conducive to running, we have talked about it before. Compression pants is not able to help improve athletic performance, in this sense, there is no essential difference between them on the function. Stretchy pants are good enough.
Of course, if the budget is abundant. Please choose the compression pants, enjoy the psychological pleasure it brings.
In summary, the benefits that compression pants bring, like, it can reduce bone vibration during exercise, thereby easing the burden on muscle, and increase working muscle oxygen content and lower levels of blood lactic acid, and so on, maybe just psychological effect, the biggest benefit is let more light and make running or work out smoothly.
