For decades, women athletes have been forced to adapt to sports apparel designed primarily for men or created with minimal consideration for female physiology. The stories of elite athletes like Allyson Felix, Alysia Montaño, Kara Goucher, and Meg Mackenzie highlight this systemic neglect. Today, Pulze is changing the game by creating athletic wear specifically engineered for women's bodies and unique needs.
The Legacy of Overlooked Female Athletes
When the most decorated track and field athlete and Olympic champion Allyson Felix was pregnant in 2018, Nike proposed cutting her pay by 70%. This wasn't just a financial blow—it represented how the industry viewed female athletes who chose motherhood. Felix's experience led her to discover something even more fundamental: the running shoes she competed in were essentially designed for men's feet and simply scaled down for women, ignoring key anatomical differences.
This revelation inspired Felix to launch Saysh, her own footwear company creating shoes specifically engineered for women's feet. But this was just one example of a much larger problem. Not only are female feet different than males, but their entire bodies are shaped differently, perform differently, and have different bodily functions.
Distance runner Kara Goucher was pressured to return to training just days after giving birth. Alysia Montaño famously competed while eight months pregnant, later revealing she had lost sponsorship support during her pregnancy. Trail runner Meg Mackenzie has spoken openly about the challenges of managing menstruation during ultramarathons with gear that simply wasn't designed for women's bodies.
The Gap in the Market
Despite women making up nearly half of all athletes, the design of athletic wear has historically failed to address their specific physiological needs. Until now, no company has truly committed to comprehensively customizing athletic wear to fit women's bodies and accommodate their unique requirements throughout different life stages.
Enter Pulze: A Revolution in Women's Athletic Wear
Pulze is pioneering a new approach with athletic clothing engineered specifically for women. Their innovative designs integrate solutions for challenges that have long been ignored by mainstream brands:
- Integrated period and incontinence protection: Many athletes avoid wearing underwear during competition as it can restrict movement and impact performance but this poses a problem with leaks from menstruation, incontinence, and discharge that women frequently experience. Pulze's designs incorporate discreet, high-performance period/incontinence liners directly into their athletic wear, eliminating the need for separate solutions.
- Anatomically correct support: Pulze sports bras directly integrated into shirts provide proper support without sacrificing comfort requiring additional clothing, addressing one of the most common complaints among female athletes.
- Life-stage adaptability: Pulze recognizes that women's bodies change dramatically throughout life. Their mission is to create designs to accommodate menstruation, pregnancy, postpartum recovery, menopause, and aging with thoughtful features that adjust to changing bodies.
- Youth-focused solutions: Even the youngest female athletes will be considered, with designs addressing incontinence issues that can affect girls participating in high-impact sports.
- Religious and cultural considerations: In the future, Pulze will include designs that would allow all women from different cultures and requirements to be able to participate in sports and activities.
Beyond Performance: Dignity and Inclusion
What sets Pulze apart isn't just technical innovation—it's their philosophy that women shouldn't have to choose between performance and dignity. By creating athletic wear that acknowledges and addresses real physiological needs, they're empowering women to participate and conquer in sports without compromise.
For too long, women have been forced to adapt to athletic wear that wasn't designed for them. Pulze is flipping the script by creating products that adapt to women instead.
As the stories of champions like Felix, Montaño, Goucher, and Mackenzie demonstrate, even elite female athletes have been underserved by an industry that should be supporting them. Pulze's approach represents more than just new products—it's a movement toward genuine inclusivity in sports apparel.
The revolution in women's athletic wear is long overdue. With Pulze leading the charge, female athletes at every level can finally look forward to gear that truly understands their bodies and needs. As their motto aptly states: Let no body stop you.