Base Layers, know your clothes!

Many people often associate a base layer  as an undergarment to keep you warm on a winters day, but they would be wrong. Base layers are a lot more than just an additional item of clothing to create a vacuum of heat close to your body, they are now scientifically designed to help athletes to increase overall performance to push their bodies to their peak levels.
Base layers should have the characteristics in which to be able to ‘wick’ moisture (sweat) away from the skin, but as well as the wicking ability, they also need to ensure that they can dry quickly to ensure that the user has a comfortable feel to the wearer.
We can categorise base layers into 2 areas – Compression Clothing and Thermal Clothing.
Compression Clothing
Compression clothing is of the tight fitting variety of the base layer family, and usually will be made of stronger material than the usual running clothing material. The idea of this is so that the clothes will ‘hug’ the body in order to offer and provide support to the muscles and joints, whilst also helping to improve the flow of blood back to the heart during exercise, or even after exercise.
Compression socks and stockings have been used for numerous years in the medicine profession to help to prevent and treat the legs from aches, swelling and vein disorders. Numerous sporting manufacturers are producing compression clothing now in order to benefit athletes with such benefits as enhancing the circulation of blood and oxygen delivery throughout exercise, whilst they also help to improve the removal of lactic acids that can build up post exercise.
Thermal Clothing
Thermals are the base layer that many people tend to categorise base layers as. These thermals are normally either made up of synthetic wool or merino wool, which comes from the breed of sheep, Merino. The difference between the two are that synthetics are cheaper, but they do tend to smell quickly as you sweat etc. Merino thermals however cost more money than the synthetics, but you will not be emptying rooms with your aroma. The quality is a lot nicer in merino wool thermals than synthetics.
The main agenda of a thermal item of clothing is that to keep you warm, not to act as anything else such as a muscle support etc like the compression clothing can give to the wearer.

All in all, we can see that base layers can be used all year round. They are not just a thermal winter layer, they can be used as a sole layer to help performance in sporting activities all year round, trying to push bodies to there limits and getting the most of the muscles capacity.