In order to have a comfortable and successful workout on the mat, the right yoga top can have every bit as much of an impact on your practice as your yoga pants or shorts. Think about your flow and just how many poses make you twist, bend or even inverted (hello handstands!).
In order to keep yourself covered up top, the right style of upper body yoga clothing is an absolute must. A loose fitting t-shirt might feel great during warm up or savasana, but the moment you transition to downward dog, it could ride up fully exposing parts of your anatomy you’d rather keep covered. On the other end of the spectrum, you can’t stretch fully or move comfortably in a tank top or t-shirt that is too tight.
The right yoga top has to hit on all of the following points in order for you to get the best possible yoga practice on all fronts:
Quality
Your mind might be calm as you smoothly transition from pose to pose, but the poses you are getting into can cause serious stress on your yoga clothes. Lesser quality gear will show wear or even begin to come apart at the seams after just a few intense yoga workouts.
If you want you body covered in all the right places, your biggest consideration should be on quality constructed yoga tops and pants. Brands like Teeki, NUX, Glyder and Onzie have a long standing reputation of crafting quality tops that are built to stand up to the rigors of a tough yoga workout. If you are in the market for expanding your yoga wardrobe with tops that are built to last, these are the ideal brands to fill your closet with.
Flexibility
In order to have a great yoga practice, you need to find the right mix of rugged and flexible when it comes to your yoga tops and bras. Certain fabrics are designed to give you breathability, such as four-way stretch fabrics. Yoga requires freedom of movement and freedom of breath, which means that your tops can’t be constricting.
A t-shirt may work fine for a traditional gym workout or spin class, but for a power yoga class, you’ll need something designed to move with you. You’ll need a top that fits snug to your body so there is minimal ride up (and no accidental exposure) during inversions but that also allows for complete freedom of movement along a full range of motion during the most challenging poses.
Style
Quality yoga tops are designed to perform on the mat, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek out yoga gear with versatility. We all know that a great pair of yoga pants can go straight from the gym to the office, to lunch or even out for a night on the town with the right accessories, but few realize that the right yoga top is capable of the very same thing.
Top brands like Jala and Free People are loaded with cool and super cute options that can not only perform on the mat, but also make you a fashion standout outside of the gym. In fact, performing a morning Vinyasa isn’t even a necessity for rocking these tops - you can easily make the right yoga top a staple in your wardrobe for days and nights where there is no workout at all.
There are plenty of yoga clothing manufacturers out there that hit successfully on all of the notes above. Take a quick scroll through our brands section to find the looks that fit well in your personal style, we’ve got the highest quality yoga tops and pants from top manufacturers so you can get the perfect gear delivered right to your door.
