After seeing a woman break 24 seconds and I think we can stop the discussion of "IF" the LZR suit is faster and start thinking "how much faster".
The previous line of suits (Fastskin and so on) were pretty similiar to a shaved swimmer. Sure - they do feel like they make you float, but overall the times seemed to move along "in line" with what I would expect to see in terms of improvements in the sport. If the previous suits would have been that much faster than shaving, you would have never seen people just using the legskins. By the way - for us Masters swimmers there was always the added benefit of keeping in all the "extra layers of skin".
So how much faster are the LZR suits ?
If I had to guess based on the results so far, I would say 0.25 to 0.30 per 50 and double that for the 100. I can see the Bernard going 48 low in the 100 and I can see Sullivan getting close or just breaking the 50 record. It makes sense that Libby Lenton would swim a 24.2 or so in the 50.
I think one of the top regular teams out there should do a test - you need a good amount of world class swimmers training together to be able to do a test. Here is the test I would propose:
8-10 swimmers
2 days of testing
4x50 on 10 minutes all out
Day 1 - swim 2 with a Fastskin2 followed by 2 with the LZR
Day 2 - swim 2 with the LZR followed by 2 with the Fastskin2
Get the averages of all 10 swimmers - maybe drop the high and low and there you go.
Why do the test ? I would HAVE to know. Swimming is a big part of your life and you just set a massive PR using this new technology - my very first question would be " How much was me and how much was the suit?"?
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Former Member
You know, I was wondering about the possibility of Speedo developing multiple tech suits for different events. At this year's Olympics, some only wore the leggings, mostly *** and fly, and most of the free was full body. Is it possible the athletes did their own tests, and they found the full LZR to be most beneficial in the freestyle? Perhaps the torso stabilizer reduces the undulating capabilities of full stroke butterfly/breastroke, but it is still okay for underwater dolphin. This is pure speculation of course, but the dolphin motion seemed to be fine in the underwater for Phelps in that 200 free.
It would be in the suitmakers interest to develop a tech suit for each stroke, and that makes hydrodynamic sense as well. Based on flow states of the differring strokes during full speed swimming there are certainly alternating variables. What would an IM suit look like, and perhaps that would be the suit of choice for athletes on a budget?
Either way, we can probably expect more research in the future. That CFD modeling is also very interesting, perhaps that will be how the suitmakers will test new variations.
I don't think buying multiple suits and testing each one to find out what works best makes sense for me anyway.
You know, I was wondering about the possibility of Speedo developing multiple tech suits for different events. At this year's Olympics, some only wore the leggings, mostly *** and fly, and most of the free was full body. Is it possible the athletes did their own tests, and they found the full LZR to be most beneficial in the freestyle? Perhaps the torso stabilizer reduces the undulating capabilities of full stroke butterfly/breastroke, but it is still okay for underwater dolphin. This is pure speculation of course, but the dolphin motion seemed to be fine in the underwater for Phelps in that 200 free.
It would be in the suitmakers interest to develop a tech suit for each stroke, and that makes hydrodynamic sense as well. Based on flow states of the differring strokes during full speed swimming there are certainly alternating variables. What would an IM suit look like, and perhaps that would be the suit of choice for athletes on a budget?
Either way, we can probably expect more research in the future. That CFD modeling is also very interesting, perhaps that will be how the suitmakers will test new variations.
I don't think buying multiple suits and testing each one to find out what works best makes sense for me anyway.
