Compression gear has been a hot ticket item in many sports now. Take a look around central park and see all the runners wearing bright knee high socks, weightlifters wearing compression pants, basketball players wearing compression elbow/shoulder sleeves. Even good ole Brett Favre is advocating compression gear for achy joints and so on. With all the popularity, do they actually work?
What Are Compression Socks/Pants For?
The main use for compression gear is to help with your overall performance and for recovery via promoting blood flow in stagnate areas, i.e your legs from standing all day. Originally, compression garments were meant for bed-ridden individuals but it’s made its way into the fitness field and the marketers capitalized ALL over it.
Compression Socks/Pants Marketed Benefits
- Increase endurance.
- Increase strength.
- Reduce inflammation.
- Increase power output.
- Increase stability.
Compression Sock/Pants Research Studies
There is a difference between marketed benefits and actual research based benefits.
Lovell et al (1), found that compression garments helped reduce blood lactate concentration and heart rate. Based on this they hypothesized that you can expedite your active recovery, which can be important for intermittent sports that consisted of repeated bouts of sprints and low intensity runs- think soccer.
de Glainville et al (2) found that the compression garments also helped with the recovery process too. This study was done with 14 trained multi-sport athletes using a 40km cycling time trial performance. Immediately after the baseline test the compression group placed their pants on for 24 hours and then were retested. They found that the performance time in the second time trial to be “substantially improved with compression compared with placebo garments”.
However they were able to fully conclude why this happened:
“Mechanisms behind the improved performance after wearing thecompression garments remain unclear. It has been suggested that wearing graduated compression garments postexercise acts to increase venous blood flow thereby enhancing stroke volume and cardiac output (3), which may enhance muscle blood flow and subsequent recovery
Hill et al. (4) did a study on recovery for marathon runners and found no “significant improvement in muscular strength nor a significant attenuation in markers of exercise-induced muscle damage and inflammation.” However they did found it to have improved subjective perceptions of recovery.
Kraemer et al (5) did a study on vertical jump performance for D1 volley ball players and found that they did not increase maximal jump power output. HOWEVER, it did help with “repetitive vertical jumps by helping maintain higher mean jumping power”.
Do Compression Garments Work or Not?
The research isn’t strong enough to definitively state that it will help with an athlete current performance. However, it does strongly suggest that it can help with the athletes recovery process, there by helping them be prepared for the following match or practice. What happens, who knows? It’s assumed that the compression gear helps promote blood flow pushing out the waste products and pushing new nutrients in thereby promoting recovery.
In regards to the repetitive jump performance, there’s a few studies that suggest compression garments help with diminish oscillation of the muscle. What does this mean? Theoretically, the less movement the more the muscle is able to fire on all cylinders and generate more power.
My thoughts, I personally like wearing compression pants and can see it’s benefits for all athletes. How it works or what happens who knows, maybe it’s proprioception? What I do know is that when I put on a good pair of compression pants, my legs feel better during the workout and post.
Compression Brands
I personally like the full pants but others like stockings. I’ve tried the 2xu stockings and can say it’s pretty uncomfortable, I don’t like how the top end squeezes my thighs, basically making my legs feel like a sausage about to explode.
Japanese brand compression tights that will be making a big splash in North America.
For pants, I like the CW-X and 2xu– which I believe are similar to Virus tights. I typically lean toward the CW-X because they don’t sag down and aren’t see through, however the 2xu feel generally tighter all around.
I’ve tried the Skins and Adidas compression tights and can say that I did not like them one bit. They are more like ‘spandex’ then ‘compression’ tights, very loose fitting which defeats the purpose.
Thanks for reading and let us know if you have any questions by commenting below.
Research Citation
- Lovell et al. Do Compression Garments Enhance the Active Recovery Process after High-Intensity Running? Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research 25.12: 3264-268.
- de Glanville et al. Positive Effect of Lower Body Compression Garments on Subsequent 40-kM Cycling Time Trial Performance. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 26:2: 480-486. 2012
- Chatard, JC, Atlaoui, D, Farjanel, J, Louisy, F, Rastel, D, and Guézennec, CY. Elastic stockings, performance and leg pain recovery in 63-year-old sportsmen. Eur J Appl Physiol 93: 347–352, 2004.
- Hill, et al. Influence of Compression Garments on Recovery After Marathon Running. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 28:8: 2228-2235. 2014.
- Kraemer, et al. Influence of Compression Garments on Vertical Jump Performance in NCAA Division I Volleyball Players. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 8/1996
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