Compression wear is intensively advertised by many brands as a performance-improving magical thing. Should we trust those brands? Does compression really work?
Luckily, we have many studies about this and (spoiler) almost all of them say that improvements are absent or minimal.
Here is the most recent analysis done by Chinese researchers. They reviewed 51 randomized controlled trials with 899 runners, covering recreational to competitive levels. The main outcomes were race time and time to exhaustion, with additional analysis of running speed, oxygen uptake, tissue oxygenation, and soft-tissue vibration.
1️⃣ Wearing compression garments did not improve race time or time to exhaustion. The effects were close to zero and not statistically significant.
2️⃣ No effects were found regardless of garment type, race distance, surface, or runner level.
3️⃣ Compression garments did reduce soft-tissue vibration, but this did not translate into better performance.
Conclusion: “no updated evidence favoring the support of wearing compression garments during running”