There are very few legitimate ways to increase your strength and functional fitness performance. Research indicates that wearing tights or compression garments, may in fact be one of the best methods to increase your strength, promote faster recovery, and become a better athlete. This article will review several research studies that discuss the benefits of wearing compression garments, for functional fitness and strength athletes.
Readers of this website will know that this isn’t the first time I’ve written about scientifically validated recovery methods. The interesting thing is that there really are very few methods of augmenting recovery apart from eating nutritious food, and sleeping well.
However, it seems that wearing tights, or compression garments, can have a huge impact both on your ability to recover from hard sessions, and your performance in the gym as well. One study, which we will cover later, indicated that athletes wearing tights during training gained more than 50% more strength and muscular power than athletes training without them.
Before we get into the research, I’d like to say that researchers really don’t understand why wearing tights has any affect on performance. They have postulated many plausible mechanisms, but none of the research I read indicated that they had hard proof. However, the performance benefits speak for themselves.
Research On Compression Garments for Recovery
I reviewed many studies in preparation for writing this article and as always I like to find meta analyses where researchers will comb through the scientific literature and aggregate the results of all relevant research on the topic.
This meta analysis entitled, “Compression garments and recovery from exercise-induced muscle damage: a meta-analysis,” looked at the effect of wearing tights on measures of muscle soreness, strength, and recovery. They found that wearing tights was effective at reducing delayed onset muscle soreness, and it improved muscular power and strength more quickly after training.
This meta analysis, “Compression Garments Recovery From Exercise Induced Muscle Damage: A Meta-Analysis,” examined the effect of compression garments on measures of strength and endurance. They found tights had the biggest effects on recovering strength between 2-8 hours after exercise and 24 hours or more. They also found that tights did not affect most endurance related activities, apart from cycling, which had a strong restorative effect.
If we combine these two meta analyses together we find that over 35 studies were examined by these researchers and they consistently indicated that wearing tights enhances measures of muscular strength and performance.
Now that we know there is good evidence that tights, and compression garments are effective, let’s look at more research in detail to see how, and when we should wear these tights. We will also see just how much our performance might improve with these garments as well.
Wearing Tights During Strength Training
This study was conducted at UCLA and was entitled, “Donning a Novel Lower-Limb Restrictive Compression Garment During Training Augments Muscle Power and Strength.” They looked at the effects of restrictive compression garments, where certain areas of the garment had more tension than others on overall strength and power.
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The researchers recruited 12 college aged males and put them through 4 weeks of heavy lower body strength and power training three times per week. Half of the subjects wore these tights from Blueprint Phoenix (Amazon Affiliate Link) and the other half also wore tights that were two sizes too large. Neither the researchers, nor the participants knew which group was the experimental group while conducting training.
The researchers tested both groups before and after the training cycle for one rep max leg press strength, as well as the number of reps to failure at 85% of 1RM on the leg press. They also measured jumping power as well. Here is the workout that they performed during the cycle.
You can see that this was a mixed program with some high rep circuit style training and some heavy lifting, as well as plyometric movements. This style of training is very similar to the demands of a WOD or metabolic conditioning session.
The Results After One Month of Wearing Tights and Lifting
As you might expect both groups made progress, but the group wearing the tights, sized correctly, made much more progress than the control group who wore the tights that were too large.
The experimental group increased their one rep max leg strength by 83.5 pounds, where as the control group only increased their one rep max leg press by 37.5 pounds. Likewise, the experimental group was able to complete 4 reps at 85% of 1RM leg press, and the control could only do 1.7 reps on average.
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The researchers measured lower body peak and average power by having the participants do a vertical jump on a force plate that measures how hard they are jumping off of it. They found that the experimental group increased their peak power output by 1642 watts, and the control increased by 756 watts. Average power was much the same with the experimental group increasing by 1022 watts, and the control at only 399 watts.
This study was well controlled with both researchers and participants blind to the research condition they were in. The participants also had more than one year of lifting experience, so this can’t be chalked up to beginner gains.
The results clearly indicated that in all measures of lower body strength, and power, the group that wore the tights during training gained more than 50% more strength and power than the control group. Frankly, this is an amazing result from just wearing tights.
I believe these results would transfer to functional fitness athletes as the training style they used is very similar to a WOD. I also believe that the measures of leg strength and power, are extremely applicable to us as well. I would be interested to see if normal tights, with uniform compression, would perform better or worse than these special tights (Amazon Affiliate Link).
Now that we know that wearing tights can be beneficial during a workout, let’s take a look on their effects after a workout.
Wearing Tights After a Workout to Promote Recovery
This study entitled, “Compression Garment Promotes Muscular Strength Recovery after Resistance Exercise,” looked the effects of wearing tights for a 24 hour period after a strenuous lifting workout.
Researchers recruited 9 college age males, who had more than 2 years lifting experience, to complete this study. These subjects only visited the lab three times. On the first visit they established their one rep maxes, that would be used to set the weight for the lifts on the second and third visits. They then returned, completing a workout, and then some participants wore this compression top and bottom from Under Armour (Amazon Affiliate Links).
The researchers measured upper and lower body strength and power at several intervals after the initial workout. They also took blood samples to see if they could detect any physiological differences in recovery.
The Results of Wearing Compression Garments for 24 Hours After Lifting
Just like the study we examined above, the group that wore compression garments (GC) for 24 hours after the workout demonstrated much better recovery.
Here the results measure how quickly strength levels returned in a machine chest press in figure A, and knee extension in figure B. You can see that the group wearing the compression garment (GC) gained back the same upper body strength level, in one hour, that the control group gained back after 24 hours.
In figure B, we can see a similar pattern of recovery where the group wearing the tights is about as recovered one hour after the workout as the control group is after 24 hours.
The researchers found that for those athletes wearing the compression garment that they had significantly faster recovery of their strength levels, and their subjective feeling of muscle soreness was reduced as well. They did not find any significant differences in blood measurements.
The researches also noted a statistically significant increase in upper arm and leg circumference in the group that did not wear the tights. The group that wore the tights had no increase. This might indicated that the tights are keeping the muscles from swelling as much after the workout, during their repair processes.
Discussion
By now we have a lot of accumulated evidence showing that wearing compression garments has a large impact on performance inside of the gym, and our recovery outside of the gym. This does leave us with a few questions however.
First, most of the research is done on college aged folks, with some experience lifting. I’d like to see a study done on competitive strength and functional fitness athletes to see if the results are just as drastic.
I think we also need more studies on the amount of time that athletes should be wearing tights. Obviously, we can’t wear tights all day every day, and right now we don’t even know if that’s better than wearing tights while sleeping or during certain portions of the day. I’m sure more research will examine this issue.
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Final Thoughts
Personally this evidence is strong enough that I plan on purchasing some tights to see what effect wearing them will have on my training. I’ll probably pick up something cheap like these tights (Amazon Affiliate Link).
Even though the research seems very clear that tights can benefit strength athletes, it’s important to try them for yourself as every participant in a study has variable results that are averaged together. You might have even better results or tights might not do a thing for you. If this seems like something you might try then give them a shot, and get out there and start training!
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