Skin Tech: Limiting Collateral Damage in the Weight Room

To improve power in the weight room, training hard and heavy comes with a price. Strength training is about breaking down and building up, and athletes can only leverage training adaptations when they maximize recovery. The ideal program strains only the areas that need, and can, adapt to the imposed demands. A shirt that adds appropriate shielding and provides the most comfort makes sense for athletes trying to achieve their best in the weight room and on the field.

Maximal squats, heavy cleans, and explosive jumps with a barbell create collateral damage that does not contribute to building strength. Many athletes and coaches perceive common joint, muscle, and tendon soreness as a cost of doing business.

There’s a big difference, however, between normal soreness and damage to untargeted tissue which may lead to permanent problems.

Even if acute or chronic injury doesn’t occur from heavy training, excessive soreness and pain limit the results of any properly designed strength program. For greater results, the winning formula is to push harder and recover more completely.

Common problem areas for athletes who train hard, even if they have great technique, are the following:

• The Upper Spine: Not everyone’s anatomical structure receives a barbell well on their upper posterior neck. For most athletes, this area isn’t naturally padded by muscle. Even if it is, muscle will always lose to heavy steel. The Apollo SS training shirt solves this problem by covering exposed areas and increasing comfort with state of the art padding.
• Clavicles and Sternum: Front squats, push presses, and heavy cleans place a lot of pressure on the collarbone and breastbone, which are not designed to handle impact forces. The shirt’s built-in high impact pads cover this area precisely for those needing a little assistance with the lifts.
• Anterior Shoulder Area: No matter what grip one uses, racking and reracking a bar on the shoulders can be tough for athletes who don’t have muscular development in this area. Exposed bone can spell discomfort to any athlete, not only those who are smaller in the upper body.
• Nerves, Upper Back, and Shoulders: Some mystery exists in the current science about sensory and motor nerves. Some athletes are highly sensitive and have discomfort in the upper back and shoulders. To eliminate any potential problem, the shirt covers these areas to protect the athlete.
• Trapezius and Other Muscle Groups: Over time, a heavy barbell can wear down other muscle groups in the upper torso. The shirt supports these areas to relieve the muscles and enables coaches to train their athletes harder in the next session.

Discomfort and pain are not caused by imperfect barbell technique; they result from a limit to the design of the human body. Some of the most skilled athletes in international weightlifting and powerlifting wear the Apollo SS shirt.

Pain is not caused by imperfect barbell technique; it results from the human body’s design limits. Share on X

We’ve also seen great results with collision sport athletes who simply need a way to calm the blows of their sport to train effectively. The physical toll of heavy training adds up; many coaches and athletes don’t realize how much recovery time they need to handle the wear and tear of competing, practicing, and training.

When Toughness is Disguised as Macho Foolishness

Some coaches believe a heavy bar crashing or pressing against the body is a sign, or part of, building toughness. We agree that heavy barbells can challenge and teach athletes valuable lessons. Discomfort, however, should come from hard conditioning and not banging up joints and tendons.

NFL coaches and science teams now work together to find the optimal load for hitting and contact using systems like Catapult and other tracking tools. It’s time to direct this attitude to the weight room.

We designed the Apollo SS to protect the areas of the body affected by intense barbell training. We love sensors and tools that measure workouts, but there are not enough solutions available to actually improve high-intensity training. Skin Tech™ is currently protecting players in the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, and athletes in both the summer and winter Olympics.

Some athletes roll up towels or use bulky barbell padding, but the experience leaves them frustrated with subpar results. Consider the hypocrisy: specialized bars have massive padding and nearly every leg machine has cushioning for the shoulders. We don’t favor plush spa athlete experiences; we just know that optimal comfort leads to harder efforts and less wear and tear.

For us, toughness is challenging the willpower to push harder. Toughness is not dealing with discomfort or pain; these don’t contribute to physiological improvements in the body. Athletes in contact games like rugby and American football experience enough impact. We want the focus in the weight room to be on building up, not piling on additional pain and trauma.

The Measurable Difference of Training with the Apollo SS Shirt

Recovery from training is a complex process. We’ve done our homework with the science and taken into account the practical considerations of training with correct weight room ergonomics.

Coaches and athletes always ask about a product’s real-world benefits. So what’s it worth? We did some of our own research and looked at the price of impact on athletes playing contact sports. We saw a pattern.

We found that the more impact or loading experienced by an athlete, the longer the recovery needed, all else being equal. There’s a difference between muscle recovery and joint inflammation.

There’s a difference between muscle recovery and joint inflammation. Share on X

The training process breaks down muscle tissue and builds it back up. This is necessary. Soreness is expected and may occur with heavy training. But lingering and excessive joint pain or inflammation only decelerate body recovery. Major pain or discomfort that sabotages sleep and prevents training is unacceptable.

When reporting their willingness to train, athletes are influenced by their physical and training fatigue. We’ve found that willingness specifically to lift heavy with a barbell on the body may not show up with subjective questionnaires, coach and athlete communication, or athlete self-reporting. Not because athletes aren’t motivated to lift heavy or train, but because most athletes don’t look forward to soreness and unproductive pain.

Everyone has a limit, whether physical or mental. We know that even tough athletes who pride themselves on the “no pain no gain” philosophy still benefit from wearing our shirt because it allows them to go harder.

We can care for the majority of athletes that simply use weight training as a means to an end and are willing to go hard provided that reasonable comfort exists when a steel bar goes to the body.

Skin Tech™ innovation adds the ability to safely maximize every athlete’s potential and provides support so recovery is deeper and intensified.

Proprietary Technology and Patent-Pending Design

Skin Tech^™ assembled the utopian training shirt by combining the current leading technologies in both the sport and the protection industries. Every possible function an athlete needs is provided with the most comfortable training shirt on the market.

The Apollo SS delivers the best shielding system to exposed anatomical areas while being ultra-light and incredibly cool. The shirt provides individual, geometric pattern XRD^® Protection foam armor that withstands 90% of the impact from ballistic lifts. It’s resilient to crush loads, has no skin irritants, and is laundry safe. The fabric is designed to allow for ease of motion in any training environment and is built to last.

Skin Tech offers the Apollo SS shirt for both men and women of all ages and sizes. In addition to an array of sizes for different athletes, the shirts can be customized with logos if teams and companies want to promote their brand uniquely.

The Apollo SS was designed to protect muscle, bone, and the nerves. The padding is a mere 6.35 millimeters thick but is able to handle high-velocity and high-load weight training shocks. The geometric patterns are strategically placed for key target areas for both power lifts and Olympic weightlifting. The precise spacing of the patterns allows for a smooth glide to preserve natural motion. In addition to barbell loading, athletes using other weighted instruments like kettlebells and medicine balls will benefit from the shirt’s design.

The Apollo SS uses XRD^® Technology, the leading impact absorption material in the industry. The material boasts an impressive tensile and tear strength index and is rugged enough to handle extreme conditions such as high-speed sports and life-saving professions. The material is surprisingly soft and flexible but is resilient to handle even the most demanding training sessions.

The shirt is cool, breathable, antimicrobial, and designed to resist odors and stains. The reinforced TopCover shield provides added support around the chest and back to reduce muscle fatigue and pressure. The high impact material creates a natural and subtle gap between fabric layers to help release body heat during training. Unlike other protective shirts, the feel is natural and doesn’t irritate the skin. We designed and tested the Apollo SS to be the most comfortable training shirt on the market.

What to Expect and Getting Started

When athletes put on the Apollo SS, they immediately feel the difference. The shirt is ultra-light and feels like a second skin. The high-tech armor covers the areas that need a little more support. The cut is athletic, form fitting, and designed for a personalized experience. Teams can customize their shirts with logos or ship same day if they just want the core essentials. If you have any questions or want guidance on sizing and large orders, visit skintechfit.com and give us a call or email me at jeremy.bunting@skintechfit.com.

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