Performance Enhancing Fitness Apparel

People all over the world enjoy sports, exercise and other activities. Their experiences are more often than not made more enjoyable by the use of specialized sports apparel.

When people engage in strenuous activities their bodies metabolism speeds up, a higher heart rate is achieved, deeper breaths are taken and the body starts to burn energy a lot more leading heat being given off and cooling measures like sweating.

Many conditions affect the performance of both the professional sportsman through to casual exercisers. Weather is a big factor, diet, warm-ups and metal alertness play their part. Often what is minimized is any negative effect of the clothes the participant is wearing.


Sports/ exercise clothing today is typically highly specialized to the particular activity in demand:

Ventilation: Many of the larger sports and exercise brands produce a wide range of apparel e.g. tracksuits, shoes and gloves that have built-in vents enabling air to pass through the garment with more ease. The act of passing air rapidly removes heat that would normally be retained between the clothing layers and the wearer. Typical places for these on jackets and sweaters are the armpits and back. Snowboarding pants often now have ventilation zips down the sides of the legs, the size of vent modifiable with a zip.

Moisture control: Today fabrics closest to the wearer’s body, e.g. quick-drying fleece, aim to absorb and therefore direct sweat/ moisture away from the body for rapid evaporation.

Insulation: Fabrics exist, such as eider down or heavy-duty fleece that act well to contain the body’s warmth. Typically this is something required by winter sports enthusiasts and climbers.

Safety features: These exist to place the wearer in a safer environment through a variety of means. Off-piste skiers can have small avalanche safety devices little bigger than an AA battery inserted into their clothes. Runners can buy clothing and shoes with reflective segments for high visibility during overcast or night conditions.


Manufacturers are well aware that the right sports clothing not only promotes a more comfortable exercise or sports activity session but that it can significantly raise the performance of the wearer to a higher level than is usual.

Examples of enhancement can be seen with synthetically scaled swimsuits, designed so that a layer of water is retained around the swimmer offering the least resistance possible with the main water body as opposed to bare skin. Similarly the adoption of materials such as lycra have improved speeds of sportsmen and women in many arenas from cycling and skating to downhill skiing and toboggan riding.

A prototype vest is in production at the moment that aids breathing whilst exercising. Currently there are no ways of strengthening breathing muscles (the intercostals muscles that work in combination with the diaphragm). ‘Respivest’ has been created, basically a tight vest with elasticated arms that offer resistance to chest expansion.

Shoes vary from the specialized e.g. mountainbike shoes that clip in to stumps of pedals or neoprene boots for surfing, to all purpose cross-trainers or mountain hiking boots.

The list of varieties and advantages of various sports apparel is vast and can’t be covered in its entirety here. Materials development continues towards the lighter tougher and less costly, you do tend to get what you pay for. It is suffice to say when considering a particular activity keep in mind some of the points here when looking at purchasing the associated clothing. Be aware of the benefits of making a well researched and informative decision.