As we watch the Olympics, one cannot help but notice the stress the women participants are putting on their bust lines. Watching Lolo Jones in the hurdles was painful and not only because she hit that last hurdle and finished out of the medals.

If you do not wear a sports bra when you exercise, you are crazy. Studies have revealed that during simple running, breasts may bounce up and down as much as six to eight inches. There are actual videos on YouTube.com showing this painful fact.

As you well know, up and down is not the only direction we have to worry about. Depending on what you are doing, movement in just about every angle is possible and you really have to pay attention to what you are doing.

Your breasts are not supported by muscles per se. Instead, they are supported by ligaments and, obviously, skin. If you watch sports at all, you know ligaments can be damaged and skin, of course, stretches. You need some additional support.

I will be honest. The average sports bra is not going to set the world on fire from a fashion point of view. In truth, you really should not care. Play hard and party hard, but do them different. Sports bras are for playing hard and seductive bras are for the remainder of the day.

For the longest of times, there was only one sports bra. It was known as the compression sports bra and worked pretty well. In recent times, the encapsulation bra has come on the scene and is receiving good reviews.

The compression bra is the time tested answer for most women. As the name suggests, it works by compressing the breast against the chest. This effectively works to eliminate the bouncing of the breast, but does tend to flatten the chest.

The encapsulation bra is the new girl on the block. She was created for larger women. Instead of eliminating bouncing by flattening the breasts, this bra provides stiff support in the cup to allow movement but limited stress on the ligaments.

Since we have two basic sports bras, you undoubtedly want to know which one you should use. There is no real right answer. The compression bra is good for women with B cups or less, while the encapsulation bra is comfortable for bigger sizes.

The sports bra has not really changed all that much since it was first created, the encapsulation cup notwithstanding. The issue is not so much which version you wear as it is whether you wear one or not. You would be crazy not to.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Clothing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.