Keeping the Girls in Place: My Quest for the Perfect Sports Bra


Exercise is good for your boobs; in fact, it may help to prevent cancer.

Which explains why I have taken up running. OK, it’s more like fast walking, but self-delusion is essential to starting a fitness regimen in your 50s. Still, even at my snail’s pace, I’m feeling the pain. There’s foot pain, knee pain, and then “jiggle pain,” i.e., the rapid-fire movement of my butt and boobs.

The pain in the rear actually feels good, because I think it’s doing good. After all, there are muscles under that fat that are tightening up. The boobs, on the other hand, are just fat sacks held up by poor, overworked Cooper’s ligaments, the tendons that have the sorry job of trying to defy gravity every day (Cooper, by the way, was a nineteenth-century anatomist).

In high school when I ran track and sported a perky pair of A cups, an Ace bandage wrapped around twice was enough to keep them in line. But my current generous Cs need greater engineering to avoid injury and embarrassment. And after watching the bounce-test videos at HerRoom.com (a great site that sells women’s underwear), I understand why. The tatas go up, they go down, they go side to side, in and out, even in a figure eight—I haven’t seen so much boob action since I was a cocktail waitress at a strip club in college.

Boob-bobbing is, in fact, a science that has been studied by the likes of LaJean Lawson, PhD, a former professor of exercise and sport science at Oregon State University, and Joanna Scurr, PhD, who is setting up Britain’s first research group for breast health. Scurr found that acceleration and deceleration caused the most breast discomfort, and that an encapsulation bra—one that separates the boobs into actual cups versus a compression bra, which flattens the breasts to the chest wall (Health’s running coach, Jenny Hadfield, refers to this classic look as the “uniboob”)—was best for those of us with larger fat sacks.

With that in mind, I did an informal survey to investigate my options. Health’s fitness editor, Su Reid, controls her Ds with Champion’s Powersleek bra and is crazy about the Bonita Run Crop from New Balance, which you can adjust to fit in two places. However, she laments the lack of colors and styles for women with bigger breasts. While there are some newer trends in bras (reversible, built-in heart monitor), most don’t come in her size.

To find my perfect sports bra, Hadfield, the co-author of Running for Mortals, suggests I measure carefully (HerRoom.com offers great measuring advice), do some jumping jacks or jog in place to check the bob control of each prospective bra, and choose my fabrics carefully. “Look for breathable synthetic fabrics that wick moisture away from the skin and have a gentle supportive stretch; they also help to minimize chaffing,” she says. “Stay away from cotton and any sports bra with a zipper. Although stylish, they have the potential to chafe and come unzipped.”

I definitely do not want to come unzipped. I need my girls to be on lockdown. So, in spite of all of the advances in bra science, I may just turn to an updated Ace bandage approach and strap these babies down with duct tape. That’s the low-tech method of runner Lady Jove, who gives taping instructions on her blog. And tape has the added benefit of color options beyond boring black and white. If you see a set of fluorescent pink knockers streaking by, you’ll know that’s me.

(PHOTO:REVELSPORTS.COM)

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