Ordered most, thought about least
Practice & Training Gear — the kit worn five days a week
Practice gear does more work than anything a team plays in. It is worn four or five times a week, washed after every session, and dragged through a season that game kit only sees on Fridays. It is also, almost always, specified as if it were game kit at a lower price — which is why it is the garment most often replaced mid-year.
We build it differently on purpose, and this page explains what "differently" means in fabric and in construction.
Practice & Training Gear in other colourways
The same construction, made up in different colours. Yours is produced to your own design.
12345678910 / 10
Product photographs from the ZEE Sports Wear range. Every order is made to the program's own colours and design.
What actually wears out
Not the fabric. The seams and the print. A training top fails at the shoulder seam where a bag strap sits, at the hem where it is pulled over pads, and at the neck where it is stretched by being taken off in a hurry. We reinforce those three places as standard rather than as an option, because on practice gear they are not edge cases.
Print is the other half. A pressed logo on a garment washed 120 times a season will lift, whatever the supplier promises; a sublimated one cannot, because there is nothing sitting on the surface to lift. For anything worn daily we recommend dye rather than press, and explain the difference on our page about how sublimation puts colour into fabric.
Colour matters less here than teams expect and fit matters more. Practice gear is the kit a squad is in when it is tired, so a cut that rides up is a cut that gets complained about all season.
How practice specification differs from game specification
- Fabric weight
- Lighter than game kit, because it is worn in longer sessions and dries between them
- Seams
- Reinforced at shoulder, hem and neck as standard
- Decoration
- Sublimated wherever possible; pressed only where a design requires it
- Colour count
- Usually fewer — a two-colour practice top reorders faster and cheaper than a five-colour one
- Numbering
- Optional, and often better on the back only; practice numbers exist for the coach, not the crowd
- Reorder
- Kept on file as a standing specification, so a mid-season top-up is a date, not a conversation
The pieces, by what they are for
Practice jerseys
The daily top. Ordered in the largest quantities and the plainest specification of anything we make.
Training shorts
Cut for movement rather than for a photograph, usually without the trim that makes game shorts more expensive.
Scrimmage bibs
High-visibility, numbered, and bought in bulk by coaches who lose two a month. Worth ordering more of than you think you need.
Training tops and shirts
The layer worn in cold sessions, which is where poly-cotton earns its place over pure performance knit.
The arithmetic nobody does until the second week
A squad training four times a week with one top per player needs that top laundered and returned four times a week. Written down it is obviously impossible; specified in June it looks like common sense, and it is the single commonest ordering mistake we see.
Then there is the forgotten bag, which is remarkably consistent: on any given session one to three players will not have their top. A coach with no spares sends them out in whatever they arrived in, which defeats the point of having practice kit at all.
And attrition. This is the kit worn hardest and washed most, so a proportion will not finish the season — a fact the specification itself should acknowledge rather than the budget discovering in February. Ordering the spares with the original run costs a fraction of the same garments alone in October, and they come from the same dye lot, which is the argument made in full on our page about adding to a kit you already own.
How practice specification differs from game kit
Six deliberate differences. Each one is a place where copying the game-kit spec costs money.
- Fabric weight
- Lighter. It is worn in longer sessions and has to dry between them, and a game-weight top in a two-hour session is a top that gets taken off.
- Seams
- Reinforced at shoulder, hem and neck as standard rather than as an option, because on daily wear those three are not edge cases.
- Decoration
- Sublimated wherever the design allows. A pressed logo washed 120 times a season will lift, whatever a supplier promises.
- Colour count
- Fewer. A two-colour practice top reorders faster and cheaper than a five-colour one, and nobody is photographing it.
- Numbering
- Optional, and usually back only. Practice numbers exist for the coach, not for a crowd.
- Reorder
- Held as a standing specification, so a mid-season top-up is a date rather than a conversation.
What wears out, in the order it happens
Not the fabric. Practice gear fails at the seams and the print, and it fails in a sequence predictable enough to specify against: the shoulder seam where a bag strap sits, the hem where a top is pulled over pads, the neck stretched by being taken off in a hurry.
Print is the other half, and it is the half most often specified wrongly. Anything sitting on the surface of a garment washed three times a week will lift at an edge within a season; dye cannot, because there is nothing there to lift — the mechanism is set out on our page about dye bonded into the fibre at heat.
Colour barely matters here and fit matters enormously. This is the kit a squad is in when it is tired, so a cut that rides up is a cut that is complained about all season, and a garment that is complained about is a garment that gets replaced early.
Baseball
What changes for baseball →
Basketball
What changes for basketball →
Training Basketball Shirt
From $26.99 per piece · min 10
Training basketball shirts designed specifically for skill development, conditioning workouts, and intensive training programs across Florida, where functionality and performance take priority while maintaining team identity during the crucial hours spent developing basketball fundamentals and athletic conditioning. These training shirts focus on the unique demands
Ask about this →
Training Basketball Shorts
From $26.99 per piece · min 10
Training basketball shorts designed specifically for skill development, conditioning workouts, and intensive training programs across Florida, where performance and functionality take priority while maintaining team coordination during the crucial hours spent developing basketball fundamentals and athletic conditioning. These training shorts focus on the unique dema
Ask about this →Football
What changes for football →
Soccer
What changes for soccer →
Custom Soccer Practice Gear
From $26.99 per piece · min 10
Training jerseys, shorts & bibs. Free design service.
Ask about this →
Custom Soccer Practice Jerseys
From $26.99 per piece · min 10
Light enough for daily use and specified for the same abrasion as game kit, because training is where most of the ground contact happens.
Ask about this →
Custom Soccer Training Bibs
From $26.99 per piece · min 10
High-visibility, durable mesh. Team logo printing. Bulk orders for coaches.
Ask about this →
Custom Soccer Training Shorts
From $26.99 per piece · min 10
Lightweight and moisture-wicking, in matched colours so training kit does not read as a different team from the game set.
Ask about this →Volleyball
What changes for volleyball →
Questions we get asked
Should practice gear match the game kit exactly?
It should be recognisably the same program, not the same garment. Matching a practice top exactly to game kit means paying game-kit prices for something that will be worn out by March.
How many practice jerseys does a squad need?
More than the roster. Teams that order one per player run out the first week somebody forgets a bag. Two per player is the specification most programs settle on after a season.
Do you number practice gear?
If you want it. Coaches running position drills usually do; programs buying for a whole age group usually do not, because unnumbered gear can be reissued next year.
Can bibs be printed with a sponsor?
Yes, and it is a good place for one — bibs are worn at every session and photographed at most of them.
How is practice gear different from game kit?
Lighter fabric, because it is worn in longer sessions and dries between them; reinforced at the shoulder, hem and neck as standard, because that is where daily wear actually fails; and sublimated wherever possible, because a pressed logo washed 120 times a season will lift.
What is the minimum order?
Lower than most programs expect for sublimated work, and it differs by garment. Ask us with the roster size in front of you rather than guessing.
Can we reorder mid-season?
Yes, and it is a production slot rather than a new project — we hold the artwork, the grading and the colour reference, so there is no mockup round to repeat.
Should practice gear match the game kit exactly?
It should be recognisably the same program, not the same garment. Matching exactly means paying game-kit prices for something that will be worn out by March.
Do you make training bibs in more than two colours?
Yes, and squads running position drills often want three or four. They are the cheapest thing to over-order and the thing coaches lose most.
How many spares should we order?
Two per player for a squad training three or more times a week, or one per player plus four spares in the commonest sizes for a lighter schedule. Ordered with the run they cost a fraction of the same garments in October.
Send us the roster, get a real quote
Sizes, colours and roughly when you need it is enough to work from. You get a written quote and a mockup in your colours before anything is committed, and the design brief on our step-by-step kit design tool covers the same ground if you would rather build it yourself first.
Prefer to talk? +1 213-449-3746, Monday – Saturday, 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM (PST).
Design it yourself
Build the brief for your practice & training gear
Six short steps, no pricing and no account. The preview shows how your colours sit together; the real mockup comes back from our team on the actual garment, free, usually the same working day.
Keep looking
Next in the range
Warm-Ups & Outerwear Before the game and after it See the range → 10 products 
Team Shorts & Pants The bottom half of the kit See the range → 4 products 
Socks & Accessories The pieces that finish a set See the range → 4 products 
Custom Printed Jerseys Names, numbers and full-colour design See the range → 14 products