Since our inception, Limitless has focussed on encouraging participation for all at school. In 2021, we collaborated with Youth Sport Trust on a piece of research specific to the independent sector, which showed a clear drop in participation for girls during puberty. For the last two years, we have run our own research, to ascertain what we can do as a sportswear provider to schools, and to ensure that sports kit is not a barrier to participating in and enjoying sport.

Together with leading women’s health experts, The Well HQ, we looked at data from our 2025 survey that might be useful to us as a sportswear designer, and to schools as a learning point. We asked girls to classify themselves as ‘sporty’ or ‘un-sporty’ to see how this affected their answers. One of the most striking outcomes was that periods continue to be the number one barrier for both groups of girls, followed by body image concerns. It’s no surprise that girls want to feel comfortable and look good whilst playing sports and Limitless is pleased to already include sports period pants in our online school shop, to offer a solution here. We continue to look at other options to reduce the worry of leaks and the lack of comfort that many girls experience.

There was also an interesting result when asking which bottom halves girls prefer to wear, with a split between ‘sporty’ and ‘un-sporty’ girls: 41% of ‘sporty girls’ still prefer a skort, where 44% of ‘un-sporty’ girls prefer a trackpant option. Shorts were amongst the least popular garments for both groups.  It’s clear that choice here is vital to making girls feel included and comfortable. When asked about kit flexibility, 65% of girls agreed that bottom-half kit should be about comfort, not uniformity and around half of all girls felt that sports kit shouldn’t just be a top and shorts for all sports. “Don’t make everyone wear the same kit, as we all have different bodies with different items of clothing working better for others” was just one of the comments from the survey that stood out.

Sports bras were also included in the survey, with still only 39% of girls always wearing a sports bra for school sports. Girls raised the colour of the bra beneath a white school shirt still being a concern for many. Limitless offers both the light grey Limitless Bra and the ice-blue PEBE bras in our online shop, offering choice and ensuring grin-through isn’t an issue.

At Limitless, we aim to ensure all our sportswear is inclusive and offers pupils a choice which allows the school to present a coherent sports uniform, rich in the school’s identity, but that still encourages and values participation across all levels of sport. We are proud to recently pledge to the Inclusive Sportswear Charter, working to create more inclusive sport and PE kit policies for schools, clubs, sport organisations and brands. The free Inclusive Sportswear Community Platform is now open for schools to join the pledge, access expert guidance and create inclusive PE kit policies. You can find out more about this at https://www.inclusivesportswear.com/our-charter.

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