Fuse Style and Performance with the Best Gym Clothes for Men

The days of it being acceptable to turn up to the gym in old, sweat-laden band t-shirts, baggy three-quarter length cargo shorts and tennis shoes are well and truly over. Gym clothes for men have moved on; we now live in an age of anti-sweat t-shirts and energy-recovering shorts, so you need to move on too.

But it's not just a style thing. Sure, athleisure is in and your good-for-nothing-else gym clothes are definitely out, but choosing the correct gym attire will have you performing, as well as just looking, better.

But where to start? There are so many options to choose from it can be difficult to sort gym wear from gym scare, and with relative new kids on the block like Gymshark and Lululemon competing with established brands like Nike and Adidas, it has become even harder to know what to go for.

To help you, we’ve compiled a list of the most up-to-date and science-backed gym clothes for men from the best men's gym wear brands around. Heed our advice and you'll look, feel and perform better for it. But if you're still not sure why you should care about the clothes you work out in, we've also included a few reasons why you should be judicious about your gym wardrobe.

If old bands t-shirts produced better gains then we’d be urging you to dust off yours. Unfortunately for you – and Led Zepp – the science doesn’t support that. Instead, labcoats believe that dressing for the task at hand is what will make you perform at your best.

Take this study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, that found 'clothes systematically influence wearers' psychological processes', or, in other words, the clothes we wear influence the way you feel. So if you want to lift a heavy barbell, make sure you're dressed for the job.

If you’re wearing cotton to the gym, the simple fact is you’re going to sweat and you’re going to retain heat and moisture, so wearing a lighter more breathable fabric is just common sense. This idea has been backed by science, where a study looking at how performance in the heat is affected by clothing concluded that clothes with lower water vapour resistance, so gym wear that doesn’t keep heat locked in, can significantly boost running speed.

You wouldn’t walk onto a building site wearing your favourite pair of brogues, nor would you feel comfortable stepping into a business meeting in your Adidas sliders because in every other facet of life, outside of the gym, we accept there’s footwear that is and isn’t appropriate.

The same is true of what you wear to the gym. A study on the effect weightlifting shoes have on how people squat, published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, suggested weightlifting shoes contribute to an optimal knee-flexed, upright posture during squatting when compared with generic athletic trainers. Put simply, if you’re aiming to lift heavy you should get your footwear right first.

Read more: The Best Weightlifting Shoes

You now know the importance of a good pair of weightlifting shoes, but occasionally you'll want to forgo the weights room for a run on the treadmill, or better yet outside, and for that you'll need to invest in a pair of running shoes.

For race days or speed sessions, a carbon-plated shoe like the Nike ZoomX Vaporfly 2 will supply more cushioning underfoot than your average trainer and reduce the weight up top, which results in unprecedented energy return and comfort. Worn by elite endurance athletes like Mo Farah and Eliud Kipchoge, these are the runners' running shoe. Now, we understand that these are pretty expensive. They're also best suited to speed work rather than longer efforts. If you're looking for more of an all-rounder at a more affordable price point and better suited to long runs, you can't go wrong with shoes like the New Balance Fresh Foam 1080 v12, Asics Gel-Nimbus 25, Hoka Clifton 9, or the On Cloudmonster.

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