In this T8 Commando Underwear review, you’ll read about who it’s for, what it feels like to wear and how it holds up in Ultra races and normal day-to-day running.
What is the T8 Commando Underwear?
The T8 Commando are tight fighting, lightweight running underwear / running undershorts. They weigh almost nothing, and aim to prevent skin chafing and also allow you to turn any normal pair of shorts into running shorts by wearing the T8 Commando underneath. It protects runners from being rubbed in between the thighs and in the crotch area.
Who is the T8 Commando Underwear for?
The T8 Commando Underwear are aimed at runners who are at risk of getting chafed in the shorts area. This includes anyone running long enough, so for example marathon runners or ultrarunners. It’s also aimed at runners who are running in hot climes, where the increased sweat increases their risk of chafing.
How are they made?
The T8 Commando Underwear are made of polyamide and elastane, so they are very stretchy and feel a little like silk tights, but durable and easily washable.
Any seams are stitched so the fat bit of the seam is on the outside – the inside near the skin has nothing to rub on.
Based on rave reviews in ultrarunning Facebook groups, I bought the male gender version with the 6″ inseam (female version has 5″ inseam). They arrived from Hong Kong in about 7 days and the price seemed reasonable. The athletes that created the brand are from Hong Kong and they needed something that copes with the high humidity and heat there.
The website claims “No chafing or your money back”, which is bold! I had a couple of ultras coming up, so was going to test out that claim for sure.
Material
The material is super thin, and lightweight. If you hold it up to the light, you can almost see through it:
If you haven’t tried anything like this before, it feels very different the first time you put it on. If your genitals are on the outside, it also holds your junk in place really well. My normal experience with shorts in the past had been with shorts with a liner to hold you in place, but they always ended up chafing somewhere, and with 2-in-1 shorts where an inner compression short is attached to the outer short. The inner compression short is normally quite thick material.
Performance in reality
I tried these in a few runs before racing in them. I enjoyed using them underneath various other running shorts, but also under items that would normally be totally unsuitable for running like Hawaiian surf shorts during normal running and also canicross where you have a hip belt with loops between the legs.
Because they are so thin, they can’t hold much sweat, so even in hot weather they stayed comfortable.
I didn’t experience any chafing during my training runs, so I decided to give them a shot during a couple of races: A 50KM hill trail run, through rivers of mud and then a 50M hill trail ultra in hotter weather. I also decided to test them to the limit by not applying any Body Glide, which I’d previously relied on in long races.
The first race was 6hrs in a fairly cold Winter and I was totally comfortable in all the areas the shorts protected, so a massive zero-chafe win!
The second race was 10hrs and a much warmer, sunny late-Spring, in which I got sunburned on one side of my body (because the race ran East along the coast with no change of direction). Again, zero chafe. Therefore I totally recommend the T8 Commando Underwear reviewed here.
If you like the sound of these undershorts, give them a go. I have no affiliation with T8 and based this review purely on my own experiences with a brand that was unknown to me up until now.
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