I understand compression technology may be able to boost performance in a race. And I actually wear the zensah sleeves for recovery. What I am wondering is training with compression on a day to day training basis and if you get the same ROI on your training, or worse or better. To clarify my thoughts on this… essentially, in training we are taxing our body, straining our cardiovascular system, causing tiny microtears in our muscles in order to build new. Compression technology claims to improve blood flow to areas and reduce muscle fatigue, but if it reduces the strain on my body, making my training runs/rides easier (or just my PE of them easier) am I going to benefit from my 15mile training run as much with the gear as if I were to not wear the socks or tights or sleeves and then putting the gear on after I finish. Will I gain more speed wearing compression for my speed work outs than if I were to not and put it on right after training. I haven’t been able to find any studies or info on this. If anyone has seen any studies, or had any experience with this I would be interested in hearing.
Bump… no one knows the answer to this question?
Um, maybe it would help if you specified exactly what you mean by the term “ROI”?
http://www.amateurendurance.com/7/injury-prevention/compression-gear-fact-vs-fiction/
“Compression garments, by hugging the muscle and skin so closely also may work to reduce muscle vibration. During running, impact causes vibration in muscles. The more the vibration the more muscle energy expended. By “dampening” muscle vibration through compression the athlete may be reducing fatigue which again translates to being more comfortable. In studies on comfort and muscular effort it has been established that the more uncomfortable an athlete is, the more they increase their muscular effort. By increasing comfort muscular effort is reduced.”
It seems to me that by training w/o compression gear it is sort of like swimming with drag or cycling with a water bottle filled with rocks. Then on race day, you put the compression gear on, take the drag off, dump the rocks from the water bottles & it’s go time!
You my also find this interesting:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/the-benefits-of-compression-clothing-35846
Um, maybe it would help if you specified exactly what you mean by the term “ROI”?
http://www.amateurendurance.com/...ear-fact-vs-fiction/
“Compression garments, by hugging the muscle and skin so closely also may work to reduce muscle vibration. During running, impact causes vibration in muscles. The more the vibration the more muscle energy expended. By “dampening” muscle vibration through compression the athlete may be reducing fatigue which again translates to being more comfortable. In studies on comfort and muscular effort it has been established that the more uncomfortable an athlete is, the more they increase their muscular effort. By increasing comfort muscular effort is reduced.”
It seems to me that by training w/o compression gear it is sort of like swimming with drag or cycling with a water bottle filled with rocks. Then on race day, you put the compression gear on, take the drag off, dump the rocks from the water bottles & it’s go time!
You my also find this interesting:
http://www.pponline.co.uk/...ssion-clothing-35846
Exactly what I was looking for! thank you very much. And to clarify, by ROI, or return on investment, I mean if I run the same 5 mile loop, in the same amount of time with compression will I reap the same benefits if I were to do the same loop same pace without compression, then putting on compression to aid in the recovery phase. By the above response the answer is no because by increasing comfort muscular effort is reduced. I hope I am right in this interpretation.
This is a great question and one that almost all sports compression products don’t have studies on. Our products, cep sportswear, are made by medi. medi is the World Leader in medical compression and we have some studies that you can download off of our website that talk about wearing cep during activity. Our compression is medical grade class I in the ankle and has a consistent, lower, compression on the calf. Most of the products out there have minimal compression and mainly just reduce muscle vibration. This helps but it won’t increase arterial flow or venous blood flow. You need a targeted amount of compression at the ankle to get any affect on the deep veins. (20-25mmHg) For the arteries you don’t want more than 20mmHg of compression but you need over 15mmHg roughly to get arterial benefit.
The arteries inner wall will relax, dilate, when you have CONSISTENT OPTIMAL compression on them. That is why we measure CALF circumference. The only other product like us is Zoot because we make their compression sock. They understand our knowledge and medical experience so came to us to manufacture the best product possible. In testing other competitors you really won’t get much ROI in terms of increased performance and any product that goes by shoe size or height and weight won’t give you optimal compression. For example, Zensah’s sleeve doesn’t even have a sizing chart??? This is completely ridiculous and technically goes against any medical knowlege on compression. Does your shoe size determine the circumference of your legs?? No! I have a size 12 shoe but 14.5 in calf. I am a size III (small) with cep. With other I am a L or XL? Clearly there is some major errors in this method and athletes need to understand how to pick the right product/s. Each body is different but the facts and data on compression levels that help the most are out there.The problem is you can’t provide a placebo to the athletes tested because they will know if they have compression on or not. However, the blood flow testing we can be argued to be more valid. I will to send the studies to you via email or you can download what we have on our website: www.cep-sports.com (Click on EN in top left corner to translate to english)
I hope this at least gives you an idea what to do and what product/s you should purchase. One other thing, we have a 30 Day wearing comfort guarantee so you can wear it during training and FEEL the product. If for whatever reason you don’t see a benefit keep you receipt and the retailer will take it back. We back our product because it’s tested, proven and made by the leading medical compression company in the world, medi. (www.mediusa.com/cep)
Good Luck,
cep sportswear