I want to give you five top tips for buying gym clothes.
Do not ever buy cotton clothes for gym. Cotton is not good for sweating in. So, you’re going to the gym, you’re sweating your ass off and you get wet in every single possible place you can think of. That’s not a good look. What you want is to be comfortable, confident and just concentrate on your workout. No cotton. No! I made that mistake – I don’t want you to do the same.
Do invest in a good sports bra. You won’t regret it. If you’re anything more than an A (cup) and up, you definitely need a good supporting sports bra and the support depends on what you’re doing. So, if you’re doing a lot of cardio-vascular, if you’re doing a lot of impact stuff, you’re jumping around, you’re running, you’re doing classes like Zumba that involve a lot of jumping around and changing direction, you do need a sport bra. They basically fix your breast where it is instead of completely constricting it. You should feel nice and easy to move and easy to breathe but when you’re, for example, jumping you feel a very slight movement compared to a normal bra. So put your bra on in the fitting room of the shop and start jumping. If your breast are going all over the place, that’s no good. If your breasts are moving slightly but at the same time you find it hard to breathe in it and you feel really tight constriction in the chest as well, that’s not good either. You want good support but the ability to breathe and move.
Bottoms. You can buy either in the shop or online. If possible, always try them on. If you’re buying online, make sure they have a good returns policy or exchange policy so if you order something and it’s not good, it’s not comfortable, it doesn’t look good, you can always send it back. Or, go with recommendation if anyone can recommend you an exact brand and type of legging, for example, you can buy and know 100% that they will be fine. Sports leggings, you want to make sure that they have proper seams done so when you buy you can have a look closely to make sure it’s the right cut. If you’re buying leggings, you need to check seams first, second that they don’t show wetness too much. I had leggings from USA Pro – they were comfortable, good material, nice colour. Go to the gym, sweat and again wet knicker line. It’s not a good look. And the third thing is that you want to check it if it’s squat proof. So when you’re in the shop, put the leggings on. Turn around, backside to the mirror and squat. Have a look if they’re see-through because some leggings look all nice and thick but when you go into a squat, you can see details on your knickers. It’s very distracting when you do Pilates or Yoga and it’s very distracting for someone behind you. They probably will be alright for running in, if you just plan to go for a quick jog, that’s fine. But if you plan to do some classes in it or go to the gym, I would stay away from them.
Tops. Here you can improvise so you can get different gym tops. You can get quite good deals on them in the High Street shops. They’re doing reasonably priced, good tops. You can buy a couple of them if you’re going to have a few days at the gym or classes, you want really a couple of different tops. You can have open shoulders, you can have open back tops, you can have short sleeves or long sleeves depending on if you’re getting cold in the gym, or if you go running you want long sleeves. It’s up to you completely. You can find tops that go really tight up against your body, some tops you can have really loose and baggy on the front, from H&M, actually very simply, very straightforward. Open shoulders, long at the front, baggy – I really like that one, really comfortable. So here you can improvise and choose depending on your preferences.
Trainers. I’ll show you a few of my trainers. You can buy cheaper trainers if you want to, again it all depends on what you’re going to do in them. If you’re planning to run a lot, you’re going to have a lot of cardio-vascular, you might need to invest a bit more in your trainers. But if you don’t have it in your budget, or you just want cheap trainers, that’s fine. The only thing I would recommend if you go to, for example, SportsDirect and buy cheaper trainers is talk to the shop assistant because some trainers look like sport trainers but they are made for day-to-day use. Just basically walking on the street. If you buy those, you do a couple of classes, you could do a couple of runs or gym and they will fall apart. They not designed for that so you ask the sales assistant what the trainers are for. So you’re buying cheaper trainers and they’re for sport or for runs specifically, that’s fine. I would recommend you to buy gel insoles. Any classes you do, dance classes for example like Zumba where you’re changing direction a lot or if you do circuits or if you do H.I.I.T. or if you run, anything that involves impact or running, you want gel insoles. Even if you’re just starting to run, you put gel insoles, it will help you with that impact and really help you with shin splints. When you buy expensive trainers, here you need recommendations because I have bought the dearest trainers, Asics, and they were absolutely beautiful. I was so happy with them but as I do a lot of exercise for my work, three months, they ripped. Customer service not good, they don’t exchange it, so Asics, I didn’t have a good experience so if you want to buy expensive trainers, you really need recommendations for which company do good, reliable and long-lasting and have good customer service if something goes wrong. I had Nike, very simply Nike trainers for runners. They lasted me a year which is not really bad as I’m a fitness instructor I’m doing a lot of fitness stuff. They ripped now – they lasted me a year and that’s quite a lot of use. So the Asics, same use, lasted me three or four months and I had a hole in them. At the moment, I’ve got Under Armour. They’re quite plain but very sturdy, really comfortable, they’re not going anywhere. They’ve got a really interesting design where you’ve got shoe laces but it’s made like a sock so you actually put your feet in it, like in a sock, and you’ve got shoe-laces on top so they’re really nice and sturdy. Really good for impact, changing direction, classes and running so I’m really happy with those.
