Why footballers wear bra

Lionel Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic wearing the bra [Picture Courtesy ]

Footballers have often caused confusion by wearing bras during their training.

With many football fans left puzzling as to why they wear black half vest or bra, it turns out there's a pretty good reason for doing so.

According to YouTube page of GPSSports Systems, the bra contain a small pouch in the back which is used to hold a small GPS device.

The GPS device is then used to track and gather vital data about the player’s heart rate, speed, and distance covered as well as movement.

Some of the bra’s features being GPS, accelerometer, wireless communication, water resistance, 5.5 hours battery life, four processors, a long-range radio and a heart rate receiver.

These vests are considered the key for the continuous progress and the development of players and teams.

Before the use of black half vest, the old vests were very sporadic and uncomfortable for many players who complained that it was affecting their performance.

Due to some minor design adjustments and its usefulness in delivering a huge amount of data, the "bra-like" design was adopted to hold the tracking device.

However, sleeveless shirts are also popular options amongst players who do not enjoy the tight fit of a bra.

 In matches, they wear the vest and device under their playing shirt which allows them to get the same data during gameplay.

The data collected by tracking the device from players is auto-analysed to provide practical information on players' performance, like:

Establish the session load for each player

Identify outliers in the group

Identify players under significant training stress

  Compare sessions to recent history

Produce high-quality reports

  Periodise training using a range of variables

Monitor individual training demands

Monitor rehabilitation and reconditioning programs

Compare players, sessions, drills and games