A Personal Problem Becomes a Scientific Mission
The story of breast biomechanics as a legitimate scientific discipline begins not in a laboratory but in a doctor's office. Two decades ago, Joanna Wakefield-Scurr, then an early-career academic in biomechanics, visited her physician with a complaint of persistent breast pain. The doctor could not identify the cause but offered a suggestion that would inadvertently change the course of her career: wear a good, supportive bra.
As a professor trained in the mechanics of human movement, Wakefield-Scurr did what came naturally. She went looking for scientific research that could guide her purchase. She expected to find a body of literature analyzing breast support, comparing designs, and quantifying the forces involved. Instead, she found virtually nothing. The biomechanics of the breast, an organ possessed by half the world's population and one that moves with every step, had been almost entirely ignored by the scientific community.
In 2005, Wakefield-Scurr established the Research Group in Breast Health at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. What began as an effort to answer a personal question has grown into the world's leading center for breast biomechanics research, employing eighteen researchers and collaborating with every major sports apparel and lingerie brand on the planet.
Discovering the Figure-of-Eight
One of the research group's earliest and most influential discoveries was the characterization of how breasts actually move during physical activity. Prior to Wakefield-Scurr's work, the prevailing assumption, shared by both the public and the sports apparel industry, was that breasts moved primarily up and down during running and other high-impact activities. Bra design reflected this assumption, with most sports bras focused on vertical compression.
Using three-dimensional motion capture technology, the kind typically used to analyze the movements of athletes or create visual effects in films, Wakefield-Scurr's team made a surprising discovery. Breasts do not simply bounce vertically. They trace a complex figure-of-eight pattern, moving simultaneously up and down, side to side, and forward and backward. This three-dimensional movement means that any bra designed solely to limit vertical motion is addressing only one-third of the problem.
The finding fundamentally changed how the sports apparel industry approaches bra design. Rather than simple compression, effective breast support requires controlling motion in all three planes of movement simultaneously. This insight drove the development of a new generation of sports bras that use structured cups, underwires, adjustable straps, and engineered materials to address the full complexity of breast motion.
Quantifying What Works
Understanding how breasts move was only the first step. The research group then set about systematically evaluating which design features actually reduce movement during physical activity. This required building something that had never existed: a standardized testing protocol for sports bra performance.
In 2014, Wakefield-Scurr established the Bra Testing Unit at the University of Portsmouth, a facility where sports bras could be evaluated under controlled conditions using the same scientific rigor applied to any other piece of athletic equipment. The protocol involves recruiting appropriately sized volunteers who run on treadmills while wearing different bras, with three-dimensional motion capture systems recording the resulting breast movement.
The scale of the testing is remarkable. To date, the unit has worked with over 3,600 volunteers testing more than 300 different bras. The data has allowed the team to identify the design features that matter most. Their research shows that the most effective high-impact sports bras incorporate underwires, padded cups, adjustable underbands, adjustable shoulder straps, and hook-and-eye closures. When optimally combined, these features reduce breast movement by up to seventy-four percent compared with wearing no bra at all.
The Bra Testing Unit has become self-sustaining, selling testing packages to companies worldwide. To date, forty-eight packages have been sold to twenty-five companies ranging from startups to global brands, generating income that supports ongoing research while simultaneously improving the products available to consumers.
From the Lab to the Lionesses
The practical impact of Wakefield-Scurr's research extends far beyond the laboratory. Her findings have been applied in contexts ranging from military training to elite athletics to public health education, demonstrating the breadth of a field that did not exist two decades ago.
In elite sport, the research group worked with the England women's football team, the Lionesses, to optimize their sports bras in the lead-up to their European Championship victory. Each player received a bra customized based on biomechanical analysis of their individual movement patterns, breast size, and playing position. The team also developed bespoke bras for Olympic athletes, where even marginal performance improvements can mean the difference between medals.
In the military, the research has helped female recruits select appropriate sports bras for the physical demands of basic training. Studies found that breast pain and inadequate support were significant factors in training injuries and dropout rates among female recruits, a problem that could be addressed through better education and equipment selection rather than changes to the training itself.
Within the National Health Service, Wakefield-Scurr's findings have informed the understanding and treatment of breast pain, a condition that affects a large proportion of women but had previously been poorly understood from a biomechanical perspective. By providing evidence-based guidance on breast support, the research has given clinicians tools to address a common complaint that was often dismissed or inadequately treated.
Educating the Next Generation
In 2014, Wakefield-Scurr and her colleagues established Treasure Your Chest, a charitable initiative that provides free educational resources to schoolgirls about breast development and bra fitting. The program addresses a gap in health education that the researchers identified through their work: many young women go through puberty with little or no accurate information about breast development, leading to poorly fitted bras, unnecessary anxiety, and in some cases avoidance of physical activity due to discomfort or embarrassment.
The initiative reflects a broader conviction that drives Wakefield-Scurr's work. Breast health is not merely a medical issue. It is a biomechanical, educational, and social issue that affects women's participation in physical activity, their comfort in daily life, and their long-term health outcomes. By approaching it as a serious scientific discipline rather than a niche or taboo topic, the research group has demonstrated that rigorous science can be applied to problems that mainstream academia overlooked for decades.
A Field That Barely Existed Now Employs Dozens
The trajectory of breast biomechanics as a discipline offers lessons about how scientific fields are born. Twenty years ago, there was essentially no published research on the biomechanics of breast movement during exercise. Today, the Research Group in Breast Health at Portsmouth has generated millions of pounds in collaborative funding, published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, presented at national and international conferences, and attracted media coverage across television, radio, and print.
Wakefield-Scurr now leads an eighteen-person team that includes biomechanists, physiologists, material scientists, and research assistants. The group's work has spawned collaborations across the globe and influenced product development at virtually every major brand in the sports apparel and lingerie industries. What began as one woman's frustration in a doctor's office has become a thriving scientific enterprise with tangible impacts on millions of lives.
The Future of the Field
Looking forward, the research group is exploring several frontiers. These include the biomechanics of breast movement during pregnancy and breastfeeding, the development of adaptive bras for women with disabilities, the impact of breast surgery on movement and support needs, and the use of computational modeling to predict breast movement without requiring in-person testing.
Each of these directions addresses a population whose needs have been underserved by both the scientific community and the apparel industry. The pattern is consistent with the field's origins: identifying a problem that affects enormous numbers of people, discovering that almost no scientific evidence exists to address it, and then building the research infrastructure to fill the gap.
Breast biomechanics may have an unusual name, but its impact is thoroughly mainstream. It stands as a compelling example of how personal experience, scientific rigor, and entrepreneurial drive can combine to create an entirely new field of human knowledge, one that improves the daily lives of millions of women worldwide.
This article is based on reporting by MIT Technology Review. Read the original article.
