Created to empower women to experience sport without restraint, made for runners everywhere.
Made possible by combining years of breast kinematics research with athlete insights & the latest innovations in materials and design from RHEON LABS.
Introducing the new Techfit Control x RHEON™ Bra – step into a new era of sports bras.
For 72% of women, running has been synonymous with enduring pain from sports bras. Feeling scared to stride out due to feeling unsupported, or feeling over-compressed and suffocated, with stitch marks digging into us at every point.
Research has shown that breasts can move up to 19cm when not supported during running, the same G force as an F1 driver, whilst over 90% of women are wearing a sports bra that doesn’t fit them properly.
A sports bra is the single most important piece of apparel for women, yet women’s needs have been underserved for decades when it comes to sports bras designed to support the female form.
We decided to do something about this age-old problem.
Introducing a new era of hi-tech support, engineered with RHEON™.
Strips of the highly strain-rate sensitive RHEON™ polymer are strategically placed across the bust and straps of the bra. The RHEON™ strips adapt to support your breasts in high-intensity movements, to give you support exactly when you need it most, whilst remaining flexible and unrestrictive when relaxed.
RHEON™ solves one of the hardest challenges in a sports bras – how can you get the levels of support required for high-intensity movements without compromising its comfort?
RHEON™ creates a sports bra that is comfortable during everyday use but supports you when you need it, absorbing over 3x more energy than conventional fabrics used in sports bras.
Adidas & RHEON LABS collaborated with Joanna Wakefield-Scurr, Professor of Biomechanics and her team at the University of Portsmouth alongside their specialist breast biomechanics laboratory, to uncover the effects of these shocking figures on athlete performance.
Additionally, the effects of RHEON™ were tested at the biomechanical lab of Professor Bryan Heiderscheit at the University of Wisconsin, using advanced motion capture systems to measure breast displacement both with and without RHEON™.
Over the years, Portsmouth’s research has revealed that poor breast support causes the entire body to compensate for this additional movement, leading to significantly reduced running performance.
It indicated that breast support for runners can lead to a reduction in stride length of up to 4cm, citing that wearers become more hesitant to stride out – over a marathon distance, that’s a whole mile lost due entirely to poor breast support.
This is backed by another study by the University of Memphis that found that good breast support is enough to improve an athlete’s running performance by as much as 7%.
Our head of design Olga Kravchenko has spent over a decade codifying and exploring algorithmic design. A Teaching Fellow at the Dyson School of Design, Olga has become a world-leader in algorithmic design, unlocking a world where data creates the product derived from the motion of the athlete.
Anything the runners described as a problem, we codified – from heat management, to breast accelerations & overall breast pain. The result? A new era of running bra created with and for women everywhere, combining years of athlete insight with cutting-edge advancements in RHEON™ materials and design.
This is the Techfit Control x RHEON™ Bra – step into the future of sports bras.