What are the point of Warmups?

             Warm ups. They may not be the most noticeable part of an athlete’s array of game day clothing, but they could easily be the most crucial. Most seem to think warm ups are just an extra uniform piece added in to make the team look unified as one as they prepare for a game, but what if I were to tell you that a warm up plays an important role in an athlete’s performance in the game?             Flashback a few years on a beautiful 60⁰ fall weekend for a soccer tournament. As my team began the stretching part of our warmups most of the girls on the team began shedding their layers all the way down to their uniforms. Once our coach got the first drills set up he told us all to go back to our bags and put on our warm up jackets and sweatpants till game time. Even though we thought he was crazy (I mean it was perfect weather) we listened to him and began the warm up with our two layers of clothes on. After that day he set the rule that as a team we all had to wear our warmup jackets and sweatpants unless the temperature was above 70⁰. That day I was somewhat annoyed because I didn’t understand why I had to sweat through warmups while I could have easily taken off my jacket and sweats and been more comfortable, but today I now understand my coach’s purpose.

FC Barcelona's Warm Up Suit looks
like most generic soccer warm up suits

           In soccer the warms consist of a jacket and sweats, basketball has a long sleeved top with sweats as well. Why would teams what to spend more money on extra articles of clothing? It’s because they provide a purpose. As you warm up for you respected sport, your goal is to get your muscles moving and heart rate ready for the speed of the game, but between the times of warm ups and game time there is a little bit of downtime as starting lineups are announced and the national anthem is played, and during that time athletes keep their warmups one. Warmups provide an extra layer of clothing that keeps the body heat in which keeps a players muscles ready and even in the long run of the game help prevent cramping from the repeating warming and cooling of the muscles. If you watch wrestling, the warmups are probably the most important piece of the uniform because their sweatshirts and sweatpants tucked into their socks work to keep their body heat in so that their muscles are prepared to work to the max during the match.
           So to answer the question of if you really should invest in warmups, I would highly recommend it as it can benefit your performance as an athlete which is what the focus of the pregame is all about: how can I best prepare my body to perform at the highest level this game?

Images courtesy of www.soccer.com



Undergarments 101

             Watch any sports game and all you see are the wide array of colors of the uniforms the athletes are wearing, but what nobody thinks about is what they are wearing underneath those uniforms. The undergarments that most athletes wear today aren’t just some random white cotton tank-tops, but technologically designed, sweat-wicking, padded compression tank-tops that benefit the athlete.

Nike Pro Combat padded compression
shorts, tank-top, & arm sleeve.

            The main type of undergarments I like to wear are compression shorts and compression tank-tops. One reason I wear undergarments is because I don’t like the scratchy feel of the jersey on my skin, so I wear the undergarments to act as a buffer between my skin and jersey. Now, some may ask, “Well won’t you get hot quicker and feel weighed down by wearing the extra layers of clothing?” and my response to that is no. When I buy undergarments, I make sure that they are thin, which allows them to be light weight and not hold in the heat my body is giving off.
            Personally I don’t wear the padded undergarment clothing, but there is always the option. I feel like you find athletes in more physical sports like football and basketball wearing the padded compression shorts and tank-tops to act as an extra layer of protection. Also another big trend in undergarment clothing lately has been the padded leggings and arm sleeves that you can see most basketball players wearing. The main purpose for the padded leggings and are sleeves are that they help prevent bruising and skin burns when athletes dive on the floor for a loose ball. Also they can help keep athlete’s muscles warm as they are compression, which helps prevents cramping.
           Wearing compression undergarments isn’t for everybody, but in my own experiences I have found them to be beneficial. With today’s sports technology you can find compression undergarments for all types of situations.  The first two places to check out would be Under Armour (as if their name doesn’t say that undergarment clothing is their specialty) and Nike’s Pro Combat line.

Image Courtesy of www.speedendurance.com

 

Breaking in Cleats for the Season

            The beginning of spring is always an exciting time of year. Gone are the dreary, cold days of winter and hello to the warm, crisp days of spring. Also with the better weather that comes along with the change of seasons, is the start of new sports seasons. This past week was the beginning of my junior high school soccer season, where my team began to work to defend our state championship.
            With a new sports season, there comes new gear, and two weeks ago I bought a new pair of the Adidas Predator Absolion FG soccer cleats. Being a very superstitious person, I continued to wear my old pair of cleats for the first week of practice because it was tryouts week and I knew I would play well in cleats I was already comfortable in. But, with the second week of the season starting, and games starting less than a week, I need to begin to break in my new cleats.
            When wearing new cleats for the first time do not, and I repeat DO NOT, wear them in a game. You need to spend time, possibly days in advance before a game, to break them in so they will be comfortable. Another important aspect of breaking in your cleats is that you will know what kind of touch you will get on the ball because your feet are a big part of soccer, so you want to know exactly how it will feel when you kick the ball with different parts of your feet.
           To start breaking you cleats in, I recommend that you wear them around your house or go outside in your yard and jog around in them for a while, you don’t even need a ball to do this first step, you just want to make sure that the cleats aren’t too tight and get them worn down a little bit so they will fit your foot better. Next, wear them to a few practices before the game so you can get a feel for the ball in the new cleats. During these few days of practice, you may develop some blisters or calluses. To combat the pain you can cover the affected area on your foot with a Band-Aid and then wear double socks over your feet because it will decrease the amount of rubbing between your feet and the cleats, which will lessen the pain of the blisters. There is also a blister kit called Second Skin that can help decrease irritation. Finally, once you feel like you are comfortable in your new cleats, it’s time to go test them out in the game. During the first few games of wearing new cleats, I always make sure to bring my old pair of cleats along with me just in case if the new ones start to hurt, I have something to fall back on that I know I am comfortable in.
            It’s always exciting getting a new pair of cleats and being able to show them off and impress your teammates, but you want to make sure that in the process you break them in so that they don’t affect your playing on the field.

Image courtesy of www.sportsphyscologytoday.com



The Simple Beanie



Sporty Beanie

Neutral Gray Beanie

       



            In the past year the classic beanie has made its way back into the fashion world, especially during the rise of the hipster trend. You can literally get beanies in any design or style imaginable. Obviously, with me being a huge sports fanatic, I love to get beanies that are in my favorite team’s colors. But it’s always nice to have a few beanies in neutral colors like cream, tan, and grey to go with everyday outfits. Another nice aspect about beanies, especially for girls is on bad hair days or just lazy days. We all know those days as girls when we just don’t feel like messing with the heap on hair on your head, so it’s always nice to be able to throw on a beanie and still be able to pull a cute outfit together. I would definitely recommend everybody to have their go to beanie as they are a must in anybody’s wardrobe.

Images source: www.amazon.com

March Madness not just about Competition, but also Business for Sports Brands

             For every college sports fan across the nation, this can be considered to be the best time of the year. Sixty-eight teams go to battle to win the NCAA Basketball Championship, and no team is a given, even unbeaten Kentucky. But along with one of the greatest sports atmospheres found anywhere in the world, the topic of sportswear and fashion trends are a main part of the talk.
            Turn on any game over the next few weeks, and I can guarantee that by the end you will know what brand each team was wearing and even possibly the specific shoes a certain player may be wearing. Top sports brand companies don’t need to create a contract with the NCAA to promote their products because the schools they sponsor are doing it for them each time they step foot on the basketball court.

For the 2015 NCAA Basketball Tournament, Adidas revealed
these specially designed uniforms for sponsored schools.

             Some sports brands use that to their advantage . In past years, companies have come out with special jerseys just for tournament time. That is a great advertisement opportunity, because sports brands can come out with eye catching gear that will attract the average basketball fan that they might not see if its shown in a commercial, because if you are like me, commercials are the best times to check your phone for other scores. I think this is ingenious of sportswear companies to use a tournament that they have no partnerships with as a way to sell their product, because in the end, they aren't losing money they wasted on an advertisement, they are creating more buzz for their product that players are unknowingly promoting.  
            Most of the big name schools in college basketball, like Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Duke are easily recognizable because they are the face of college basketball and their fan gear is always in high demand throughout the season. But, what happens when smaller schools like Georgia State and University of Alabama Birmingham make some noise by getting upsets over top seeds on their path to being this years’ Cinderella story? They cause a huge surge in the sportswear world. When a smaller school upsets a big name, they gain followers as most love to support the David when battling a Goliath. When they win, people want to show their support for this newly rising star and go out and buy a jersey or fan shirt to support their team. Think back to when Florida Gulf Coast made a run in the tournament a few years ago and how many people you saw wearing a snapback or jerseys to show their support for a school they had not previously had affiliation with.
           That right there shows the power of the sports and their influence on the sportswear world. This is about big events like March Madness, the Super bowl, the College Football Playoffs, and the World Series. After a champion is crowed, what is the first commercial you see following the game? Yep, that’s right, it’s a commercial influencing the consumers to buy a shirt that supports the winning team, and who wouldn’t want to do that? Sports brands have found a way to use big events that they may not be necessarily partnered with, to create profit by showing support for the winning teams. It’s all calculated decisions when it comes to the business world and when combined with sports, it’s not too hard to figure out as most people tend to support the underdog and the hard-nosed winners.

Image Source: www.bleacherreport.com

Customization: the future of fashion?

                In my past blog posts I have talked about how many sports brands offer the opportunity to customize shoes. The option to customize numerous different articles of clothing seems to be the big thing lately, and I think that is because people feel the need to express themselves more and stand out from the cookie-cutter mold. People want to be different, and to provide that, sports companies use customization. In a post I wrote back in November, The Beauty of Customization, I told of how I customized my basketball shoes for the then upcoming season. Now that my high school basketball season has come to an end, I am once again relying on the customization options to design new jerseys for our season next year.
                To start the process, we met as a team with a sales rep for Adidas and Under Armour, where he showed us the different styles of jerseys available. Most of them were not in my school’s colors so it was hard to in vision how cool the jerseys would actually look, so that was where the “beauty of customization” came into play. The sales rep, showed us how to access Adidas customization tool, mi adidas, and from there we could access the numerous styles sitting in front of us, but this time we could view how they would look in green and gold. Not only is the customization tools offered by these sports companies fun to mess around with to try crazy combinations, but they also give the buyer the option to assess all their creations side by side so they can see exactly what they are buying, exactly how they want it, and exactly how much each creation would cost. It makes the buying process much easier, because there isn’t any doubt on what you are purchasing.
                Obviously within the customization site, you could easily change the colors of the jerseys to match what we wanted, but there were also many other variables that the buyer has the option to change. You could decide where you want the team name placed on the front, where the numbers would be, what the size and font the numbers and letters would be, where you wanted to place your team logo, and so on. Just on one jersey style there are millions of options on how to make your team’s own unique jersey so you can stand out from the rest. Now realistically with all these choices there is also a price to it, which can get pretty high the more options you add. But it is nice because as you are creating your jerseys and you add more options, you can see the price adding up off to the side, so you know that if you got with option 1 over option 2 you could save $10, which adds up when you are buying a team set of jerseys.

                Customization is the future of not only the sports fashion world, but the fashion world in general. People want to be different. People want to stand out from the crowd. People want to be noticed in that one-of-a-kind clothing and know that they won’t show up to a party wearing the same thing as the next guy. Being different is just what we are as people and the ability to customize clothing to fit our wants and needs, satisfies us. Every time I’ve used a customization site, whether it be for personal items or as a team, the process has been an easy one because you get to dictate exactly want you want and how you want it.

Casual Sportswear Shoes

          Shoes are probably my favorite article in the fashion world, as is with most girls. I can’t even begin to count how many shoes I have in general, not just sporty shoes. As you know, I have a great collection of Nike tennis shoes from my previous blog posts, but I also like to wear what I would describe as the casual shoes in sportswear.

Galaxy Authentic Low Pro Vans

          I am in love with Vans. I don’t know what it is about them, but I probably wear them 4 out of the 7 days during the week. I like how simple all their styles are. But, even those they have simple styles, they have every pattern or color imaginable when it comes to the designs of the shoes, and that's what makes them stand out from the rest. I’ve seen floral, galaxy, tribal, and rainbow tie-dye designs just to name a few. I myself own four pairs of the Authentic Low Pro Vans, but I only have them in the basic colors like white, black, gray, and navy. But, this summer I am really looking to expand my collection to the more vibrant colors like pink and bright yellow!

White Low-Top Converse

          Another type of casual shoes that have definitely made their comeback in the fashion world these past few years would be Converse. The most popular color among a lot of my friends and teenage girls in general is the classic white. I also have black and dark gray pairs as well. Converse are a classic shoe that will probably never go out of style and they come in both low and high tops. I mean, when you think of any old shoes the first image that pops into my mind would be the original black Converse.

          There are numerous different types of casual shoes that fit into the sportswear category like Sperry’s, but Vans and Converse are the ones I am most familiar with. Lately I have been wearing them a lot more than my beloved Nike Running tennis shoes. Crazy right?!?! But, if you are seriously looking for a reliable pair of shoes that you can wear with literally anything, I would definitely check out what Vans and Converse have to offer.

 

Images Courtesy of www.zappos.com and www.conversehighsneakersoutlet.com