Meet the Woman Behind the Fitness Industry’s Latest Innovation

Have you ever found yourself breathing so hard that your lungs feel like they’re about to explode? And sweat enough to notice your perfectly filled-in eyebrows are dripping off the sides of your face? You take one last deep breath and throw yourself onto the floor for a final burpee only to be welcomed by what I refer to as“the burpee nip slip.”

If that's the case, your bra may be cute, but it’s certainly not doing the job.

Instead of finishing your workout, you are faced with constant readjusting and pulling back into place, hoping no one saw that.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think we can all agree that if you’re a woman, you’ve had some sort of sports bra issue.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Reebok's Senior Innovation Apparel Designer Dani Witek who explained what the company is doing to fix some of those issues.

“It’s our job as apparel designers to solve these problems,” says Witek.

“Wake up! What are we doing? Nothing has changed, and every year women are still unsatisfied with their sports bras.”

Wake up! What are we doing? Nothing has changed, and every year women are still unsatisfied with their sports bras.

Witek was the force behind the team that designed Reebok’s new PureMove Bra, the first sports bra designed with shear-thickening fluid (STF).

She had heard some startling stats about sports bras: 70 percent of women are wearing the wrong size, 50 percent of women experience some type of pain or irritation, and 1-in-5 women won’t even attempt to work out because of bra issues.

Not to mention, find the right sports bra is complicated process in itself. Magazines have created roadmaps, infographics, charts and millions of ways to help you find the proper bra. Why must it be so complicated?

Well, Witek believed it didn’t have to be, so she set out to change this.

1-in-5 women won’t even attempt to work out because of bra issues.

Enter: the PureMove Bra.

I visited Reebok HQ in Boston, Mass., to see the technology and science that went into building the PureMove Bra, and let me tell you, the team did their research.

After three years of testing and experimenting, they came up with a lightweight bra made from a knit fabric coated in this STF. Essentially, this material is the same as what is used in bullet-proof vests and NASA space suits.

The PureMove bra was designed to be supportive, minimize bounce and maximize stability during high-intensity movements. You no longer have to worry about which of your sports bra is for yoga and which one is for CrossFit. Because of STF, the PureMove Bra seamlessly transforms and molds to your body as an action takes place.

If you’re running, it will stiffen to properly support you on your run, and if you’re downward dogging, it will release to support you in your pose.

If you’re running, it will stiffen to properly support you on your run, and if you’re downward dogging, it will release to support you in your pose.

After learning about the bra and all of its benefits, I visited the Reebok gym to put the bra into action. In a boot camp class, I jumped rope, did burpees, crunches and squats and even participated in a sled race. And that bra? I loved it.

I won’t lie, I had my hesitations.

I’ve worn hundreds of different sports bras so I was convinced this one wouldn’t be much different, but the PureMove bra was truly one-of-a-kind. It was super lightweight and wireless. There was no unnecessary padding. It was weightless and it even passed the “burpee nip slip” challenge (which is the real test if you ask me).

It has been 40 years since the first sports bra was created. And if you ask me, now, 40 years later, Reebok is changing the game with their invention of the PureMove Bra.

“Up until this point I think bra companies were just taking things off the shelves and combining them and saying that it was innovative,” says Witek. “That’s not innovative to me.”

“Innovation, to me, is reaching out to people in other industries, creating something new, collaborating with people and really shaking things up. I hope this discovery challenges the industry to wake up, try different things and drive innovation through women’s products.”

“Women deserve that.”

“Innovation, to me, is reaching out to people in other industries, creating something new, collaborating with people and really shaking things up.

Shop the PureMove Bra. This is a sponsored advertisement with Randi Vasquez.