Whatever Happened to Jockstraps? (2024)

Remember jockstraps?

Or more specifically, remember when guys used to wear jockstraps?

I vividly remember grim warnings from my high school gym teachers, who lectured us on exactly what would happen if we didn’t wear them.

Best case scenario, we’d never be able to have children. We’d twist the wrong way, and that’s it, our reproductive organs would be mangled beyond repair.

And that was if we were lucky. Worse case, we’d suffer testicular trauma. There’d be ruptures, fractures, contusions, torsions; there was no end to the horrible things that could happen to our nuts during a friendly game of pickleball.

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But I haven’t put on a jockstrap since sentences like “I’m worried about tomorrow’s algebra test” and “I sincerely think that dry-humping my girlfriend during a slow dance at prom sounds like a meaningful relationship milestone” were things I thought about regularly.

That is, until a public relations rep for Diamond MMA compression jock and cup system—availablefor just $90—sent me a complimentary set a few weeks ago.

Here’s what they look like:

If your first thought was, “Hey, isn’t that the same cup Dairy Queen uses for their Banana Splits?”, then we are totally on the same page.

At first, I left it on my desk, like a sort of perverse tip jar. I even briefly used it as a makeshift container for pens and Post-It notes.

Then I decided to strap it on for the Men’s Health Monday morning editorial meeting.

There’s something weirdly exhilarating about going to work wearing the kind of testicular protection usually reserved for MMA athletes.

Because when your balls are that ensconced, you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the day won’t end with you being rushed to the emergency room with internal scrotal bleeding.

Of course, you could say that about most days—especially if your job, like mine, involves long periods of typing on a computer, or having conversations with calm, entirely nonviolent people who are unlikely to judo chop you in the nuts without warning.

But there I was, all but daring my fellow editors—with nothing more than a smug smile—to thrust their elbows into my gonads, or grind the business end of their shoes into my giggleberries.

Not surprisingly, there were no takers.

Afterward, I got to talking with some my male coworkers about balls—hey, these topics just come up—and what, if anything, we’re doing to protect them. I learned that not a single one of them wears jockstraps anymore.

Not just around the office. Even at the gym. Or wherever they work out. They’re essentially free-balling it.

Jay Ferrari, a regular MH contributor who has a black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu, says the last time he wore a jockstrap “was for pee wee football. But a jockstrap during college football or jiu jitsu? Never.”

So why not? Why were jockstraps necessary in our youth, but not so much in 2015?

When our high school gym coaches warned us of the testicular Armageddon that could result from letting our boys dangle unprotected, were they full of sh*t?

“Probably,” says Brian Steixner, M.D., Director of the Institute of Men’s Health at Jersey Urology Group in Atlantic City.

Dr. Steixner has treated some truly horrifying, gory penis injuries. But when it comes to testicular trauma, at least among non-pro athletes, he insists it rarely happens.

Of the approximately 2,500 patients he treats every year, only about two of those are suffering from scrotal injury.

How does it happen? “Maybe a horse kicked them in the balls,” he says. “Or there was a car accident where the steering wheel went into their nuts. Sometimes it has to do with farm equipment or heavy machinery. Your job involves pulling a strap and something breaks and snaps.”

In other words, nothing that’s likely to happen to you. (Except for the car accident. But even then, having a steering wheel rammed into your balls seems like a long shot.)

Jockstraps have become irrelevant, says Dr. Steixner, because underwear has gotten tighter.

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“Modern boxer briefs pretty much solves the problem,” he says. “You don’t need to wear this weird contraption that has these straps that wrap around your butt. You can wear tight-fitting underwear, because it does everything a jockstrap did, which is keep things high and tight. That’s all you need.”

While underwear has evolved, not much has changed in jockstrap and cup technology, which first came into vogue during the late 1800s.

“A jockstrap is a jockstrap, today as it was back then,” says Kevin Flaherty, whose great-great-great-grandfather founded one of the first jockstrap manufacturers in the country, the J.B. Flaherty Company, Inc., in 1898.

In the past 100-plus years, the materials have changed. Flaherty’s company—now Martin Inc., which produces Flarico, Bub, and Activeman products—has evolved from knitted waistbands and straps into more comfortable woven products.

The waistbands now have a plush back, and there isn’t a three-inch-wide piece of rough elastic. But aside from that, and some fashion colors, there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in the design.

Except, of course, for products like the Diamond MMA. Their compression-jock-and-cup system is constructed from polycarbonate, a durable thermoplastic material that’s used in bulletproof glass.

That may be useful if your job requires people trying to kill you, or at least severely damage your yam bag. But for us non-MMA athletes, do we really need that much ball-protecting technology?

Sure, fluke accidents happen. But that doesn’t mean you should walk around wearing a helmet and elbow pads. That would be insane.

“The only other time I’ve seen serious scrotal injury was from a parent,” Dr. Steixner says.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“Like a dad getting kicked hard in the nuts by one of his kids. That happens all the time.”

“It does?” I ask this even though I absolutely know he’s right.

I’m a parent of a 4-year-old boy, and I’ve been on the receiving end of a barbarous foot or elbow. I’m well aware of what it’s like to receive a crushing ball blast from a kid not old enough yet to realize that scrotums have the same general resistance to blunt force trauma as hard-boiled eggs.

Later that night, when I return home, I’m still wearing my Diamond MMA compression jock and cup. But unlike the professional interactions with my co-workers, I don’t discourage a violent reciprocity with my testicl*s.

“C’mon!” I shout at my son, who can’t believe what his daddy is asking him. “Hit me again! Really throw your whole body into it this time!”

Related: Your Balls Are Tougher Than You Think

My wife watches, grimacing with each scrotal coup de grâce.

“Everything about this makes me uncomfortable,” she announces, like this proclamation will somehow make my son stop hurtling into my nutsa*ck with extreme prejudice.

My son and I just laugh, and he continues to deliver blow after merciless blow onto what should be my soft extremities.

“It’s okay,” I try to explain to her, after pretending for the umpteenth time that my son had caused me irreparable scrotal damage. “This is just what boys do.”

Then he tries on his own cup—the Diamond MMA people were kind enough to send me two—and I give his groin a pounding (although admittedly I pull my punches.)

My wife eventually walks away. She can’t take it anymore. But my son and I keep laughing, and keep punching each other in the nuts, amazed at the loud CLUNK our knuckles make every time they connect with what should be testicl*s.

“This is the greatest night of my life,” my son laughs, falling onto the floor, clutching his ribs with laughter.

Testicular violence is nothing to laugh at. But testicular violence in which nobody gets hurt thanks to modern technology designed specifically for professional athletes? Well, that’s just a reminder that we’re living in a remarkable age, unlike anything our high school gym teachers could have imagined.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Bradford.)