KYMIRA® Sport products help you to perform at the next level.
Endurance | Power | Power-Endurance | Speed | Strength & Grip | Flexibility | Mobility
Endurance
Wearing KYMIRA® Sport boosts how long you can maintain your peak performance zone for, and offers a reduction in fatigue in the latter stages of your training session or competition. This enhanced energy availability and stamina is due to a number of different biological effects, namely increased local circulation, increased tissue oxygen levels and improved respiration efficiencies.
The expected changes to your endurance performance when wearing KYMIRA® can be seen here, where we show speed on the y-axis, and time on the x-axis. In those wearing KYMIRA® we see a slight acceleration to reach peak performance, and a slight increase in overall speed or power output. The big changes are seen in the peak zone, with peak performance maintained significantly longer and fatigue reduced significantly quicker.
For the wearer, this means that you are able to cover more ground in the same space of time, or the same ground in less time. Ultimately resulting in faster competition performances and increases to your training capacity and efficiencies.
Power
KYMIRA® Sport products offer the wearer an increase in the body’s available power. The biggest performance benefit will come from a reduction to your in-session fatigue.
Simply putting on KYMIRA® increases ATP production which has been shown to offer marginal improvement in absolute speed and power. Improvements in performance for power athletes are predominantly achieved because the body recovers quicker from each bout of exercise, making recovery intervals more effective. These improvements in recovery effectiveness are caused by the increase in local circulation and tissue oxygen levels that remove waste products such as lactic acid quicker, along with providing fuel to the cells quicker.
The expected changes to your power performance when wearing KYMIRA® can be seen here, which has time on the y-axis and repetition number on the x-axis. In those wearing KYMIRA® we see top power performance maintained throughout a training session. Increases to your training load will offer the benefits of enabling the physiological adaptions gained from training to occur quicker. If you compete in a heat based format, this is invaluable for you too, as it will mean that you can have the confidence to put more effort into each heat, while still recovering before the next.
Power / Endurance
If you are seeking power and endurance performance, ideal for sports such as rowing, then you stand to benefit from the full spectrum of performance benefits KYMIRA® offers.
Your peak performance zone will be extended, you will experience a reduction in session fatigue and this will allow you to increase training capacity and improve competitive performances.
During interval based training sessions when wearing our KYMIRA® products, we see athletes’ bodies recover quicker between intervals. When monitoring heart rate, we have consistently seen athletes’ heart rates recover by an additional 10BPM between intervals, compared to the same session in normal sportswear. This shows us that the athlete’s bodies are recovering quicker, and are able to continue performing at a higher level throughout that session.
The graph on the right shows a representation of the heart rate changes that have been observed using KYMIRA® products VS standard sportswear. You will see that no change has been seen in heart rate during exercise, only during the recovery phases.
Speed
Speed is an important variable in every sport and one of the most crucial factors in physical performance. Wearing KYMIRA® infrared products during performance increases your tissue oxygen levels which is shown to enhance your speed to increase your competitive edge.
Strength & Grip
KYMIRA® can offer the wearer increased muscular strength, due to its effects of increasing local circulation, tissue oxygenation and energy production at a cellular level. In a recent study, participants wearing a KYMIRA® infrared shirt recorded a mean grip strength increase of 12.44% in dominant hands, following a 90 minute period of wear, when compared to a placebo shirt.
Flexibility
If your sporting performance utilises flexibility for high level performance, then KYMIRA® can support your muscles to stretch further, whilst decreasing the risk of injury (as discussed in injury prevention next). By wearing your KYMIRA® Sport garments before exercise, the increased presence of Nitric Oxide primes the muscles, which improves muscle condition and elasticity ready for performance. This will continue throughout your performance, and be further boosted if you compete in your KYMIRA®.
Injury Prevention
Our KYMIRA® infrared products have been shown to reduce the incidence of soft tissue injury significantly. One sample population made up of 53 professional international rugby players have seen the incidents of soft tissue injuries drop by 80% over a two year period.
The reduction in soft tissue injuries is due to a number of different effects. By wearing your KYMIRA® Sport garments before exercise, you can prime the muscles with Nitric Oxide which improves muscle condition and elasticity so that they are less prone to acute damage. Secondly, if like many of us you are training with little niggles, old injuries and signs of wear and tear, the pain alleviating effects of wearing your KYMIRA® Sport products will reduce compensatory injuries and may well be able to help to fix the niggles as well via their recovery and rehabilitation supporting properties (as discussed in the rehabilitation section).
Finally, by reducing fatigue as we discuss on the Performance tab, we see a reduction in fatigue based injuries, which are typically caused when poor form creeps in when we are tired at the end of training or in a competition.
Please note that to receive the strongest injury prevention benefits, you should prepare, exercise, and recover the used active muscle groups in your KYMIRA® Sport products. KYMIRA® infrared products have a localised effect that penetrates up to 4cm in depth and the surrounding peripheral areas, so to receive the benefits, the area must be covered in KYMIRA®. For example, wearing our leggings will help reduce injury risk in your legs, glutes and lower back, but not your shoulders.
“Introducing KYMIRA® Sport products have allowed us to achieve much higher training loads while also reducing the risk of injury occurrence.”
Bob Stewart
Senior Physiotherapist – International Rugby
Recovery | Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
Recovery is an important area of training and competition programmes, for all ages and sports. It is where your body repairs, rebuilds and strengthens your muscles; where harmful waste products are removed and broken down; where inflammation is calmed.
Wearing KYMIRA® will allow your body to accelerate its recovery processes by delivering more oxygen and nutrient rich blood to your muscle cells, while also removing waste products quicker through the increased local circulation. The increased tissue oxygen levels that you will see as a result of wearing your KYMIRA® Sport products, will help your muscle fibres to heal. Research shows between 140% and 210% increases in cellular growth and repair, when cells are exposed to the wavelengths of infrared light that KYMIRA® Sport products emit.
In addition to the direct benefits on our muscle cells, active recovery allows the muscles to flush waste products and bring nutrients into the blood to replenish them. The increased local circulation simulates an active recovery protocol while you are completely passive/inactive. This means that you can put your feet up watching TV, and still receive the same benefits.
Senior International Rugby Physiotherapist Bob Stewart utilises our leggings alone in 7 different recovery modalities within his squad.
“As a recovery protocol we have seen a 25% reduction in perceived pain scores, a 33% reduction in stiffness.”
Rehabilitation
As well as a tool to mitigate the risks of getting an injury, KYMIRA® products can help you recover quicker from them should they occur. KYMIRA® Sport garments are widely recommended and used by physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths to aid rehabilitation, whether it be from a sporting injury, surgery or other condition.
Research has shown between 140% and 210% increases in cellular growth and repair when cells are exposed to the wavelengths of infrared light that KYMIRA® Sport products emit. This in combination with the previously discussed benefits of increased circulation and increased tissue oxygen levels, enable your body to recover quicker, reduce inflammation faster and accelerate your rehabilitation.
“KYMIRA® clothing has helped me to come back from a ruptured Achilles tendon and back to competition – that’s the biggest highlight for me! It could have been a career-ending injury but thankfully, it hasn’t been.”
Henry Trinder
Professional Rugby Player – England & Gloucester RFU
The pain relief benefits that KYMIRA® Sport products provide, can also be of benefit for rehabilitation. Alongside the support to soft tissue repair, inflammation reduction and pain management effects highlighted, KYMIRA® products can help reduce the negative effects of immobility as studies show Nitric Oxide can be powerful in preventing muscle-disuse atrophy.
KYMIRA® products are found to be useful to support compliance and maintenance of a physical rehabilitation programme. With increased blood flow and oxygen levels, KYMIRA® helps to breakdown lactic acid within muscles and reduce the effects of muscle aches, the commonly referred to issue of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). KYMIRA® rehabilitation partners compliment their treatment plans with KYMIRA® products, reporting that patients have an increased capacity to work and reduced issues of muscle soreness that lead to a lack of regime compliance. Overall the rehabilitation professionals and customers report an accelerated physical rehabilitation process.
Travel Management
Travel can be one of the hardest parts to manage of any competition. It is a necessary evil that takes its toll on your body, whether you are driving, being driven or flown to an event. We can build time in to let our bodies recover, but for most of us, that isn’t feasible. For those that can, it can often come at great expense across a season. By wearing your KYMIRA® Sport products when you are travelling, you can mitigate a lot of the negative effects and arrive feeling fresher, reducing the time needed to recover and/or acclimatise to your new surroundings.
“The kit helps me combat jet-lag on long haul flights.”
Ben Peggs
GB Professional Fencer
Similar to the active recovery benefits, wearing your KYMIRA® Sport products while travelling will allow you to arrive at your destination feeling less fatigued, less stiff, and less sore. Through the complete combination of the benefits listed on our Science Page our products will increase localised circulation and muscle energy, reduce swelling, relax your muscles and reduce any discomforts that you may be feeling. The thermoregulatory effects are often beneficial as well and allow you to maintain a more comfortable temperature throughout your journey, plus the kit offers SPF35 sun protection ready for an arrival to a sunny destination.
Many people will travel in compression products such as socks to prevent DVT’s. However, compression products require the wearer to be actively engaging their muscles by movement, or they will have little benefit. KYMIRA® Sport products will work without muscle activation because they increase circulation through the production of nitric oxide and their subsequent natural chemical reaction, not muscular activity and compression. For those wanting the benefits of infrared and compression though, our KYMIRA® compression socks are widely used as flight socks.
“The squad has been very, very positive in their feedback for comfort, thermoregulation and use during travel.”
Bob Stewart
Senior Physiotherapist – International Rugby
Pain & Condition Management
Customers use KYMIRA’s® pain relief benefits to reduce the felt effects from training and competing, but also to help manage existing medical conditions, old injuries and illness symptoms that affect performance. KYMIRA® products are utilised for medical applications under our sister brand, KYMIRA® Medical. Our products containing Celliant® are determined to be medical devices.
The pain relief pathways activated by wearing our products have been shown to decrease perceived pain levels by 25% in both elite and amateur athletes. Due to the vasodilating and local circulation boosting effects of the Nitric Oxide, KYMIRA® products support a localised reduction in inflammation by opening up the blood vessels and increasing the blood flow. In doing so the body can more efficiently remove excess fluids from the site of the inflammation.
“KYMIRA® helps me to manage the pain of DOMS. There have been so many times where I’ve thought “I should not feel this good. I don’t DESERVE to feel this good. I should be in absolute bits but I’m absolutely fine”
Raya Hubbell
International Age Group Triathlete
KYMIRA® products are ideal to help alleviate issues that accompany circulatory based conditions like Raynauds and Chilblains, thermoregulatory conditions such as heat or cold intolerance, and inflammation based problems such as Carpel Tunnel, Golfer’s or Tennis Elbow and Arthritis; helping you continue to play the sport you love, be less affected by your condition and in turn perform better.
“I suffer from Raynaud’s syndrome in my fingers and toes, which is exacerbated when I spend hours running in the cold and wet weather. KYMIRA® Sport’s infrared sports gear has become an integral part of my training. The infrared technology increases the blood flow to my outer extremities and disperses the heat that my body generates.”
Nikki Love
Professional Adventure & Ultra Runner
Temperature Regulation & Protection from the Elements
Regulating temperature is key to both performance and recovery. On one side, you will be more comfortable if you are not too hot, or too cold. More importantly, the closer you are to the metabolically perfect temperature, the quicker and more efficiently the cellular processes in your body will occur, further boosting performance and recovery.
Temperature control is a negative feedback system whereby your body will fluctuate between actively cooling and heating as depicted by the grey line in the graph on the right. As you can see, when you are using KYMIRA® Sport products we cannot guarantee to keep your body at the metabolically perfect temperature all of the time, but it will reduce the size and frequency of these fluctuations. This thermoregulatory affect in turn allows your body to use its energy and fluid reserves more efficiently on other functions such as performing or recovering.
“Having tested and relied upon KYMIRA’s® products in some of the most extreme environments on earth, I believe they offer the most robust, adaptable and comfortable baselayers for any conditions. The robustness of the garments are second to none. I have never used products that perform so well when wet, and the muscle conditioning and recovery benefits make a massive difference to physical condition and morale.”
Louis Nethercott
Expedition 5 Explorer
KYMIRA® Sport kit is ideal if you are training or competing outside, in hot or cold conditions, or touring where weather can be variable; whether that is during a long race or over a series of competitions. KYMIRA® is suitable for both hot and cold climates, with a regulating effect experienced by our athletes in conditions ranging from -35 to +48 degrees. When you use KYMIRA® as a base-layer, layering over the top, the infrared fabric warms 63% better than fabric of its usual weight.
KYMIRA® fabric dries 65% quicker on average than standard fabrics, offering quick drying from sweat or rain. The Quartz Dioxide offers a built in SPF protection of at least SPF35, so your skin is benefits from additional protection from the elements while you train and compete.
“All the KYMIRA® layers work together and guarantee a great fit, along with great temperature control. I am based in Zermatt, Switzerland, where we have 4000m slopes. Temperatures, blood pressure, weather conditions are all ever changing and being able to count on garments that ‘evolve’ with you in the changing environment is fundamental.”
Federico Sollini
Founder & Head Ski Coach of Subzero Coaching
KYMIRA® Sport products are regularly used by amateur and elite athletes for a multitude of reasons. For some, this is simply to continue their recovery through the night. For others this is to improve their quality of sleep through maintained homeostasis, caused predominantly by the thermoregulation benefits and circulation benefits.
A recent study on 20 athletes in the US, investigated the use of KYMIRA® leggings used only during sleep, not during exercise or recovery phases. The results showed a 15.9% improvement in sleep quality, which correlated with a 15.8% improvement in fatigue and a 13.6% reduction in soreness. Wearers also report that they fall asleep faster, have less night time awakenings and wake up feeling more rejuvenated.
“At tournaments I wear KYMIRA® to bed to give me the best possible start to the following day’s competition. At competitions we can have three days back to back without much recovery time. Wearing them at night helps flush the legs out and promote repair, meaning I can start days two and three as if it was day one.”
Ben Peggs
GB Professional Fencer