Compression socks for runners

Nowadays, in the era of a busy lifestyle, fast food, and instant interactions, the sport has become one of the ways to get back to ourselves. If you are visiting our website, chances are that you are interested in taking care of your physical health and overall wellbeing. As we all know, running is a perfect activity to keep your body in a good shape, to improve your breathing and stimulate circulation in the body. So let’s find out something new and useful for starting or improving the quality of your running routine.

Did you hear of the compression socks for runners?

If you are a runner, or you know a runner, there is a high chance that you have already heard of the compression socks and their benefits for sportsmen and runners. But, to make a good understanding of their benefits, once again, let’s make it clear what compression socks are. Compression socks are a special piece of clothing that makes a mechanical pressure on the leg, which stabilizes, supports, and compresses the tissues. At first, they were created as a therapy for varicose veins and poor circulation in the lower parts of the body.

This was in the mid-15th century. A few centuries later, in the late 1980s, compression apparel entered the world of elite athletes. Athletes found purpose in wearing a compression garment during the training to improve their performance in long-distance endurance events such as marathons and road cycling, as well as after the training to enhance and accelerate recovery. But, how does the compression do all this stuff for us?

Benefits of compression

Breathing is a vital activity that keeps us alive. It is also a vital aspect that makes a difference between an average and an excellent runner. By taking a breath, we feed our bodies with oxygen. The main roles in this story are played by heart and veins.

The heart has the task of pumping oxygen-rich blood to our muscles and limbs through arteries.

Once our cells use up the oxygen and nutrients in the blood, the deoxygenated blood and other waste products are headed back to the heart through the veins. And that is where the importance of compression kicks in. With compression, the blood is circulating more efficiently through the legs, which makes the cycle of blood oxygen pump shorter, and consequently – our cells are getting more oxygen.

To put this simple – The more oxygen the cell gets, the better it functions. Now, it should be pretty clear how compression affects physical activity and especially running.

Compression socks and running

Compression socks cannot run a marathon for  you, or make you run it faster, but they definitely can help you recover quicker and feel greater relief in your muscles. It is important to state, nevertheless, that to have the benefit of the faster recovery, you should wear them during the activity. In endurance-based sports, such as long-distance running and cycling, muscles experience inflammation and micro-trauma.

Why should you wear compression socks for runners?

Wearing socks for circulation, while running or cycling, increases the temperature in your muscles, reduces muscle pain and damage, and results in less inflammation.

Compression socks provide graduated compression, meaning they’re tighter at the bottom, and looser at the top. That design helps push blood back up to the heart and keep the oxygen pump going.

Another benefit of compression socks in sports is the prevention of muscle cramps

Runners experience muscle cramps for various reasons, but two main reasons are overworking of muscles and electrolyte imbalance.

Muscle overloading and fatigue type of cramps and very well known and almost inevitable with half-marathon and marathon runners.

They occur from repeated or extended loading of a particular muscle group and muscles being in a shortened position. The best practice for preventing this type of cramps to occur is to introduce the practice of stretching into your running routine, go to massages, and for sure, wear compression garments!

Electrolyte imbalance cramps occur as a result of extensive sweating and significant loss of electrolytes, especially sodium and chloride.

This type of cramps happen usually during long-distance activities because as the duration of the exercise increases, sweating continues and a sodium deficit can be developed. So, it is worth mentioning that Skineez socks for circulation prevent excessive sweat.

Compression socks from Skineez also stimulate and massage your muscles, helping them recover faster and avoid muscle cramps. They manage to do that because they are infused with the skincare formula that supplies your skin with nutrients to make it softer and more elastic.  Our special skin care formula consists of 5 ingredients:

• Apricot Kernel Oil – improves skin tone, maintains softness, and calms irritated skin
• Retinol – improves the elasticity of the skin by increasing the production of collagen
• Vitamins A and E – nourish skin and have an antioxidant effect
• Shea Butter – moisturizes skin and tones skin
• Rosehip Oil – reduces inflammation, moisturizes, and boosts collagen formation
• Caffeine – prevents skin discoloration, reduces inflammation

So, not only that socks for circulation help you get your blood flowing, but they also protect and nourish your skin. For runners, always striving to be better than the previous day, wearing Skineez can make a big difference.

Worth mentioning also is the fact that marathon runners are more prone to becoming victims of blood thrombosis. The study made by AirHealth.org found out that 85% of air travel thrombosis victims are athletic, usually endurance-type athletes like marathoners. The causes of blood clotting for this type of athlete are repetitive microtrauma from running long distances, dehydration, thick blood that is a consequence of having more oxygen in the blood than regular people, and artery damage that comes from more blood being pushed out by each heartbeat while exercising.

Taken all together, we can say that running a marathon can disturb regular coagulation of the blood. By wearing compression socks, we increase blood flow and circulation, speeding up the rate of blood detoxification and reduce the chance of developing a blood clot.

To sum up, if you are a runner, you can benefit from wearing compression socks because:

• They reduce swelling and lower leg tiredness on running long distances
• They reduce recovery time
• They lower the chance of getting leg cramps
• They keep your legs warm in a cold weather
• They moisturize and protect your skin

We hope that you are considering wearing compression socks on your next running session, and if you are there is one more detail why Skineez compressions socks are the perfect choice – thez are easy to put on and feel so natural that you will not feel you’re wearing them. So grab a pair of Skineez compression socks and let’s go running!

To shop for our products, visit Skineez shop at https://www.myskineez.com/collections/all.