Dr. Zaslow weighs in on the nuances of the study.
Article Link: Your Sports Bra Could Increase Knee Pain, Study Says: Here’s How
Knee pain can sideline your fitness routine for the foreseeable future, but research suggests there’s one easy fix that may help: changing your sports bra.
That’s the major takeaway from a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Biomechanics. So why might your sports bra influence your knee pain? Here’s what to know.
What did the study find?
For the study, researchers analyzed data from 35 female athletes with bra cup sizes that ranged from B to D. The participants were asked to go through a range of exercises while wearing bras with different support levels.
Scientists found that people who wore bras with little support put more stress on the knee’s stabilizer muscles during landings, ramping up their risk of ACL injuries. (Your ACL, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a ligament in the knee that prevents your tibia from moving too far forward or your knee from rotating too much.) But women who wore a highly supportive bra were more likely to land using muscles in their hips, which put less stress on their knees. 
But the study didn’t conclusively find that lower-support sports bras will cause knee pain—it just suggests that they could raise the risk. “That’s reaching a little far,” says Tracy Zaslow, MD, primary care sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles and a team physician for Angel City Football Club and LA Galaxy.
The larger your breasts are, the more your center of gravity will be off, explains Jillian Gleason, athletic trainer at Gleason Performance Training. But a well-fitting sports bra pulls your center of gravity back into a neutral position, thus allowing you to have better form during workouts. “That way, you are less likely to make corrections and adjustments to accommodate for your center of gravity being off,” Gleason says. “You’ll also be more comfortable.”
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