Tight Margins: Compression Garment Use during Exercise and Recovery—A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background: Compression garments (CGs) are a popular tool that may act on physiological, physical, neuromuscular, biomechanical, and/or perceptual domains during exercise and recovery from exercise, with varying levels of efficacy. While previous reviews have focused on the effects of CGs during running, high-intensity exercise, and exercise recovery, a comprehensive systematic review that assesses the effectiveness of garment use both during and after exercise has not been recently conducted. Methods: A systematic search of the literature from the earliest record until May 2022 was performed based on the PRISMA-P guidelines for systematic reviews, using the online databases PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and Google Scholar. Results: 160 articles with 2530 total participants were included for analysis in the systematic review, comprised of 103 ‘during exercise’ studies, 42 ‘during recovery’ studies, and 15 combined design studies. Conclusions: During exercise, CGs have a limited effect on global measures of endurance performance but may improve some sport-specific variables (e.g., countermovement jump height). Most muscle proteins/metabolites are unchanged with the use of CGs during exercise, though measures of blood lactate tend to be lowered. CGs for recovery appear to have a positive benefit on subsequent bouts of endurance (e.g., cycling time trials) and resistance exercise (e.g., isokinetic dynamometry). CGs are associated with reductions in lactate dehydrogenase during recovery and are consistently associated with decreases in perceived muscle soreness following fatiguing exercise. This review may provide a useful point of reference for practitioners and researchers interested in the effect of CGs on particular outcome variables or exercise types.

Compression Sportswear Improves Speed, Endurance, and Functional Motor Performances: A Meta-Analysis

“…To the best of our knowledge, the current meta-analytic findings are the first to report specific effects of compression sportswear on speed, endurance, and functional motor performances. Despite relatively small positive effects, the findings support a proposition that compression sportswear may improve exercise performances because of potential benefits on physiological, biomechanical, neuromuscular, and perceptual components [20].…”

The influence of compression garments on recovery during a triathlon training camp: a pilot study

“…Participants' nutrition, sleep environment and sleep duration were also not controlled in this study, which are potential confounding variables that influenced their recovery. It is also not well understood how repeated wear of compression garments may influence their applied pressure over time (38), which may have influenced the effect of the garments across a six-day camp. Further, the heterogeneity and size of the sample population in this pilot study should be considered in the interpretation of these findings.…”

Identifying relationships between compression garments and recovery in a military training environment

“…Compression garments have become increasingly popular over the past decade in human performance applications, and reportedly facilitate post-exercise recovery by reducing muscle soreness, increasing blood lactate removal, and increasing perception of recovery, but the evidence is mixed, at best [16, 17,18,19,20,21]. One review study, for example, found that CGs help in recovery in terms of subsequent performance for endurance but not sprinting or jumping [22].…”