The sports bra was invented in 1977, in Burlington, Vermont, by three women: runner Lisa Lindahl and costume designers Polly Smith and Hinda Miller. As Smithsonian Magazine tells it, the first prototype was sewn from two men’s jockstraps, after Lindahl’s husband jokingly pulled one over his chest. The history of the sports bra starts there, with a garment the sporting goods industry had never thought to make, built by women it had never thought to ask.
That lateness is the story: women ran, jumped and competed for decades before anyone designed support for the moving breast. What follows is how it caught up: a federal law, an aerobics boom, a World Cup photograph, and a university laboratory that turned support into a measurement.
The history of the sports bra at a glance
| Year | Milestone | Why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| Before 1972 | No sports bra exists; women exercise in everyday bras, often a size too small | Support was an improvisation, not a product |
| 1972 | Title IX is signed on June 23 | School and college sport opens to girls at scale, and a mass market for women’s athletic gear becomes possible |
| 1977 | Lindahl, Smith and Miller sew the first Jogbra prototype in Vermont | The sports bra becomes a designed product with a name |
| 1979 | The inventors receive US Patent 4,174,717 for an athletic brassiere | The design is protected, and the young company can sell and license it |
| 1982 | Jane Fonda’s Workout video is released | Aerobics makes structured exercise a mainstream habit for women |
| 1984 | Joan Benoit wins the first women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles | Women’s endurance sport is undeniable at the highest level |
| 1990 | Playtex Apparel buys the Jogbra company | The sports bra is now big brand business |
| 1999 | Brandi Chastain celebrates the World Cup win in her sports bra | The garment becomes visible outerwear and a cultural symbol |
| 2005 | The Research Group in Breast Health is founded at the University of Portsmouth | Breast support becomes something measured in a lab, not guessed at in a design studio |
| 2020 | Lindahl, Miller and Smith are inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame | The sports bra is formally recognized as an invention |
Before 1977: support was an improvisation
What did women run in before the sports bra? Whatever was already in the drawer. Lindahl’s own pre-Jogbra method, described in the NPR history of the garment, was an ordinary bra bought one size too small for compression, until the straps stretched out. Others doubled up two bras, or wore none. Smithsonian Magazine notes that bra advertising in 1977 shows almost no construction for stopping movement. The improvisation outlived 1977, too: the same piece opens with a young soccer player who wore two sports bras at once in high school.
1972: Title IX builds the demand
Five years before the Jogbra, the demand for it was created by law. Title IX, signed on June 23, 1972, barred sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, and school athletics showed its effect first. In the 1971 to 1972 school year, 294,015 girls played US high school sports; by 2010 to 2011 the figure was 3.2 million, according to National Federation of State High School Associations figures reported by Education Week.
Millions of new athletes meant millions of bodies moving in ways everyday bras were never built for, and the Jogbra’s inventors were among them, solving their own problem. But the law is why their solution found a nation of customers instead of a drawer of fellow sufferers.
1977: two jockstraps and a costume shop
The inventors kept their records, now held by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Lindahl, frustrated by sore breasts after running, asked her sister why there was no jockstrap for women. Her husband acted out the joke with his own jockstrap, and the three women saw the engineering at once: pouch becomes cup, waistband becomes underband, leg straps become shoulder straps.
Smith and Miller, costume designers at the University of Vermont, sewed the prototype with all seams on the outside to prevent chafing. Miller test ran behind Lindahl, running backwards, to watch whether the movement had stopped. It had not. As Miller later put it to Smithsonian Magazine: you cannot stop breasts from moving, only pull them closer to the body and minimize it. Every support claim made since is a footnote to that sentence.
They called it the Jockbra, then the Jogbra. Buyers were, in Lindahl’s word, squeamish about stocking bras, but the first run sold through running stores, the company was profitable in its first year, and the patent followed in 1979.
The 1980s and 1990s: aerobics, outerwear and one famous jersey
The next decade made exercise itself mainstream. Jane Fonda’s Workout, released on video in April 1982, became the first non-theatrical video to top the sales charts, and her tapes went on to sell more than 17 million copies, as Parade records. Aerobics classes filled, and workout clothing became an industry. Two years later, Joan Benoit won the first women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 2 hours, 24 minutes, 52 seconds, as the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum records.
Playtex bought the Jogbra company in 1990, and the brand later sat inside Champion sportswear, per the Smithsonian Magazine account. Then came the photograph. On July 10, 1999, in a sold out Rose Bowl, Brandi Chastain scored the winning penalty in the World Cup final and celebrated in a black sports bra, in front of 18 million television viewers, as ESPN records. Mike May of the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association told USA Today at the time: “She made it OK for women to wear sports bras without anything else on top.” The sports bra as outerwear, worn on its own in public, dates from that kick.
The research era: support becomes a measurement
For its first quarter century, the sports bra was designed by feel, until universities started measuring. The University of Portsmouth founded its Research Group in Breast Health in 2005 and later opened the world’s first sports bra test facility. In the facility’s first decade, its researchers tested more than 700 sports bras on more than 8,000 women.
The findings rewired design. Unsupported, a breast can move up to 15 centimetres during running, in three directions, not just up and down, as Portsmouth’s motion capture work showed and Science 2.0 reported. A bra that only squeezes downward misses two thirds of the problem. That is the research case for encapsulation, cups supporting each breast separately, and for today’s hybrid running bras. It is also why bra parts work as a system; our guide to the parts of a sports bra takes it apart.
The modern era: engineered, sized and independently made
Today’s category would be unrecognizable in the 1977 costume shop. Specialist brands build running bras in band and cup sizes to GG and H cups, as retailer Fleet Feet notes in its history of the garment. Independent labels now sit alongside the big names, and the choice has widened to the structured menu in our guide to the types of bras. In 2020, the circle closed: Lindahl, Miller and Smith were inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, their prototype preserved at the Smithsonian.
Two modern descendants show where the main threads have arrived. Both were checked against manufacturer specs and their Amazon US listings; neither was wear tested by us.
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The compression thread, carried by the brand that absorbed Jogbra: Champion Absolute Sports Bra (B9504)
The original Jogbra was a pull on compression bra whose brand ended up inside Champion. The Absolute is that same architecture in modern fabric: a wire free, pull on racerback that Champion’s Amazon listing rates for moderate support, with a SmoothTec underband and an 89% polyester, 11% spandex knit. Climb in, no hooks, compression does the work: this is the direct descendant of 1977.
The honest ceiling is the same one Miller named in 1977. Compression minimizes movement; it does not isolate it, and at larger cup sizes it is a gym and cycling bra, not a marathon bra. Read the listing’s “high-impact” title language against its own moderate support field.
Pros
- Pull on compression with no hardware to dig, chafe or fail
- Moderate support rating stated plainly in the listing
- Machine washable, unlike many structured bras
Cons
- Alpha sizing; no band and cup precision for fuller busts
- Moderate support is a hard ceiling: not a running bra above smaller cup sizes
- Pull on styling will not suit limited shoulder mobility
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Support | Moderate support, medium impact (manufacturer listing) |
| Size range | Alpha sizes (Amazon listing; confirm the current size options in the listing chart) |
| Closure | Pull on |
| Construction | Compression, wire free racerback, SmoothTec band, 89% polyester and 11% spandex |
| Adjustability | None |
The molded cup thread: Baleaf Sweatleaf Adjustable Sports Bra
The research era added a second idea to compression: shape the cup itself. The Sweatleaf is the budget end of that thread, a wire free bra with molded cups and adjustable straps, in a 69% nylon, 31% spandex knit, per its Amazon listing. Molded cups give each breast its own space instead of one compressed shelf, the everyday version of the encapsulation the labs validated.
Keep the ceiling honest, because the listing does not. It carries a high impact label while its own sport type fields say walking and yoga. Treat this as a comfortable molded bra for low to medium impact days. Treat it as a running bra and the oldest lesson in this history applies: labels are not measurements.
Pros
- Molded cups separate rather than simply compress
- Adjustable straps, which the 1977 original did not have
- Soft nylon rich knit with no wire and no closure hardware
Cons
- The listing’s high impact label is contradicted by its own walking and yoga sport fields
- Narrow straps cap how much the adjustment can add
- Alpha sizing again; no band and cup precision
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Support | Listed as high impact; honest read from the listing’s own fields: low to medium impact |
| Size range | Alpha sizes (Amazon listing; confirm the current size options in the listing chart) |
| Closure | Pull on |
| Construction | Molded padded cups, wire free, 69% nylon and 31% spandex |
| Adjustability | Adjustable straps |
What history says about where the category still lags
Across fifty years, the category improves after the women it underserves organize, run anyway, or get measured. Two gaps remain open. First, the research base is still thinner at larger cup sizes, the gap Portsmouth’s program exists to close, and the university reports that more than half of women experience breast pain during exercise, so the core problem the Jogbra addressed is not solved. Second, engineering still thins out as cups grow. The specialist GG and H cup ranges exist, but they are the exception sold by a handful of brands, not the standard; our guide to exercising with a larger bust covers the evidence today. Alpha sizing is the quieter lag: the 1977 original came in small, medium and large, and much of the market still stops there.
Common questions
When was the first sports bra invented, and by whom?
In 1977, by Lisa Lindahl, Polly Smith and Hinda Miller in Burlington, Vermont. Their company sold the first commercial version, and US Patent 4,174,717 followed in 1979.
Was the first sports bra really made from jockstraps?
Yes, the prototype was. In the inventors’ telling, preserved by the Smithsonian, Smith sewed two men’s jockstraps together after Lindahl’s husband jokingly wore one across his chest. The production bra used purpose bought fabrics.
Did women not exercise before 1977?
They exercised in growing numbers, in everyday bras, doubled bras or nothing purpose built. The Jogbra did not start women’s sport; it removed one of its most literal pain points.
The bottom line
The history of the sports bra is a fifty year argument that support is equipment. It took a law to create the athletes, three outsiders to build the first bra, a World Cup photograph to make it visible, and a biomechanics lab to make it measurable. The gaps that remain, larger cup engineering and research at every size, are the same gaps the inventors started with. Our best sports bras guide sorts the current field by job, with every size ceiling in print.
