As a sports person especially athletes you need every ounce of help that you can get to avoid the resistance to your body.

Athletes running a 400 meter race or a cyclist in a race always have resistance when they encounter air as they try to push forward. This resistance if reduced can cause immense benefits to the athletes as he can run faster than his opponent. Another arena where advanced materials have been used is swimming whereby resistance by water once you try to swim faster is a main cause for the swimmer to lose speed.

Significant amount of research has taken place in the sports fraternity in lowering down these resistances via advanced clothing material. Aerodynamic shapes of the helmets as well as aerodynamic shapes of seats have been used to reduce resistance while cycling.

Swimming body suits have undergone significant changes since swimming was introduced as a competitive sport. There are companies who only manufacture advanced clothing for swimmers and there single most aim is to produce such clothing which when worn by the swimmer will ease his cut through the water.

Athletes of late have begun using the compression stocking in a big way as a way to improve the return of blood to the heart as well as they claim that the pressurized compression stocks help in controlling the excessive swaying muscles while running. Now does that improve the running ability of the athletes is a question that still remains to be answered. But you knew how any new idea that people can try to get ahead of their competitors becomes the de factor standard.

In the case of cycling initially people used to wear normal plastic or metallic helmets but nowadays these helmets are made up of composite materials. These composite materials are so light and also the shape of so very aerodynamic such that the air resistance is reduced considerably. In fact the material used for making cycles for top line cyclists is also very specialized so that the cycle is light and encounters less resistance.

That said some of these uses like the compression socks have been used by the doctors now for long time for curing the varicose veins and preventing the deep vein thrombosis from occurring. That suggests that advancement in the sports arena have helped the average common man in a few quests as well as vice versa with a few things that the medical world uses have been used by athletes to achieve superior performances.