After doing more personal research on materials, fabrics, and various other clothing technologies, I discovered an interesting technology that is being used by Adidas. Below is a summary of the article.
Adidas has released a new clothing technology called "ForMotion" that improves comfort and enhances performance by combining several different fabrics with different properties in a shaped garment. ForMotion garments are designed to enhance athletes' movements in three specific types of sports: Linear sports such as running, where the focus is on forward motion; Lateral sports, such as tennis, where the focus is on upper body rotation and quickness; And the Helix movements of football/soccer, where the focus is on lower body power and movement. The ForMotion concept utilises a combination of: compression fabrics in sport-specific body locations to control & enhance muscle activity to assist the athlete maintain proper form; and sculpted cuts and three-dimensional engineering to boost athletic freedom of movement.
I found this technology rather interesting because one of the aspects that we want our final shirt to be is highly comfortable (this is one of the things that Under Armor struggles with). Additionally we need our shirts to remain stationary so that during practice the shirt will not ride up and prevent proper resistance. This particular technology and cut caught my attention while I was doing research on various fabrics and i figured we could potentially adapt Adidas concept to fit what we are looking to do.
Full article found
here
That's a really cool idea. What makes this fabric so comfortable? Is it ready for sale? Will you create your own fabric, or try and get adidas's materials?
This technology is designed to anticipate the movements of the user (or essentially plan for various movements given the sport). This minimizes irritation and increases maneuverability. I believe this particular product is now available @ Sportcheck and other sporting goods stores. As for the materials, this particular design doesn't really use anything special with respect to fabrics; however, the design of the shirt is primarily what contributes to added comfort and mobility. It's interesting to see how even the athletic apparel industry is exploring new technology.