After listening to @Prof interesting podcast interview with Ellie Maybury , I realized I must not be the only one struggling to find well fitting sports bras.
Check out Ellie’s amazing blog post above and make sure to listen to the podcast. Great points all around but let’s reel it back to bra fit.
I remembered reading an article how the tightness of a bra’ underband can affect breathing, and ultimately our exercise efficiency. Here’s the article from WP and the study looking at how tightness of the underband relates to respiratory function and mechanical respiratory work. Unsurprisingly, loosening tightness of your underband (if possible), naturally allows you to breath deeper, slower breaths and improve running economy. Not only is a looser underband more comfortable, it can enhance your performance!! Good news, right?!
That’s all fine, but what about the overall support then? I’ve been told by a breast surgeon that the underband needs to be quite tight to properly support the breast tissue higher up. Intuitively I would rather have loser underband than feel like my rib cage is a prisoner, but a doc must be right?!
This brings me to my next point, which is training data quality. Chest strap is still the best accessible Gold Standard measurement tool for heart rate on the go. When I have a very tight bra and I’m stuffing my HR strap underneath the underband, it’s not the most comfy set-up, I’ll be honest, I have been lucky and never had much of an issue with chafing, but know many are not as lucky. Also to get a good data from chest strap, it needs to be nice and snug against the chest. Unfortunately optical HR is not yet quite there to provide good quality HR reading, especially in higher than zone 1 intensities.
Last year, Garmin created a women-specific chest strap which straps on to the underband. My immediate thought was - what if the bra is not tight enough to allow proper reading of your HR? ! I have not heard anyone use this kind of chest strap. If you have, let me know.
It seems we are still stuck in between tight chest strap&bra combo, non-optimal hr data and diminished performance.
Does anyone have good experiences with one of those Armband HRM like Coros or Scoche or Polar Verity?
@Prof thoughts about the dilemma many women face in choosing between ideal bra for performance (looser band) , breast support, and good quality hr data? Should we be working on our breathing mechanics with a device like Breath Way Better to optimize our breathing for performance to mitigate the negative effect of our tight bras?
Let’s start the conversation ladies 
MJ