Patent Application
20240130447
For decades, water sports garment design has evolved with respect to garment characteristics apart from stylishness. Great advancements have taken place in qualities such as thermal insulation, buoyancy, and flexibility of garments that are to be worn on or in water (e.g., surfing, swimming, or snorkeling). Similarly, land exercise garment design has improved with respect to characteristics like ability to reflect heat and to wick sweat.
With specific regard to the buoyancy qualities of certain watersports clothing, what is typically seen in the prior art are either: (a) garments fabricated entirely of buoyant material such that they, when worn in water, will moderately assist in urging wearers up toward the water's surface, but are not quite buoyant enough to be relied upon to function as life preservers (e.g., surfing wetsuits); or (b) garments that feature inflatable portions designed to keep wearers afloat in water too deep for them to stand in. What is generally not seen is a middle ground in that regard: garments featuring discrete buoyant sections spots that are strategically positioned, not to keep a wearer afloat, but rather to exert buoyant forces on isolated parts of a wearer‘s’ body to facilitate their performing certain water aerobic exercises.
Concerning land sport clothing, the construction and selection of materials used in those garments are matters of design choice in service of athletic performance, as those design choices bear on ability to regulate body temperature, freedom of body movement, and overall comfort. What is generally not seen in land exercise clothing, however, are garments designed to function, essentially, as exercise equipment by way of providing weighted resistance to various of the wearer's muscle groups.
Consequently, the present inventor recognizes a need for sports clothing that, itself, functions as exercise equipment. More specifically, in the swimming pool use context, the inventor has identified a need to create garments having buoyant [or non-buoyant, weighted] points along the sleeve, pant, or other sections that will urge certain sections of the wearer's body either up toward the pool water surface or down toward the pool bottom. And in the non-aquatic exercise context, the present inventor identifies a need for clothing to feature weighted areas that can provide resistance training for the wearer's muscles. Moreover, because the force needed to provide ideal buoyancy or weighted resistance may vary from person-to-person, the present inventor recognizes a need for the same garment to be adjustable in the magnitude of its buoyant or weighted areas. The present invention for an aerobic garment substantially fulfills these needs.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an exercise garment fashioned and constructed to facilitate either water aerobic exercise by way of having buoyant attachments or land exercise by way of having weighted attachments—in either case, with those attachments being strategically positioned about the garment in order to induce certain body movements and provide resistance to corresponding return movements.
In one aspect of the inventive garment, its fabric covers various parts of a wearer's anatomy (such as the torso and/or the arms and/or the hands and/or the waist area and/or the legs and/or the feet), and it features connecting elements by which the buoyant or weighted attachments are attached—typically, removably attached—to the garment fabric. In the case of a version of garment designed for water aerobics, the connecting elements are positioned and constructed such that the buoyant pieces can be attached at positions which will urge the water submerged limbs of the garment wearer up toward the water surface and require muscle exertion against those buoyant forces to return those limbs to their submerged positions. Similarly, in the case of a land aerobics version, weighted attachments increase the physical exertion required to motion any limb further from the ground.
Furthermore, in the is aspect of the invention, separate connecting elements can be discretely positioned, or a single connecting element can be configured to support alternative placement of one floating or weighted attachment at different points along the same limb so as to support different exercise motions. For example, the connecting element(s) could be configured to allow the same buoyant pad to, in one instance, be positioned along the front thigh (quadricep) to create forward pull on the water-submerged leg and, in another instance, be placed along the rear thing (hamstring) of that leg to create an opposing rearward pull.
Finally, in yet another aspect of the invention, the connecting elements can vary with respect to the type of fastener that they are, their binding force (which, in the case of some fastener types, may be a function of fastening surface area), and their positioning along the garment.
The present invention generally relates to exercise garments, and it is specifically directed to a garment configured to have muscle training elements removably attached to it—be those training elements buoyant attachments for aquatic use or weighted attachments. In the descriptions that follow and accompanying illustrations, the invention will be described in its preferred form as a two-piece aquatic garment that is anticipated to be worn while performing water aerobic exercises in a swimming pool. This preferred garment features an upper body piece that covers the torso and arms and a lower body piece that covers the waist and legs, and both pieces have buoyant pads attached to them. However, a variety of alternative embodiments of the garment are contemplated within the scope of the invention. Not only may those alternate embodiments differ with respect to their being adapted for non-aquatic use and employing non-buoyant, weighted attachments designed to place load on certain muscle groups, they can vary with respect to the specific body parts that they cover, the ways in which exercise attachment attach to the body covering(s), and in other respects.
For instance, another version of garment within the scope of the invention could be arm-covering sleeves or hand-covering gloves or a combination of both that host exercise attachments against the arms and/or hands. In another example, the garment could cover the lower body only—with or without a feet-covering bootees for mounting attachments at the feet. Or the garment could be in the form of a pair of leg sleeves that each cover portions of the upper and/or lower legs, but not the waist area. There is a wide range of possibilities in terms of what sections of the anatomy the present exercise garment covers.
Nevertheless, referring to the preferred embodiment depicted in
In this preferred embodiment designed for aquatic use, each exercise attachment 4 is a foam pad that is contoured for comfortable placement flush against a specific part of the anatomy. For instance,
When a user is standing in chest or neck high water, the positioning and buoyancy of the upper arm foam pad attachments 32 will urge her arms away from her torso and toward the water surface along what can be considered a fly exercise path, thus, requiring some degree of physical exertion against those buoyant forces to bring her arms down toward her torso along a return path. Similar phenomena—that is, buoyant pad-forced limb motions and muscle-driven countermotions that, together, constitute aerobic exercises—are created by each of the other pads at their respective limb positions. Furthermore, for a given exercise, a garment user would choose to wear one foam attachment 4 that urges an arm or leg to move in one direction (given the wearer's anatomy), but not wear another exercise attachment that would tend to pull the limb in the opposing direction. For example, one might elect to not wear a pad 4 over the calf 48 when wearing one over the shin 46, and vice versa.
As mentioned, the exercise attachments 4 are, preferably, foam pads. Within the scope of the invention, though, they can each be formed of any floating device that either is made of buoyant material or is an air-inflatable enclosure. Whatever their configuration, the attachments 4 features some mechanism for engaging connecting members 8 positioned along the body coverings 10, 40.
In a preferred embodiment, these connecting members 8 are strips of the loop portions of hook and loop fastener systems (i.e., VELCRO) which are either adhered or stitched to the garment fabric, and they engage with corresponding hook strips which are adhered to the inner surfaces of the foam pad attachments 4. The surface areas of these strips can vary in accordance with the corresponding foam pad's surface area and, thus, the detachment force that they will experience due to a pad's buoyancy. The larger the surface areas of the fastener strips 8, the more broadly distributed will be that detachment force over the engaged areas of male and female connecting strips 4. This can mitigate the possibility of foam pads 4 inadvertently detaching from the body coverings 10, 40 or even creating wearer discomfort caused by a high magnitude of buoyant force being concentrated on too small an area of the body. In addition, the body covering-mounted connector strips 4 may completely encircle an arm or leg, or at least be considerably longer than the pad-mounted strips to which they are engage, so as to enable a floating pad 4 to be attached at a wide range of discrete positions about that limb and, thereby, create resistance to different muscle groups based on the pad's exact positioning.
Although hook and loop fasteners may be preferred, it is certainly the case that entirely different fastening mechanisms can be utilized within the scope of the invention. For example, snap fasteners (e.g., press-buttons), various types of buckles, and other fasteners are contemplated as being employable.
This non-provisional application claims the benefit of provisional application No. 63/419,323 filed Oct. 25, 2022.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63419323 | Oct 2022 | US |
