July 6, 2021 • 39 mins
Co-hosts Adrienne Herbert and Tamara Pridgett are joined by the Head of the Research Group in Breast Health at the University of Portsmouth Professor Joanna Wakefield-Scurr. Joanna talks to us all about sports bras, why she is so passionate about wearing a good one, and how the wrong bra can negatively impact your performance!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What makes a bra right for you kind of boils
down to function, comfort and fit. Function, I guess is
the sort of first thing to consider, what do you
want the bra for? Comfort is going to be key
whether it works for you, and then the final area
is fit. And you could choose a great bra that's
(00:21):
right for the function that you want it for, but
if it doesn't fit properly for you, then it's not
going to function appropriately. This is Sweat the Details, a
collaboration with under Arma and I Heart Radio, a podcast
made for a women by women that puts our training, journeys,
(00:44):
falls and mindset at the center. Antienra Bridget and I'm
Adrian Herbert. Every episode will hear from athletes, trainers, and
experts who will give us insights into how our bodies
and minds work together in training and competition. Entered is
episode We're getting up close and personal with our bras,
specifically sports bras and the best support during sport. Yes.
(01:08):
I love this, Timeara, because I feel like most women
lack the knowledge around what goes into developing a sports
bra and really what the differences between all of the
various types. Yeah, for me, when I think about buying
a sports bra. I'm really just looking for style and
comfort and acute color. But there is so much science
(01:28):
and research that goes into making a quality sports bra exactly,
and that's why we are going to jump right in
with Joanna to begin to understand just how much research
actually goes into creating the best bra for sports. Yes,
I'm so excited for this, so let's do this. Hi,
(01:50):
Dr Scare, welcome to sweat the details. We are so
excited to speak with you today about our boobs about
sports bras and breast health. Great, well, nice to be here,
Nice to talk to you about it. It's an area
that is really important to me. I'm really passionate about it.
It's been my entire career. So delighted to have the
(02:11):
opportunity to talk about it. Brilliant. Well, we certainly have
a lot of questions and lots of things that we're
hoping you're going to be able to share with us
all today, So I guess just to start at the
top would be great to hear a bit about your journey,
you know, how you became an expert in bras and
in relation to sports performance. Yeah, no problem, So my
(02:33):
journey in this area began eighteen years ago as a
breast pain sufferer. So I really suffered from breast pain
on a monthly basis, and then I went through a
period where I was suffering from permanent breast pain. So
it lasted for about four months, and in the end
I visited my doctor. So my breast pain was affecting
(02:54):
my exercise, it was affecting my sleep, It would affect
the bras that I would wear. So in the end
I went to my doctor and my doctor said to me, well,
we have no way of dealing with what we call
benign breast pain um and so instead our advice is
to get a good bra. And so as a scientist,
I thought, well that must be fairly easy. I'll just
(03:16):
go away and research what a good bra is and
off we go. So I researched what makes a good
bra and soon found out that it wasn't that easy.
And they actually, at the time, eighteen years ago, we
knew very little about the science behind bras and what
makes a good bra, what the impact of wearing a
(03:37):
good bra is, And so my research journey began there
really with the initial question of what makes a good bra,
And to be honest, eighteen years on, we're still asking
that question, so there's still loads of research to be done. Yeah,
in your opinion, what makes a good bra? What does
your research focus on when it comes to supports brice? Yeah,
(03:59):
So when I initially started researching this area and realized
that there was a real lack of scientific information out
there about what a bra needs to do. What is
the purpose of a bra? What? What what does it do?
Does it lift the breast, does it hold the breast,
does it stop it from moving? Should it reduce pain?
You know, so all of these sort of fundamental questions
(04:21):
we didn't really know the answer to. So I set
up the research group in breast health at the University
of Portsmouth. There was three of us in the research
group eighteen years ago. There's now about eighteen of us.
So the research group has really expanded and our sort
of core knowledge revolves around us investigating what we call
(04:42):
the biomechanics of the breast. So the biomechanics of the
breast essentially is looking at how the breast moves, the
forces that act on the breast, So how much stretch
or strain there is on the tissues of the breast itself,
whether we might be causing damage to the breast tissue,
why pain occurs in the breast, So all of these
(05:03):
sort of fundamental questions we've started to research over the
last eighteen years. One of the interesting things that we
live with on a daily basis, though, is that it's
very difficult to answer that question of what makes a
good bra. And the reason being is because we're all
very different. What works for me might not work for you,
(05:25):
and so that's challenging from a research perspective, but it's
great from an industry perspective because it means that there's
an opportunity for loads of different solutions. There's loads of
different sports bras that have different features that will fit
one person but not the other. So there's this sort
of great range of products out there. So in answer
(05:47):
to your question what is a good BRA? I just
encourage everyone to get out there, check out the market,
try on loads of different things. Even if you think
that's not going to work for me, try it on,
jump around in it in the changing room. M M. Well,
you mentioned that there's so many, you know, different variables there, so,
as you said, we've all got unique body shapes and
(06:08):
sizes and we want to maybe wear our bras for
different activities like running or boxing or yoga, so they
need a different level of support. And as you said,
there's a wide variety, so we can go and shop
around and trying different things. But I personally think that
can also give you decision paralysis when there's so many
options to choose one that sometimes you kind of think, well,
which one is right? And obviously if you're having to
(06:31):
purchase them as well, are there any kind of hardlines
there on things that we should look out for. So
it's a really good question, and I always suggest that
what makes a bra right for you kind of boils
down to function, comfort and fit. Function, I guess is
the sort of first thing to consider, what do you
want the bra for Comfort is going to be key
(06:53):
whether it works for you, And then the final area
is fit. And you could choose a great bra it's
right for the function that you want it for, but
if it doesn't fit properly for you, then it's not
going to function appropriately. So this whole area of bra
fit is absolutely crucial in terms of getting the most
(07:14):
out of your sports bra. In our research group, our
mantra about bra fitting is to educate women on how
to fit themselves, so to empower women to be able
to assess their own bra fit. And so we have
sort of five simple tips for bra fitting, and the
first one of those is the underband. So the underband
(07:37):
is the bottom part of the bra that goes all
the way around from the back to the front. Making
sure that that fits you first off is the most
important thing. Because the support of any bra, so that's
an everyday bra or a sports bra, comes from the underband.
So you want the underband to be acting as a
(07:57):
shelf almost, so a fixing around your torso, and the
cups then sit on that shelf. So you want a
nice firm fixing in the underband. And how you check
that is by pulling the underband out at the side.
You shouldn't be able to pull it out any more
than five centimeters, So if you can pull it all
(08:18):
the way out a meter, then that bra is not
right for you, the wrong size. Well, I'm learning that
for the first time. I sometimes find it restricts your
breathing if it's tight. But then there's that balance right between,
like if you want it tights it supportive, but you're like,
I don't want my rib cage to feel like I
can't breathe when I'm doing sprints, so I'm taking notes.
After a few hours, I feel like, oh, this is
(08:40):
digging into my side. Let me get this bra off now.
It is a bit of a compromise. I mean, if
you do want that bra to provide you with maximum support,
then it is going to be reasonably firm fitting. It
is going to be reasonably stiff materials and they're going
to hold you. That's the job, and that's the AIO.
(09:00):
That's what we want the bra to do. So that
firm fitting underband is crucial. The next thing to check
is that it's level all the way around your body.
And check that it's level after you have jumped around,
put your arms in the air twisted length forwards, you know,
so you really let the bra settle where it wants
(09:20):
to settle. And if it's not level all the way around,
then it's not tight enough. So that's always a good check.
The next thing to check is the cups, and the
cups should sort of sit on the underband, and most
of the support in the cup should come from the
underband rather than the weight of the breast being carried
on the shoulder, So we want to make sure that
(09:42):
the underband is like a shelf. And when you're looking
to see if the cups fit, you're looking to make
sure that you haven't got any bulging of breast tissue.
So Wirreen often will check the sort of cleavage area
and say, oh no, no, no flesh bulging there. But
also check under the arm because sometimes the cup is
(10:02):
too small and so you get flesh sort of spilling
out at the side. And likewise, you don't want the
cup to be too big so it's gaping or the
fabrics wrinkling because again the bra is not doing its job.
Then next thing to check is the center front of
the bras, so that's the sort of bridge between the
two cups. You just want to make sure that that
(10:25):
center front is sitting on the rib cage. And then
the final thing is the shoulder straps. So the shoulder straps, again,
like the underband, should be a firm fit, not too
tight that they're digging in too much, but also not
too loose that again, when you stretch them, you should
have no more than a five centimeter gap on the
shoulder strap. Another really interesting important thing to consider with
(10:50):
the shoulder straps is that you don't have to have
them both adjusted. The same of women have one breast
bigger than the other, so it would be quite unusual
to have both your shoulder straps in the same position
because it's likely that you've got one breast bigger than
the other. So having them at different levels is how
(11:10):
it should be. So that's the five simple steps. There
we go. I see Adrian writing stuff down to I'm
like furiously writing because I have never considered half of
these things. Everything you said, I'm like, yep, never adjusted
the straps, never checked the band, I don't ever jump
around and test it out. So I'm definitely putting these
(11:31):
tips to use as soon as possible. Yeah, me too,
As you're saying, lots of useful information in there, and
could you tell us now, I guess moving on a
little bit more to the process and the research. Since
you've done so much work and you're so knowledgeable in
this area, and you mentioned you know how your team
has expanded. What has that process and research development look
like to the sports bras that we have now, Yes,
(11:53):
so so good question. One of the early aspects associated
with our work was understanding the difference between different sports
brass styles. So sports bras support the breast in two
fundamentally different ways. Either you can compress the breast tissue
towards the chess wall, so basically you could squash it,
(12:18):
or you can lift it and hold it. And so
sports bras historically were one or the other. They were
either compression tops that squashed the breast compress it towards
the chess wall, or they looked more like an everyday
bra and they lifted the breast, they encase the breast,
and they held the breast. So they were sort of
(12:40):
one or the other. And when we started our research,
this is going back sort of fifteen years, one of
the initial innovations was to put those two together. Let's
just literally so one on top of the other. And
so this idea of a combination of compression and what
we call encapsulation and sort of came onto the market
(13:02):
and we saw bras that looked like a crop top
but had some structure and some molding and an actual cup,
and that was really interesting. And actually now we see
probably about of sports bras on the market have a
combination of both some sort of compressive element and some
kind of cup. So that that's been really interesting, and
(13:25):
then we've done tons of work looking at things like
the effect of a good sports bra on sports performance.
We've done lots of work looking at the effect of
a good sports bar on reducing breast pain, on reducing
damage to the breast tissue. So there's been lots of
sort of innovations in those areas as well that research.
(13:49):
When it comes specific to performance, what have you guys found,
especially when it comes to improving performance. My research group
is actually based within a school of sports, exercise and
health sciences, so we're embedded in the world of sports.
So one of our first questions that we were interested
in answering was whether a sports bra could help you
(14:12):
be a winner in sport, and so we've investigated the
effect of sports bras on physiological function. So we found
that a sports bar actually changes the way that we breathe.
It improves our breathing frequency, and we think that that's
probably related somehow to pain. So if you exercise without
(14:35):
a good sports bra, or with no sports bra, for example,
then it could be reasonably uncomfortable. And we found with
our participants that they might hold their breath or change
their breathing frequency. We also saw improvements in heart rate
as well, actually when our participants ran wearing a sports bra,
so we know that there's some potentially some physiological benefits
(14:59):
to make you more efficient if you run wearing a
good sports bra. We also looked at the biomechanical effects
and we found that if you run wearing a good
sports bra that supports you well biomechanically, we found changes
in your stride length, so you actually shortened your stride
(15:20):
when you were running wearing poor bra support. We found
that on average, women shortened their stride by four centimeters
and if you multiply four centimeters over a marathon distance,
it equates to a mile. Well, I think these stats
are so important. You know, we focus on performance, and
(15:41):
you know, as female athletes versus male athletes, you know
there's all of these things that without the adequate research
and without this kind of data and support, women gonna
be able to perform at their best. And you mentioned,
you know, the biomechanical effects, and we know that you've
worked with under armas biomechanics and innovation team, So can
you talk to us about your experience working with the
Underramur team. So we've been working with under Arma since
(16:04):
two thousand and nine, so many many years. What has
always been great with under Armur is their innovative thinking,
which is reasonably unusual because a lot of the industry
are very focused on what's going to happen next season.
That was always a disappointment for me as a female
working in the air of sports bras. I didn't want
(16:27):
my new sports bar to be a slight variation on
the sports bar had last year. And that's what's happened
in the bar industry. The bar industry has just been
sort of evolving, Whereas actually what I found with working
with under Armur is they will wipe the slate clean.
Let's start again. Let's look at what the breast support
(16:47):
requirements are. Let's look at what the issues are for
female athletes. Let's look at the issues with breast pain
or with different anatomies, um so that you can really
come up with innovative of solutions for this rather than
just a change from the bra that we had last season.
So what are you currently researching looking at right now
(17:09):
when it comes to sports bras and performance if you're
allowed to tell us so. From a sports performance perspective,
a particular project that we've been working on recently, which
has been really really exciting for us, is working with
professional elite female athletes in the UK. And initially what
(17:29):
we've been doing is basically educating them. I don't mean
that's sound patronizing, but essentially just giving information on breasts
and bras. And we've had some really interesting, slightly worrying
results come out of that project. We had sort of
assumed that because professional athletes might be wearing a sports
(17:50):
bra for longer than the general public, that they might
know more about sports bras, but actually that wasn't their
findings from our research and interestingly, you know, these professional
athletes were reporting that they knew less than the general public.
So that project with professional athletes started out with some
(18:10):
an educational component, and then we went on to bra
fit each of those athletes individually, to look at the
bras they were wearing sports bras they were using now,
and then to um prescribe sports bras for them that
were specific to their sports, specific to their anatomy and
(18:31):
that fitted them really well. So, just to give you
a snip bit of the results, one of the athletes
that we worked with was a shooter and in shooting,
you can't have breast tissue touching the rifle, and so
for her, her issue was being able to move the
breast tissue out the way so she didn't infringe the
regulations within her sports. So that was a really interesting
(18:54):
BRA development project where we had to move the breast
tissue out the way and she saw a huge provement
in her performance. So that was really really exciting project
for us. It's so important that we're having this research
done and this work is ongoing. And actually, even when
you talked about, you know, under arms approach when it
comes to innovation and Blue Sky thinking, I really liked
(19:16):
what you said about, you know, just reimagining and not saying, okay,
well this is what you know, the kind of best
options are the best practices because that kind of suggests
that what we have now is as best that we'll
ever have. And I really like that thinking of actually,
let's subscrap it start again and can we make something
even better? And I think that that thread of innovation
definitely goes throughout the brand and it's something that I
(19:37):
always keep coming back to again and again and plumb
and I really love to ask, is you know, I'm
a runner, and I'm always listening and thinking back to running,
and I was actually thinking, say, you've running, I don't know,
a hundred miles and a pair of trainers, you might
start to realize, Okay, the support is changing and it's
time to change the shoe. Is it the same with
sports bras? Does it come a time where the fit
and support will change and you actually need to replace them? Yeah?
(19:59):
Absolute utely. And I think again that's a really important
point to make your optimum sports bra for you that
worked really well when you first bought it may not
be optimal in six months time. We're actually doing study
on that at the moment, and what we're finding is
that the thing that affects the life of a sports
(20:19):
bra more than anything is how often you wash. It
affects the life of the sports bra more than how
much you wear it and what you wear it for.
When you talk about the life of a sports bra,
then it's probably worth looking at how many times you've
washed it. Now, that's kind of difficult to keep itally
of that, I know, but make sure you follow the
(20:43):
manufacturer's guidelines. So some sports bras are handwash only. I
don't know if your ladies hand wash your bras I
don't know. I air dry though I don't know if
that cancer anything. Yeah, and not many people do handwash them.
So those fit tips that I talked about earlier, check
(21:05):
those regularly and make sure that the bra hasn't stretched.
So check the fit, jump up and down and see
if it is still giving you the support that you need. Yeah,
I want to look back a little bit because you
mentioned right at the top of this interview that the
reason a lot of this research and this passion started
for you was because you were experiencing pain. Now for
(21:26):
me personally, you know, and I'm sure for many listeners
if you're experiencing breast pain or you also mentioned at
one point about is certain exercise damaging the breast tissue?
You know, that kind of can be quite scary. So
one of the health benefits all the health risks of
not having a supportive bra. So I would definitely talk
(21:46):
first off about breast pain. And I guess I'm a
bit biased because I was and still am a breast
pain sufferer, and so interestingly, breast pain affects half the
female population, and I think a lot of people don't
know that half the female population experienced breast pain, and
if you're one of the lucky people that doesn't experience it,
(22:09):
then it kind of stays off your radar, so you
you might not realize that actually the other half of
the population are getting breast pain, and that breast pain
falls into two different categories. Really clinical breast pain, which
is nothing related to exercise. It's breast pain that occurs
either monthly or it occurs constantly. And then the other
(22:32):
pain is movement related pain. So this is pain caused
by stretching on the supporting structures of the breast, and
that stretch is painful. So you can have clinical breast
pain and then you've got movement related breast pain. So
for me eighteen years ago, when I first started this journey,
(22:54):
I was getting clinical breast pain, so I was having
pain constantly. But then I was also trying to exercise
eyes I was trying to run, and so I was
getting movement related pain as well because I wasn't wearing
a supportive bra, so I had like a double whammy
of two types of pain at the same time. So
it was pretty uncomfortable. So that's one of the negative
(23:14):
consequences of not wearing appropriate support we know that appropriate
support reduces and in most instances eliminates movement related breast pain.
But also from a clinical perspective, we found that a
BRA is also effective at reducing clinical breast pain. So
(23:36):
essentially the solution to all of this is a good bra.
So it has health benefits from a pain perspective, but
it also has health benefits from a damage perspective. And
this is probably something that many women don't necessarily consider
on a day to day basis, But essentially, your breast
(23:56):
is supported only by the skin and something called the
Cooper's ligaments. It's basically like a spider's web that goes
throughout the breast in all directions internally, So you've only
got these two things, the skin and the Cooper's ligaments
that support the breast. So we know elsewhere in our
body that our skin starts to sag, it starts to
(24:19):
stretch as we age, and so the same thing happens
with the breast. But actually, if we stretch the skin
too much, we can lead to premature sagging. So the
skin itself has a stretch limit of six approximately, So
(24:39):
what that means is, but if you stretch it beyond,
you start to cause what we call micro traumas, so
micro damage to the fibers in the skin, and what
that means is it doesn't recover fully each time, and
if if you keep doing that, eventually the skin will stretch,
and it will stretch prematurely, and so that stretch then
(25:03):
leads to a sagging, drooping, whatever you want to call
it of the breast. Well, I feel so mind blown.
I really feel like I knew none of this prior
to this interview. How should we be thinking about how
we choose our bras for different activities in addition to
what should that look like depending on the size of
(25:24):
our breast? Like I have really small boobs. I feel
like I honestly could get away wearing a bra designed
for yoga to run and I personally would feel like, Okay,
this is fine, But I feel like that changes with
people who have more breast tissue all these different things. So, like,
what should we be focusing on when it comes to
choosing a bra for performance? It sort of comes back
(25:47):
to that function and what you want the bra for.
What's important for you? So for you, if you don't
get any breast pain, if you don't experience breast pain,
and as you say, you've got smaller breasts, so you
don't feel that they might stretch the supporting structures of
your breast. However, it seems to be all relative. So
(26:09):
if you've got smaller amount of breast tissue, you've got
less skin covering the area, so less skin supporting the breast,
you've probably got less Cooper's ligaments inside holding the breast
in place. And so personally, if it was me, whatever
size my breast were, I'd be wanting to protect that
breast tissue from being stretched too much. And I talked
(26:32):
about that sixty threshold and stretch beyond that starts to
cause damage. In our lab we've seen stretch up to
a hundred and two. Yeah, So things like stretch marks,
for example, So larger breasted women, it's really common for
them to experience stretch marks on the skin of the breast.
(26:53):
And stretch marks are scar tissue that's where the skin
has been essentially broken, it's been stretched beyond its limit.
That can happen from a rapid gaining weight and a
loss in way that that might happen during pregnancy, during breastfeeding,
or it might be related to stretch if the breasts
are moving a lot, then that could happen. I mean,
(27:17):
smaller breasted women suffer from a lot of breasts and
bra related issues, as do larger women, and we would
hope that there are bras out there that will work
for any size breast. But in reality, I'm well aware
of women who are exercising wearing two sports bras, or
(27:39):
even some women who have resorted to taping their breasts,
So I really recognize the challenge that particularly larger breasted
women face in finding a sports bra that works for them. Yeah,
I do think there are more brands that are expanding
their sports bra offerings, so hopefully they keep doing that,
(28:00):
So hopefully more researchers like yourself and brands are just
continue to listen to the market, listen to what the
consumers need, and just expand the offerings so that anyone
that has breast can exercise in the way that they
want without having to feel like they need to compromise
or give something up. Yeah, and that's actually been another
(28:20):
one of my experiences of working with under Armour is
there is a combined approach in terms of understanding the
biomechanical and scientific requirements of a sports bra. But also
what is comfortable, what a woman wants in a sports bra,
(28:40):
what her preferences are, and that is really important because
you know, I come from a real scientific background, but
I'm well aware that if I developed a bra, no
one would want to wear because I would develop it
with purely scientific approach and it would be really ugly,
(29:01):
it would probably be really uncomfortable, and I'd just say
to when you put up with it, Whereas my experiences
of working with under Rama is the combining the consumer
preferences and their feedback and the design and that side
with the scientific support requirements. Yeah, I think it's really
important because you know, let's be honest, I think for
(29:23):
a lot of people, when you're picking out sports bride,
maybe the color and all of that sounds trivial, but
in reality, you know, I think you want to feel good,
you want to look good, you want to look cute,
and I think that you're You're totally right in terms
of obviously the functionality and performance has to be there,
but we also personally anyway, I think a lot of
women want to Yeah, they want to feel like they
look good too. We're going to take a short break,
(29:51):
but don't go too far away because we're going to
be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back. But I feel
like we are all equipped with so much information to
find bras that work for us the best. And I
(30:14):
think we could always talk longer and longer and longer.
But we have a fun game that's related to the
conversation we're having. So this game is called breast Friend.
So we're gonna ask you questions about bras and fitness,
and we want to know if it's your breast friend
or not. So do you love it? Do you hate it?
What advice do you have? Okay, great, well let's kick
(30:34):
it off with breast friend. Is this your breast friend
or not? I think I already know the answer to this,
given this conversation. Working out bras that certainly wouldn't be
for me. I mean there's there's lots of negative consequences
associated with that, including the potential to cause some damage
to your breast tissue. Okay, number two, working out in
(30:58):
an underwire bra rest friend or a nut Yeah, I
think that's fine as long as it fits. But really importantly,
if you're wearing it for sport, then you want to
make sure that it doesn't move when you're doing sports
number three, wearing a smaller bra to feel like you
have extra support. Yeah, that's a good question. There is
(31:19):
no science out there that shows any negative consequences with
compressing breast tissue. As long as it's not compressed by
something like a wire, if it's held firmly by fabric,
then there's no negative consequences associated with that. So if
you did wear a bra that was smaller but didn't
(31:40):
mean that you're spilling out of it, then it might
increase the level of support that it provides you. So
it's fine. Very interesting. What about taps that have the
built in sports bras. I feel like that's like the
new thing, like you know, the crap tops that kind
of like a two for one type of situation. What
are your thoughts Personally, I've never found one that has
(32:02):
worked for me, but in fact, I haven't bought one
for a number of years now. So as long as
it can provide you with the right fit and it
functions well for you, then it's fine. I've seen some
products like that. There are a full sports bra that's
just been attached in a couple of places to an overtop,
(32:24):
so it still functions exactly like a sports bra wood Okay,
number five is a racer back, sports bra or straight straps.
A lot of that is personal preference. If you've got
problems with shoulder straps slipping off your shoulder, then a
racer back is going to be better for you. Conversely,
some women find with racer backs if the straps sit
(32:45):
on your traps muscle, so they're sitting sort of up
here near your neck on your traps, and some women
can find that uncomfortable after a long period of time.
So yeah, it's really just personal preference for straps. Well,
as I've said a billion times, this was so informative.
I I never knew there was so much that went
(33:06):
into developing a sports bra and just making it so
that we can move in the ways that we want
to move while maintaining the health of our breast. So, Joe,
thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge
with us, because these conversations need to be out there
in the mainstream more agreed. Definitely, anything to raise awareness
(33:28):
of this important area of women's health. Um, I think
is really important. Thank you too, doctor Joanna Sca for
teaching us so much about bras. I honestly had no
idea that there was so much research and science and
(33:48):
time that went into creating a good sports bras. So
I feel more prepared to just buy beterfitting bras and
bras that actually work with me and not against me. Yeah,
and it was really great to hear, you know, both
of our perspectives and the conversation previously. I just feel
like often it's framed in a way that's only for
women who have bigger breasts. And actually, I think it
(34:10):
was really important that in this conversation, the key takeaway
from me was that any person who was buying a
sports bra needs to consider these things as well. When
Joanna was talking about, no matter what size breast you have,
you can have sagging, You'll be more prone to stretch
marks and just like pain and all of these other things,
efforts like okay, noted, I'm going to go make sure
(34:31):
that all my braws fit properly. So that was super informative.
Moving forward, I will be paying attention to all of that, yes, absolutely,
and also the impact on performance. You know, it's super
interesting when she was talking about that because you know,
for a pro athlete, the small things, you know, the
one percent improvement that can be the difference between a
gold medal, silver medal, or no medal at all. So
(34:53):
I think the focus on performance as well. It's really
great to know that that work and that research is
being done to support female athletes. Absolutely. When she said
having a bra that fits properly or doesn't fit you
correctly can impact your stride. Once she said that, I
was like, Okay, sold, whatever you say I'm doing, because
(35:13):
that's major, Like that totally influences your performance. Yeah. So
with that in mind, when it comes to performance and
achieving our goals, I think we should probably dive into
our weekly goal check in what do you think, Yes,
let's do it. Maybe I'll kick it off because I've
been a bit nervous about this time or this week,
because for weeks and weeks and weeks, you know, I've
(35:33):
been talking to you about my training for the half marathon. However,
I still in the end had to do the race virtually,
so I had to run alone, and unfortunately I didn't
manage to get a p B in the race. I
really enjoyed it, but to be honest, I think I
overdid it and I paced too well because by the
end I wasn't able to make up the time, so
you know, it's not the last time I'm going to
(35:54):
run a half marathon. So yeah, I didn't hit the
pr yet, but maybe later in the year I can
do it. Yeah, I mean it's definitely going to happen.
But like physically, how are you feeling? Did you feel
prepared for it? Yeah? I really did. You know what
I felt? That's what I mean about pacing it wrong.
I should have gone harder from the start. I think
I was like, oh, you know what, I'm going to
pace myself, you know, and then the last five k
(36:17):
was the fastest of the whole thing, and I actually
felt like I had more in the tank. So I
was frustrated because I was like, Adrian, you should have
gone harder sooner. But how about Utama, how are you
doing working towards your first hep top on? My training
has been pretty good. I was just talking to somebody
about this where I'm in a new training cycle and
(36:38):
it's been going really really well, So I'm really excited.
Like I'm just trying to be super present in everything
and that seems to be working great. And so with that,
what do you think you need right now in terms
of support from myself as a teammate, from the listeners,
what do you need right now to to keep that
momentum and that gear change? Yeah, I think, Um, I
(37:00):
kind of touched on it before, but that reminder just
like staying present for me, I've learned, like one, I
have to be present too. I can't just like psych
myself out of something that I haven't even done. Um.
So you know, just like those like reminders, Um, it
can be like a motivational quote, it can be whatever.
That is always super super helpful. And I'm curious for you.
(37:23):
So you've already done this half marathon. Do you have
a new goal? Are you going to take a moment
reset and chill? What's going on? And how can we
support you if there is a new goal. Well, I'm
still trying to figure out what that goal is going
to be because, to be honest with you, you know,
I always run for so many different reasons, Like running
is just so much a part of my week. You know,
(37:44):
It's just I'm still going to be running, but I'm
looking for that next challenge. I don't know whether I'm
going to focus more on endurance or whether I'm going
to focus more maybe on speed but I need to
pick something. I've even been reading a little bit about ultras,
so never say never. But yeah, I'm looking for a
goal right now, so inspiration and it would be great, awesome. Well,
once you figure out your goal, please let us know
(38:04):
so that we can support you on your way to
achieving it. Yes, I will, And also for the listeners,
if you are working towards the goal right now, please
do reach out and let us know. We would love
to support you. We'd love to hear how you're progressing,
and any inspiration that you have for me will be
well received. So you can reach out on Twitter and Instagram.
I'm at Adrian Underscore l d N. Yes, so we
(38:27):
want to know your goals, but we also want the
good vibes and energy as well, so send it our
way and I'm on Instagram at TAM's Going Ham and
on Twitter at Tamera Pridget. That's it for this week's episode,
but don't forget to listen next week when we are
speaking with Lindsey Vaughn, world champion alpine skier, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
(38:49):
Trust me, you do not want to miss this conversation
until next time. Stay tuned in, stay Motivated and don't
forget to Sweat the Details. Bye Bye. If you liked
what you heard on the show, subscribe for free or
follow the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
(39:13):
or wherever you listen, and don't forget to leave five
star rating and review. Sweat the Details is a collaboration
with under Armour and I Heart Radio. Our show was
hosted by me Tamera Pridget and me Adrian Herbert. Our
executive producers are Jess Schreibstein, Chaselle, Luis Archibald and Molly Sosia.
(39:33):
Our supervising producer is Maya Cole. Our producers are Ellen
Kaplan and Kelly an Tall. Our assistant producers are Natalia
Tamayo and Bella Walco, and our sound editor and engineer
Sarah gibel Laska. Keep up with the latest news in
women's fitness by following under Armour Women on Instagram at
under Armour Women
What makes a bra right for you kind of boils
down to function, comfort and fit. Function, I guess is
the sort of first thing to consider, what do you
want the bra for? Comfort is going to be key
whether it works for you, and then the final area
is fit. And you could choose a great bra that's
(00:21):
right for the function that you want it for, but
if it doesn't fit properly for you, then it's not
going to function appropriately. This is Sweat the Details, a
collaboration with under Arma and I Heart Radio, a podcast
made for a women by women that puts our training, journeys,
(00:44):
falls and mindset at the center. Antienra Bridget and I'm
Adrian Herbert. Every episode will hear from athletes, trainers, and
experts who will give us insights into how our bodies
and minds work together in training and competition. Entered is
episode We're getting up close and personal with our bras,
specifically sports bras and the best support during sport. Yes.
(01:08):
I love this, Timeara, because I feel like most women
lack the knowledge around what goes into developing a sports
bra and really what the differences between all of the
various types. Yeah, for me, when I think about buying
a sports bra. I'm really just looking for style and
comfort and acute color. But there is so much science
(01:28):
and research that goes into making a quality sports bra exactly,
and that's why we are going to jump right in
with Joanna to begin to understand just how much research
actually goes into creating the best bra for sports. Yes,
I'm so excited for this, so let's do this. Hi,
(01:50):
Dr Scare, welcome to sweat the details. We are so
excited to speak with you today about our boobs about
sports bras and breast health. Great, well, nice to be here,
Nice to talk to you about it. It's an area
that is really important to me. I'm really passionate about it.
It's been my entire career. So delighted to have the
(02:11):
opportunity to talk about it. Brilliant. Well, we certainly have
a lot of questions and lots of things that we're
hoping you're going to be able to share with us
all today, So I guess just to start at the
top would be great to hear a bit about your journey,
you know, how you became an expert in bras and
in relation to sports performance. Yeah, no problem, So my
(02:33):
journey in this area began eighteen years ago as a
breast pain sufferer. So I really suffered from breast pain
on a monthly basis, and then I went through a
period where I was suffering from permanent breast pain. So
it lasted for about four months, and in the end
I visited my doctor. So my breast pain was affecting
(02:54):
my exercise, it was affecting my sleep, It would affect
the bras that I would wear. So in the end
I went to my doctor and my doctor said to me, well,
we have no way of dealing with what we call
benign breast pain um and so instead our advice is
to get a good bra. And so as a scientist,
I thought, well that must be fairly easy. I'll just
(03:16):
go away and research what a good bra is and
off we go. So I researched what makes a good
bra and soon found out that it wasn't that easy.
And they actually, at the time, eighteen years ago, we
knew very little about the science behind bras and what
makes a good bra, what the impact of wearing a
(03:37):
good bra is, And so my research journey began there
really with the initial question of what makes a good bra,
And to be honest, eighteen years on, we're still asking
that question, so there's still loads of research to be done. Yeah,
in your opinion, what makes a good bra? What does
your research focus on when it comes to supports brice? Yeah,
(03:59):
So when I initially started researching this area and realized
that there was a real lack of scientific information out
there about what a bra needs to do. What is
the purpose of a bra? What? What what does it do?
Does it lift the breast, does it hold the breast,
does it stop it from moving? Should it reduce pain?
You know, so all of these sort of fundamental questions
(04:21):
we didn't really know the answer to. So I set
up the research group in breast health at the University
of Portsmouth. There was three of us in the research
group eighteen years ago. There's now about eighteen of us.
So the research group has really expanded and our sort
of core knowledge revolves around us investigating what we call
(04:42):
the biomechanics of the breast. So the biomechanics of the
breast essentially is looking at how the breast moves, the
forces that act on the breast, So how much stretch
or strain there is on the tissues of the breast itself,
whether we might be causing damage to the breast tissue,
why pain occurs in the breast, So all of these
(05:03):
sort of fundamental questions we've started to research over the
last eighteen years. One of the interesting things that we
live with on a daily basis, though, is that it's
very difficult to answer that question of what makes a
good bra. And the reason being is because we're all
very different. What works for me might not work for you,
(05:25):
and so that's challenging from a research perspective, but it's
great from an industry perspective because it means that there's
an opportunity for loads of different solutions. There's loads of
different sports bras that have different features that will fit
one person but not the other. So there's this sort
of great range of products out there. So in answer
(05:47):
to your question what is a good BRA? I just
encourage everyone to get out there, check out the market,
try on loads of different things. Even if you think
that's not going to work for me, try it on,
jump around in it in the changing room. M M. Well,
you mentioned that there's so many, you know, different variables there, so,
as you said, we've all got unique body shapes and
(06:08):
sizes and we want to maybe wear our bras for
different activities like running or boxing or yoga, so they
need a different level of support. And as you said,
there's a wide variety, so we can go and shop
around and trying different things. But I personally think that
can also give you decision paralysis when there's so many
options to choose one that sometimes you kind of think, well,
which one is right? And obviously if you're having to
(06:31):
purchase them as well, are there any kind of hardlines
there on things that we should look out for. So
it's a really good question, and I always suggest that
what makes a bra right for you kind of boils
down to function, comfort and fit. Function, I guess is
the sort of first thing to consider, what do you
want the bra for Comfort is going to be key
(06:53):
whether it works for you, And then the final area
is fit. And you could choose a great bra it's
right for the function that you want it for, but
if it doesn't fit properly for you, then it's not
going to function appropriately. So this whole area of bra
fit is absolutely crucial in terms of getting the most
(07:14):
out of your sports bra. In our research group, our
mantra about bra fitting is to educate women on how
to fit themselves, so to empower women to be able
to assess their own bra fit. And so we have
sort of five simple tips for bra fitting, and the
first one of those is the underband. So the underband
(07:37):
is the bottom part of the bra that goes all
the way around from the back to the front. Making
sure that that fits you first off is the most
important thing. Because the support of any bra, so that's
an everyday bra or a sports bra, comes from the underband.
So you want the underband to be acting as a
(07:57):
shelf almost, so a fixing around your torso, and the
cups then sit on that shelf. So you want a
nice firm fixing in the underband. And how you check
that is by pulling the underband out at the side.
You shouldn't be able to pull it out any more
than five centimeters, So if you can pull it all
(08:18):
the way out a meter, then that bra is not
right for you, the wrong size. Well, I'm learning that
for the first time. I sometimes find it restricts your
breathing if it's tight. But then there's that balance right between,
like if you want it tights it supportive, but you're like,
I don't want my rib cage to feel like I
can't breathe when I'm doing sprints, so I'm taking notes.
After a few hours, I feel like, oh, this is
(08:40):
digging into my side. Let me get this bra off now.
It is a bit of a compromise. I mean, if
you do want that bra to provide you with maximum support,
then it is going to be reasonably firm fitting. It
is going to be reasonably stiff materials and they're going
to hold you. That's the job, and that's the AIO.
(09:00):
That's what we want the bra to do. So that
firm fitting underband is crucial. The next thing to check
is that it's level all the way around your body.
And check that it's level after you have jumped around,
put your arms in the air twisted length forwards, you know,
so you really let the bra settle where it wants
(09:20):
to settle. And if it's not level all the way around,
then it's not tight enough. So that's always a good check.
The next thing to check is the cups, and the
cups should sort of sit on the underband, and most
of the support in the cup should come from the
underband rather than the weight of the breast being carried
on the shoulder, So we want to make sure that
(09:42):
the underband is like a shelf. And when you're looking
to see if the cups fit, you're looking to make
sure that you haven't got any bulging of breast tissue.
So Wirreen often will check the sort of cleavage area
and say, oh no, no, no flesh bulging there. But
also check under the arm because sometimes the cup is
(10:02):
too small and so you get flesh sort of spilling
out at the side. And likewise, you don't want the
cup to be too big so it's gaping or the
fabrics wrinkling because again the bra is not doing its job.
Then next thing to check is the center front of
the bras, so that's the sort of bridge between the
two cups. You just want to make sure that that
(10:25):
center front is sitting on the rib cage. And then
the final thing is the shoulder straps. So the shoulder straps, again,
like the underband, should be a firm fit, not too
tight that they're digging in too much, but also not
too loose that again, when you stretch them, you should
have no more than a five centimeter gap on the
shoulder strap. Another really interesting important thing to consider with
(10:50):
the shoulder straps is that you don't have to have
them both adjusted. The same of women have one breast
bigger than the other, so it would be quite unusual
to have both your shoulder straps in the same position
because it's likely that you've got one breast bigger than
the other. So having them at different levels is how
(11:10):
it should be. So that's the five simple steps. There
we go. I see Adrian writing stuff down to I'm
like furiously writing because I have never considered half of
these things. Everything you said, I'm like, yep, never adjusted
the straps, never checked the band, I don't ever jump
around and test it out. So I'm definitely putting these
(11:31):
tips to use as soon as possible. Yeah, me too,
As you're saying, lots of useful information in there, and
could you tell us now, I guess moving on a
little bit more to the process and the research. Since
you've done so much work and you're so knowledgeable in
this area, and you mentioned you know how your team
has expanded. What has that process and research development look
like to the sports bras that we have now, Yes,
(11:53):
so so good question. One of the early aspects associated
with our work was understanding the difference between different sports
brass styles. So sports bras support the breast in two
fundamentally different ways. Either you can compress the breast tissue
towards the chess wall, so basically you could squash it,
(12:18):
or you can lift it and hold it. And so
sports bras historically were one or the other. They were
either compression tops that squashed the breast compress it towards
the chess wall, or they looked more like an everyday
bra and they lifted the breast, they encase the breast,
and they held the breast. So they were sort of
(12:40):
one or the other. And when we started our research,
this is going back sort of fifteen years, one of
the initial innovations was to put those two together. Let's
just literally so one on top of the other. And
so this idea of a combination of compression and what
we call encapsulation and sort of came onto the market
(13:02):
and we saw bras that looked like a crop top
but had some structure and some molding and an actual cup,
and that was really interesting. And actually now we see
probably about of sports bras on the market have a
combination of both some sort of compressive element and some
kind of cup. So that that's been really interesting, and
(13:25):
then we've done tons of work looking at things like
the effect of a good sports bra on sports performance.
We've done lots of work looking at the effect of
a good sports bar on reducing breast pain, on reducing
damage to the breast tissue. So there's been lots of
sort of innovations in those areas as well that research.
(13:49):
When it comes specific to performance, what have you guys found,
especially when it comes to improving performance. My research group
is actually based within a school of sports, exercise and
health sciences, so we're embedded in the world of sports.
So one of our first questions that we were interested
in answering was whether a sports bra could help you
(14:12):
be a winner in sport, and so we've investigated the
effect of sports bras on physiological function. So we found
that a sports bar actually changes the way that we breathe.
It improves our breathing frequency, and we think that that's
probably related somehow to pain. So if you exercise without
(14:35):
a good sports bra, or with no sports bra, for example,
then it could be reasonably uncomfortable. And we found with
our participants that they might hold their breath or change
their breathing frequency. We also saw improvements in heart rate
as well, actually when our participants ran wearing a sports bra,
so we know that there's some potentially some physiological benefits
(14:59):
to make you more efficient if you run wearing a
good sports bra. We also looked at the biomechanical effects
and we found that if you run wearing a good
sports bra that supports you well biomechanically, we found changes
in your stride length, so you actually shortened your stride
(15:20):
when you were running wearing poor bra support. We found
that on average, women shortened their stride by four centimeters
and if you multiply four centimeters over a marathon distance,
it equates to a mile. Well, I think these stats
are so important. You know, we focus on performance, and
(15:41):
you know, as female athletes versus male athletes, you know
there's all of these things that without the adequate research
and without this kind of data and support, women gonna
be able to perform at their best. And you mentioned,
you know, the biomechanical effects, and we know that you've
worked with under armas biomechanics and innovation team, So can
you talk to us about your experience working with the
Underramur team. So we've been working with under Arma since
(16:04):
two thousand and nine, so many many years. What has
always been great with under Armur is their innovative thinking,
which is reasonably unusual because a lot of the industry
are very focused on what's going to happen next season.
That was always a disappointment for me as a female
working in the air of sports bras. I didn't want
(16:27):
my new sports bar to be a slight variation on
the sports bar had last year. And that's what's happened
in the bar industry. The bar industry has just been
sort of evolving, Whereas actually what I found with working
with under Armur is they will wipe the slate clean.
Let's start again. Let's look at what the breast support
(16:47):
requirements are. Let's look at what the issues are for
female athletes. Let's look at the issues with breast pain
or with different anatomies, um so that you can really
come up with innovative of solutions for this rather than
just a change from the bra that we had last season.
So what are you currently researching looking at right now
(17:09):
when it comes to sports bras and performance if you're
allowed to tell us so. From a sports performance perspective,
a particular project that we've been working on recently, which
has been really really exciting for us, is working with
professional elite female athletes in the UK. And initially what
(17:29):
we've been doing is basically educating them. I don't mean
that's sound patronizing, but essentially just giving information on breasts
and bras. And we've had some really interesting, slightly worrying
results come out of that project. We had sort of
assumed that because professional athletes might be wearing a sports
(17:50):
bra for longer than the general public, that they might
know more about sports bras, but actually that wasn't their
findings from our research and interestingly, you know, these professional
athletes were reporting that they knew less than the general public.
So that project with professional athletes started out with some
(18:10):
an educational component, and then we went on to bra
fit each of those athletes individually, to look at the
bras they were wearing sports bras they were using now,
and then to um prescribe sports bras for them that
were specific to their sports, specific to their anatomy and
(18:31):
that fitted them really well. So, just to give you
a snip bit of the results, one of the athletes
that we worked with was a shooter and in shooting,
you can't have breast tissue touching the rifle, and so
for her, her issue was being able to move the
breast tissue out the way so she didn't infringe the
regulations within her sports. So that was a really interesting
(18:54):
BRA development project where we had to move the breast
tissue out the way and she saw a huge provement
in her performance. So that was really really exciting project
for us. It's so important that we're having this research
done and this work is ongoing. And actually, even when
you talked about, you know, under arms approach when it
comes to innovation and Blue Sky thinking, I really liked
(19:16):
what you said about, you know, just reimagining and not saying, okay,
well this is what you know, the kind of best
options are the best practices because that kind of suggests
that what we have now is as best that we'll
ever have. And I really like that thinking of actually,
let's subscrap it start again and can we make something
even better? And I think that that thread of innovation
definitely goes throughout the brand and it's something that I
(19:37):
always keep coming back to again and again and plumb
and I really love to ask, is you know, I'm
a runner, and I'm always listening and thinking back to running,
and I was actually thinking, say, you've running, I don't know,
a hundred miles and a pair of trainers, you might
start to realize, Okay, the support is changing and it's
time to change the shoe. Is it the same with
sports bras? Does it come a time where the fit
and support will change and you actually need to replace them? Yeah?
(19:59):
Absolute utely. And I think again that's a really important
point to make your optimum sports bra for you that
worked really well when you first bought it may not
be optimal in six months time. We're actually doing study
on that at the moment, and what we're finding is
that the thing that affects the life of a sports
(20:19):
bra more than anything is how often you wash. It
affects the life of the sports bra more than how
much you wear it and what you wear it for.
When you talk about the life of a sports bra,
then it's probably worth looking at how many times you've
washed it. Now, that's kind of difficult to keep itally
of that, I know, but make sure you follow the
(20:43):
manufacturer's guidelines. So some sports bras are handwash only. I
don't know if your ladies hand wash your bras I
don't know. I air dry though I don't know if
that cancer anything. Yeah, and not many people do handwash them.
So those fit tips that I talked about earlier, check
(21:05):
those regularly and make sure that the bra hasn't stretched.
So check the fit, jump up and down and see
if it is still giving you the support that you need. Yeah,
I want to look back a little bit because you
mentioned right at the top of this interview that the
reason a lot of this research and this passion started
for you was because you were experiencing pain. Now for
(21:26):
me personally, you know, and I'm sure for many listeners
if you're experiencing breast pain or you also mentioned at
one point about is certain exercise damaging the breast tissue?
You know, that kind of can be quite scary. So
one of the health benefits all the health risks of
not having a supportive bra. So I would definitely talk
(21:46):
first off about breast pain. And I guess I'm a
bit biased because I was and still am a breast
pain sufferer, and so interestingly, breast pain affects half the
female population, and I think a lot of people don't
know that half the female population experienced breast pain, and
if you're one of the lucky people that doesn't experience it,
(22:09):
then it kind of stays off your radar, so you
you might not realize that actually the other half of
the population are getting breast pain, and that breast pain
falls into two different categories. Really clinical breast pain, which
is nothing related to exercise. It's breast pain that occurs
either monthly or it occurs constantly. And then the other
(22:32):
pain is movement related pain. So this is pain caused
by stretching on the supporting structures of the breast, and
that stretch is painful. So you can have clinical breast
pain and then you've got movement related breast pain. So
for me eighteen years ago, when I first started this journey,
(22:54):
I was getting clinical breast pain, so I was having
pain constantly. But then I was also trying to exercise
eyes I was trying to run, and so I was
getting movement related pain as well because I wasn't wearing
a supportive bra, so I had like a double whammy
of two types of pain at the same time. So
it was pretty uncomfortable. So that's one of the negative
(23:14):
consequences of not wearing appropriate support we know that appropriate
support reduces and in most instances eliminates movement related breast pain.
But also from a clinical perspective, we found that a
BRA is also effective at reducing clinical breast pain. So
(23:36):
essentially the solution to all of this is a good bra.
So it has health benefits from a pain perspective, but
it also has health benefits from a damage perspective. And
this is probably something that many women don't necessarily consider
on a day to day basis, But essentially, your breast
(23:56):
is supported only by the skin and something called the
Cooper's ligaments. It's basically like a spider's web that goes
throughout the breast in all directions internally, So you've only
got these two things, the skin and the Cooper's ligaments
that support the breast. So we know elsewhere in our
body that our skin starts to sag, it starts to
(24:19):
stretch as we age, and so the same thing happens
with the breast. But actually, if we stretch the skin
too much, we can lead to premature sagging. So the
skin itself has a stretch limit of six approximately, So
(24:39):
what that means is, but if you stretch it beyond,
you start to cause what we call micro traumas, so
micro damage to the fibers in the skin, and what
that means is it doesn't recover fully each time, and
if if you keep doing that, eventually the skin will stretch,
and it will stretch prematurely, and so that stretch then
(25:03):
leads to a sagging, drooping, whatever you want to call
it of the breast. Well, I feel so mind blown.
I really feel like I knew none of this prior
to this interview. How should we be thinking about how
we choose our bras for different activities in addition to
what should that look like depending on the size of
(25:24):
our breast? Like I have really small boobs. I feel
like I honestly could get away wearing a bra designed
for yoga to run and I personally would feel like, Okay,
this is fine, But I feel like that changes with
people who have more breast tissue all these different things. So, like,
what should we be focusing on when it comes to
choosing a bra for performance? It sort of comes back
(25:47):
to that function and what you want the bra for.
What's important for you? So for you, if you don't
get any breast pain, if you don't experience breast pain,
and as you say, you've got smaller breasts, so you
don't feel that they might stretch the supporting structures of
your breast. However, it seems to be all relative. So
(26:09):
if you've got smaller amount of breast tissue, you've got
less skin covering the area, so less skin supporting the breast,
you've probably got less Cooper's ligaments inside holding the breast
in place. And so personally, if it was me, whatever
size my breast were, I'd be wanting to protect that
breast tissue from being stretched too much. And I talked
(26:32):
about that sixty threshold and stretch beyond that starts to
cause damage. In our lab we've seen stretch up to
a hundred and two. Yeah, So things like stretch marks,
for example, So larger breasted women, it's really common for
them to experience stretch marks on the skin of the breast.
(26:53):
And stretch marks are scar tissue that's where the skin
has been essentially broken, it's been stretched beyond its limit.
That can happen from a rapid gaining weight and a
loss in way that that might happen during pregnancy, during breastfeeding,
or it might be related to stretch if the breasts
are moving a lot, then that could happen. I mean,
(27:17):
smaller breasted women suffer from a lot of breasts and
bra related issues, as do larger women, and we would
hope that there are bras out there that will work
for any size breast. But in reality, I'm well aware
of women who are exercising wearing two sports bras, or
(27:39):
even some women who have resorted to taping their breasts,
So I really recognize the challenge that particularly larger breasted
women face in finding a sports bra that works for them. Yeah,
I do think there are more brands that are expanding
their sports bra offerings, so hopefully they keep doing that,
(28:00):
So hopefully more researchers like yourself and brands are just
continue to listen to the market, listen to what the
consumers need, and just expand the offerings so that anyone
that has breast can exercise in the way that they
want without having to feel like they need to compromise
or give something up. Yeah, and that's actually been another
(28:20):
one of my experiences of working with under Armour is
there is a combined approach in terms of understanding the
biomechanical and scientific requirements of a sports bra. But also
what is comfortable, what a woman wants in a sports bra,
(28:40):
what her preferences are, and that is really important because
you know, I come from a real scientific background, but
I'm well aware that if I developed a bra, no
one would want to wear because I would develop it
with purely scientific approach and it would be really ugly,
(29:01):
it would probably be really uncomfortable, and I'd just say
to when you put up with it, Whereas my experiences
of working with under Rama is the combining the consumer
preferences and their feedback and the design and that side
with the scientific support requirements. Yeah, I think it's really
important because you know, let's be honest, I think for
(29:23):
a lot of people, when you're picking out sports bride,
maybe the color and all of that sounds trivial, but
in reality, you know, I think you want to feel good,
you want to look good, you want to look cute,
and I think that you're You're totally right in terms
of obviously the functionality and performance has to be there,
but we also personally anyway, I think a lot of
women want to Yeah, they want to feel like they
look good too. We're going to take a short break,
(29:51):
but don't go too far away because we're going to
be right back. Hey, everybody, welcome back. But I feel
like we are all equipped with so much information to
find bras that work for us the best. And I
(30:14):
think we could always talk longer and longer and longer.
But we have a fun game that's related to the
conversation we're having. So this game is called breast Friend.
So we're gonna ask you questions about bras and fitness,
and we want to know if it's your breast friend
or not. So do you love it? Do you hate it?
What advice do you have? Okay, great, well let's kick
(30:34):
it off with breast friend. Is this your breast friend
or not? I think I already know the answer to this,
given this conversation. Working out bras that certainly wouldn't be
for me. I mean there's there's lots of negative consequences
associated with that, including the potential to cause some damage
to your breast tissue. Okay, number two, working out in
(30:58):
an underwire bra rest friend or a nut Yeah, I
think that's fine as long as it fits. But really importantly,
if you're wearing it for sport, then you want to
make sure that it doesn't move when you're doing sports
number three, wearing a smaller bra to feel like you
have extra support. Yeah, that's a good question. There is
(31:19):
no science out there that shows any negative consequences with
compressing breast tissue. As long as it's not compressed by
something like a wire, if it's held firmly by fabric,
then there's no negative consequences associated with that. So if
you did wear a bra that was smaller but didn't
(31:40):
mean that you're spilling out of it, then it might
increase the level of support that it provides you. So
it's fine. Very interesting. What about taps that have the
built in sports bras. I feel like that's like the
new thing, like you know, the crap tops that kind
of like a two for one type of situation. What
are your thoughts Personally, I've never found one that has
(32:02):
worked for me, but in fact, I haven't bought one
for a number of years now. So as long as
it can provide you with the right fit and it
functions well for you, then it's fine. I've seen some
products like that. There are a full sports bra that's
just been attached in a couple of places to an overtop,
(32:24):
so it still functions exactly like a sports bra wood Okay,
number five is a racer back, sports bra or straight straps.
A lot of that is personal preference. If you've got
problems with shoulder straps slipping off your shoulder, then a
racer back is going to be better for you. Conversely,
some women find with racer backs if the straps sit
(32:45):
on your traps muscle, so they're sitting sort of up
here near your neck on your traps, and some women
can find that uncomfortable after a long period of time.
So yeah, it's really just personal preference for straps. Well,
as I've said a billion times, this was so informative.
I I never knew there was so much that went
(33:06):
into developing a sports bra and just making it so
that we can move in the ways that we want
to move while maintaining the health of our breast. So, Joe,
thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge
with us, because these conversations need to be out there
in the mainstream more agreed. Definitely, anything to raise awareness
(33:28):
of this important area of women's health. Um, I think
is really important. Thank you too, doctor Joanna Sca for
teaching us so much about bras. I honestly had no
idea that there was so much research and science and
(33:48):
time that went into creating a good sports bras. So
I feel more prepared to just buy beterfitting bras and
bras that actually work with me and not against me. Yeah,
and it was really great to hear, you know, both
of our perspectives and the conversation previously. I just feel
like often it's framed in a way that's only for
women who have bigger breasts. And actually, I think it
(34:10):
was really important that in this conversation, the key takeaway
from me was that any person who was buying a
sports bra needs to consider these things as well. When
Joanna was talking about, no matter what size breast you have,
you can have sagging, You'll be more prone to stretch
marks and just like pain and all of these other things,
efforts like okay, noted, I'm going to go make sure
(34:31):
that all my braws fit properly. So that was super informative.
Moving forward, I will be paying attention to all of that, yes, absolutely,
and also the impact on performance. You know, it's super
interesting when she was talking about that because you know,
for a pro athlete, the small things, you know, the
one percent improvement that can be the difference between a
gold medal, silver medal, or no medal at all. So
(34:53):
I think the focus on performance as well. It's really
great to know that that work and that research is
being done to support female athletes. Absolutely. When she said
having a bra that fits properly or doesn't fit you
correctly can impact your stride. Once she said that, I
was like, Okay, sold, whatever you say I'm doing, because
(35:13):
that's major, Like that totally influences your performance. Yeah. So
with that in mind, when it comes to performance and
achieving our goals, I think we should probably dive into
our weekly goal check in what do you think, Yes,
let's do it. Maybe I'll kick it off because I've
been a bit nervous about this time or this week,
because for weeks and weeks and weeks, you know, I've
(35:33):
been talking to you about my training for the half marathon. However,
I still in the end had to do the race virtually,
so I had to run alone, and unfortunately I didn't
manage to get a p B in the race. I
really enjoyed it, but to be honest, I think I
overdid it and I paced too well because by the
end I wasn't able to make up the time, so
you know, it's not the last time I'm going to
(35:54):
run a half marathon. So yeah, I didn't hit the
pr yet, but maybe later in the year I can
do it. Yeah, I mean it's definitely going to happen.
But like physically, how are you feeling? Did you feel
prepared for it? Yeah? I really did. You know what
I felt? That's what I mean about pacing it wrong.
I should have gone harder from the start. I think
I was like, oh, you know what, I'm going to
pace myself, you know, and then the last five k
(36:17):
was the fastest of the whole thing, and I actually
felt like I had more in the tank. So I
was frustrated because I was like, Adrian, you should have
gone harder sooner. But how about Utama, how are you
doing working towards your first hep top on? My training
has been pretty good. I was just talking to somebody
about this where I'm in a new training cycle and
(36:38):
it's been going really really well, So I'm really excited.
Like I'm just trying to be super present in everything
and that seems to be working great. And so with that,
what do you think you need right now in terms
of support from myself as a teammate, from the listeners,
what do you need right now to to keep that
momentum and that gear change? Yeah, I think, Um, I
(37:00):
kind of touched on it before, but that reminder just
like staying present for me, I've learned, like one, I
have to be present too. I can't just like psych
myself out of something that I haven't even done. Um.
So you know, just like those like reminders, Um, it
can be like a motivational quote, it can be whatever.
That is always super super helpful. And I'm curious for you.
(37:23):
So you've already done this half marathon. Do you have
a new goal? Are you going to take a moment
reset and chill? What's going on? And how can we
support you if there is a new goal. Well, I'm
still trying to figure out what that goal is going
to be because, to be honest with you, you know,
I always run for so many different reasons, Like running
is just so much a part of my week. You know,
(37:44):
It's just I'm still going to be running, but I'm
looking for that next challenge. I don't know whether I'm
going to focus more on endurance or whether I'm going
to focus more maybe on speed but I need to
pick something. I've even been reading a little bit about ultras,
so never say never. But yeah, I'm looking for a
goal right now, so inspiration and it would be great, awesome. Well,
once you figure out your goal, please let us know
(38:04):
so that we can support you on your way to
achieving it. Yes, I will, And also for the listeners,
if you are working towards the goal right now, please
do reach out and let us know. We would love
to support you. We'd love to hear how you're progressing,
and any inspiration that you have for me will be
well received. So you can reach out on Twitter and Instagram.
I'm at Adrian Underscore l d N. Yes, so we
(38:27):
want to know your goals, but we also want the
good vibes and energy as well, so send it our
way and I'm on Instagram at TAM's Going Ham and
on Twitter at Tamera Pridget. That's it for this week's episode,
but don't forget to listen next week when we are
speaking with Lindsey Vaughn, world champion alpine skier, entrepreneur and philanthropist.
(38:49):
Trust me, you do not want to miss this conversation
until next time. Stay tuned in, stay Motivated and don't
forget to Sweat the Details. Bye Bye. If you liked
what you heard on the show, subscribe for free or
follow the show on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
(39:13):
or wherever you listen, and don't forget to leave five
star rating and review. Sweat the Details is a collaboration
with under Armour and I Heart Radio. Our show was
hosted by me Tamera Pridget and me Adrian Herbert. Our
executive producers are Jess Schreibstein, Chaselle, Luis Archibald and Molly Sosia.
(39:33):
Our supervising producer is Maya Cole. Our producers are Ellen
Kaplan and Kelly an Tall. Our assistant producers are Natalia
Tamayo and Bella Walco, and our sound editor and engineer
Sarah gibel Laska. Keep up with the latest news in
women's fitness by following under Armour Women on Instagram at
under Armour Women
Hosts And Creators
Monica Jones
Meg Boggs
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