review: Zensah compression shorts. sort of long.
I recently had to throw out an old pair of compression shorts. I was shopping my way through the web when I found Zensah. It was a company I'd never heard of, so I did a search on some other forums and saw some good things about them, and decided to try the shorts.
First of all, in women's they only come in S/M and L/XL. I'm at the top end of the small, so that's what I bought. They fit just fine. The material is very soft. While it is compressing, I didn't feel like I was wearing a girdle. The shorts were longer than I expected: almost down to my knees. There isn't any "gripper" stuff at the knees. Instead, it's held down by the same fabric with some ribbing to make it hold a little tighter. That seemed to work very well.
That same ribbing is also in the front of the bikini area. Since the rest of the short is smooth (except for the band at the bottom of the legs), when I first put them on I sort of felt like I had a superhero costume on between the outlined "panty" area and the insignia on the waist. The only seam runs up the inside of the legs. It's flatlocked, so I didn't notice it rubbing on my 5 mile run.
Overall, they were very comfy when I put them on. When I began to run, though, I had a bit of a problem. The shorts crawled up. I spent the first mile of the run extracting them from my private parts. After about a mile, they stopped crawling. I don't know if it was because the shorts stretched out a bit or because they were starting to get wet from my sweat. Either way, they were much more comfortable. I never chafed during the run. I didn't feel soggy at the end, either.
I'll wear these shorts on the treadmill at home or under some other shorts outside. They were comfortable after a while and they worked, but I would feel a little strange with the superhero look and the cameltoes out in public.
Here's the website: www.zensah.com, and for the shorts: http://www.zensah.com/9200.html
