Whilst sports clothing has not changed much in appearance in recent years, apart from alterations in style and the fabrics used, attention to comfort and function has increased appreciably, and ergonomics has had a large part to play in this.
Sports clothing needs to protect you against heat and humidity in summer, and against cold, wet and wind in winter. During exercise in the heat, clothing must be lightweight, loose fitting and porous to allow sweat to evaporate as core temperature rises, and to cool the skin by radiation and convective heat loss. For runners in hot conditions, a predominance of cotton in a mix with polyester is preferable for thermoregulatory purposes; it is also comfortable on contact with the skin, avoiding the irritation associated with ‘joggers’ nipple’. The use of base-layer hot (a mix of polyester with elastane) and base-layer cold (nylon, polyester and lycra) garments represent attempts to fit the clothing to hot and cold conditions, respectively. Heat stress is associated with international soccer tournaments in the summer; until recent years materials with a sheen suitable for television, took precedence over their thermal properties, a factor that placed players at increased risk of hyperthermic fatigue. Matters can be compounded by the absence of the cooling effects of air movement inside the stadium.
Novice participants in half-marathons or marathons in the spring or autumn may experience hypothermia if clad similarly to the elite competitors at the front of the pack; if the weather changes for the worse their pace is not fast enough to generate the heat needed to maintain thermal balance. An extra layer of clothing helps, as worn by the majority of professional soccer players under their club shirts during winter. The keys to protection against cold are firstly, to ensure that clothing insulation is adequate and secondly, that exposure time is limited. The study of protective garments in a variety of extremes in sports and industrial contexts, such as on the mountains or deserts or in accidental immersion in water, is still a rich vein of ergonomics research. There is a growing demand for merino wool garments, normally used by mountaineers and skiers, as a wicking layer. It promotes evaporation of sweat, enhances thermal comfort and does not smell afterwards – a bonus in après ski activities! Comparatively little attention is given to the added value of gloves and headgear in extreme conditions where choice is largely based on subjective evaluation of prevailing environmental conditions. Developments in clothing for outdoor activities have implications also for occupational contexts, such as in the construction and fishing industries.
In field games such as rugby, that incorporate physical contact, tackles can be effective if a tight grip is secured on the opponent’s clothing. Traditional loose fitting jerseys of rugby players have been replaced with tighter garments of synthetic materials, which are harder for adversaries to hang on to. Clothing designers take care that movement is not hampered when wearing tightly fitting shirts requiring good stretch and recovery properties.
There has been a recent resurgence of interest in the clothing needs of female athletes, particularly relating to sports bras. Early studies were done by John Atha and co-workers at the Human Sciences Department in Loughborough University and have recently been extended by Joanne Scurr and colleagues at West Sussex Institute in Chichester. Current products tend to be based on curtailing breast movement, both vertically and laterally, during locomotion. Compression bras that flatten the chest but are not so tight as to affect breathing are mostly preferred; encapsulation bras which contain each breast separately are preferred by larger-breasted joggers. Top female athletes race wearing a two-piece suit, the upper effectively functioning as a sports bra while the exposed midriff increases the surface area of the body available for convective cooling. Aerodynamic suits are worn in winter sports such as ski jumping and in time-trial events of road-race cycling. Their ergogenic effects must be balanced against the physiological requirements and environmental exposure of the event, to avoid hypothermia or overheating. The whole-body piece for minimising aerodynamic drag in track races was promoted by Cathy Freeman, winner of the women’s 400-metres race at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, but these designs are generally considered to be ineffective for runners. Evidence is much stronger for the effect of novel designs of swimwear based on reducing hydrodynamic drag, as used at the Beijing Olympic Games, with over 100 world records being attributed to their use. Swimming with the so-called ‘fastskin’ suit causes a reduction in energy cost, a lowered passive drag and an increased distance per stroke compared to use of conventional swimsuits. Improvement in performance over a range of distances averaged 3%. The advantage was recognised earlier this year when the international governing body changed its regulations for acceptable designs, indicating that swimsuits must not cover the neck nor extend past the shoulders and ankles.
The colour of garments may be influential in performance too, for example the colour can affect the ease with which team mates may be distinguished from opponents in field games, or identified against a floodlit background. Team colours are not restricted to the garments used in competition, there is now a vast market for team garments as fashionwear, reflecting support for the team. Colour can cement the link between the team and its supporters and define allegiances such as the red (Liverpool) and blue (Everton) halves of Merseyside. Occasionally choice of colour seems to inhibit performance. After changing their away strip to an inconspicuous grey in the early days of the Premier League, Manchester United famously changed back to their traditional colours at half-time, having conceded three goals to Southampton in the first half. There is evidence over a half-century of data that soccer teams wearing predominantly red strips have an advantage. A potential negative factor is that goalkeepers facing penalty kicks have greater expectancies of saving the shot when the kicker is in red rather than white. Teams wearing white are not always disadvantaged either since the long-term evidence from soccer is that white is more successful than yellow. The mechanisms for the effect of colour in team sports have yet to be clarified.
Warm-up and cool-down procedures are now accepted as mandatory practice in sport, the participants clad in extra layers to remain warm before competition commences and promote recovery when the contest is over. Compression bandages may be used for protection against muscle injury and compression stockings, as used to prevent travellers’ thrombosis, are worn as a putative means of recovering from strenuous exercise. Their effectiveness is currently being investigated alongside other means of accelerating recovery processes such as hand and forearm immersion in water, whole-body immersion and deep-water running. The latter requires specific apparel worn as a buoyancy jacket. Ice vests, with multiple pockets for insertion of ice cubes are also used, during recovery periods and during half-time interventions to protect against hyperthermic fatigue. Such practices are also explored in occupational contexts, for example between firefighting episodes. The benefits of phase-change materials, substances which on melting or solidifying are capable of storage and release of large amounts of energy, in clothing have yet to be established.
Safety is also a factor in clothing design, as evident in the fire-resistant characteristics of motor-racing suits and the padding incorporated in American football suits. Conspicuity of clothing for runners and cyclists ensures that they are less vulnerable to accidents when wearing fluorescent garments during road training. Changes in sports clothing are likely to continue with developments in materials science and with dictates of fashion. There is much scope within these ergonomic developments of clothing design to transfer knowledge from sporting activities to occupational contexts.
Author: Professor Tom Reilly
Print 
PDF