X-Bionic The Trick Biking Shirt

X-Bionic want to make you sweat, sweat till you can't sweat no more. They reckon the goal, much like in the song, is to allow you to push it some more. The Trick Biking Shirt is chock-full of technological innovations designed to help you perform at your peak. It looks and feels pretty unusual, being woven in various intricate patterns, each of which is designed to perform a specific function.

UK readers might not be that familiar with X-Bionic, but the Swiss/Italian brand is well-established in Continental Europe and further afield. This year they have their eye on a move into the UK market with a particular focus on select bricks and mortar retailers. The company was founded by 'world champion innovator and designer in chief' Professor Bodo W. Lambertz and X-Bionic gear is developed in Switzerland and made in their own factory in the north of Italy.

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They're rather fond of a patent or two at X-Bionic, not to mention a trademark, and The Trick® is a technology developed to improve the body's ability to regulate its temperature when exercising. In short, it consists of a zone of thicker woven material which insulates the zone along the spine. Warming this zone can apparently fool the whole body into starting to produce sweat earlier than it would otherwise. The evaporation of this sweat then helps you maintain an optimal temperature, whereas otherwise you only sweat once you're already starting to overheat.

That's the claim anyway, and The Trick features in this jersey as well as the matching shorts and gilet that we've also been testing. So does it work? Well yes, I think it does, to an extent.

Modern cycling gear (or at least the marketing that accompanies it) tends to treat sweat as an evil, something you want to avoid and that needs to be transported away from the skin as quickly as possible. X-Bionic's Big Idea is that sweat is actually an essential part of the body's systems and that by stimulating it and moving it around you can use it as a tool to help keep you running at the right temperature.

The Trick is just one of the technologies used here, though, so let's take a look at some of the others. Front and back of the chest you've got the impressive-sounding 3D-BionicSphere® system, another complex woven arrangement of fibres designed to promote the cooling of the skin in key areas without the body sensing it. No, I'm not sure quite how that works either.

Here's what X-Bionic have to say about it: "The air is tempered inside the ducts, working like a sluice. Hot, moist air is disposed of using the dynamics of body warmth and then replaced with new fresh air. No draughts, but perfect ventilation."

SweatTraps® (yes, they really have registered all of these names) are the areas under the armpits, with yet another type of weave, this time designed to catch the sweat before too much builds up The sweat is then transported away from your armpits by (wait for it) the Evaporation Surface Expander™.

X-Bionic list other technologies present on this jersey, including 'Pockets' and 'ReflectorStripes', but really the interesting parts are those concerned with the management of sweat. To test them out, I used this jersey on a humid club run in Shanghai when the temperature was in the 30s. The large size was a good, close fit on me, and there was no unwelcome flapping. The fabric doesn't sit as smoothly as jerseys where aerodynamics are the primary focus, particularly in the key area around the neck, but it's very stretchy and so should work for a variety of body shapes.

I didn't end up dripping in sweat; X-Bionic say the idea is that an imperceptibly thin film is enough for The Trick to work. What I noticed on this and every other hot ride in this jersey was that I needed to drink more fluids than I expected, suggesting I was indeed producing more sweat. So the concept of fooling your body into sweating earlier appears to work.

X-Bionic say their tests show that keeping your body cooler like this allows you to perform better. I didn't really have the means to measure any such marginal gains, so I can neither prove nor disprove the claims, but it sounds plausible, even if the gains are likely to be small.

If you're heading out for a hot day in the mountains, you've really got to buy in to these claims to pick this out of your kit drawer. The fabric is 50 per cent heavier than that used in lightweight climbers' jerseys like those from Castelli and Rapha, and lacks the same hyper-breathability. Performance-enhancing or not, I'd pick the airy comfort of a thin, open-mesh material over the knitted fabric used here; I think it just feels nicer, and if you've got a long day in the saddle, that counts for something.

All that techy knitting makes for quite an unusual-looking jersey, too, especially to the rear. If you're not a fan of orange, it's also available in royal blue, black or white. The matching bib shorts (review coming soon) are also a fairly garish mix of black and orange.

It also makes for a very Velcro-phobic jersey – I found even fingernails tended to snag the threads on the inside. You'll want to keep your gloves well away from it.

At the rear are the standard three pockets, with the central one slightly larger than those either side. They hold the usual stuff I want to take with me on a ride, though the inherent stretch in the fabric means they can sag a bit if you load them too heavily. There's a strip of what looks like 3M Scotchlite reflective material sewn underneath the central pocket which I like – a discreet but effective aid to night-time visibility. The zip at the front is a full-length YKK affair with a custom X-Bionic pull.

So in summary, The Trick Biking Shirt does seem to result in increased production of sweat, which is managed such that it doesn't leave you a soggy mess. The most obvious consequence of this is that you need to drink more, but – if X-Bionic are to be believed – it can also help you ride further and faster. You'll pay handsomely for the privilege; £140 is top dollar for a summer jersey, although that only puts it mid-range for X-Bionic – the prices of their Lamborghini collaboration frankly defy belief.

Whether the enhanced production and distribution of sweat is really the primary thing you'll be looking for in your new jersey is a question I can't answer for you. Personally, I'd rank comfort, styling and aerodynamics higher in a performance jersey, and for this sort of money there are some pretty compelling alternatives that excel in those areas.

Verdict

Manages your sweat like no other jersey, but is that really the main thing you look for in a jersey?