Compression Clothing

Hi,
I thought I would put this one on the ski fitness forum as well.

Has anyone tried skiing with compression tights, eg skins>>snow tights. Do these products actually help with eliminating muscle burn, reducing muscle fatigue and minimise muscle injury, or is it all just hype. If they do work is there other brands on the market that do the same job, or are the expensives skins the only option?

I was able to trial compression garments (Skins) for a season a couple of years ago. My assessment and that of the other people who wore them was:

They do seem to reduce muscle fatigue a little by the end of a day or a string of consecutive days. You certainly can feel them compressing your thigh muscles - I'm not sure how great this effect is because it is difficult to compare one day to the next.

In terms of injury prevention, most ski injuries are twisting or high-speed force injuries (or both) and so i didn't see any effect of preventing muscle strain/sprains which are not overly common anyway.

The ones I had, had no real thermal quality so you still had to wear a thermal layer as you normally would, i.e. they weren't 'super thermal underwear' rather an additional layer. They may have changed since.

Overall I would definitely say they were helpful however I don't think they make a spectacular difference. This seemed to be a fairly common opinion of others who used them too.

I'd be interested to hear what others think. :-)