I am just back from the SPMA meet where all the top finisher were wearing the latest generation tech suits,mostly B-70s(or were named Jeff Commings.)I have here to for been in favor of the suits,but now I am not so sure.First,they eliminate the old bench marks.I went my fastest 100m BR in 5 yr in my LZR,but it was only .3 sec faster than I did untapered 5 wk earlier in my first swim in the LZR.So was my swim good or not,I'm not sure.Also,instead of focusing on technique or pace I found myself ruminating over aspects of the suits,how many more swims did the suit have,is it the right size,was the reason I didn't get better results from my B-70 because it was too big?etc.The B-70 has somewhat mitigated the "too expensive,not durable" problem,but for how long.
Lets say a company comes up with a suit that is much faster,say 4 sec/100.Further that it is very expensive(say $1000) lasts 4 swims and is very hard to make so that quantities are always limited and the fastest way to get one is to bid up to $3000 on ebay. Now lets say your nemesis has one,or that getting one is your best chance to get TT or AA or a ZR or WR,or that your child is close to making JO cuts,or finally beating his/her nemesis etc. Is it worth it and where does it stop?
Former Member
Hey...they make some of us look better than we really are! Enough reason to get em for me. :afraid:
Lucky!
Unfortunately for others such as myself, these suits make us look like the Michelan Man (of questionable gender) on steroids. :roids::afraid:
Quote from The Fortress:
"The suits have brought increased excitement, exposure and revenue to the sport. I hope they're here to stay."
Hey Fortress
Just where is all that increased excitement and revenue to the sport of swimming?
The only increased revenue is to the suit makers who are hooking plenty of suckers willing to pay several hundred dollars for the tech suit fad.
By the way, the Olympics (either summer or winter) are just another form of corporate welfare that ultimately costs the host cities a lot more than they take in. In fact, San Francisco lost a huge amount of $$$ just sending buses and drivers from our transit system (while the riders here had to wait over an hour to get home) to the Olympics in Salt Lake City and I am urging the city officials NOT to bid on having the Olympics here anytime in the future.
As for them being "here to stay", I hope they are eventually gone for good so the Olympic swimming events are not tacky "infomercials" for Speedo, Nike, Tyr, etc.
Dolphin 2
As long as we are talking about "the girls," it should be noted the suits also keep "the gents" well in place. I will be banned momentarily, nice knowing you all.
Maybe it's the old placedo effect. You get all gigged up about the hot new suit and you swim faster. Kind of like how I jump higher when I get new basketball shoes.
Maybe it's something to do with the core stabilization? Perhaps this feature of the suit helps men more. Perhaps women's suits have always affected core stabilization while only the current crop of suits have helped men in this regard.
I thought about that too...except the page states that the results from the 2000 and 2004 trials for both men and women were no better than predicted. If what you say is correct, I would have expected a larger prior improvement for women by the previous generation suits.
But I'm just speculating, I haven't looked at the previous data closely enough to be very confident in my assertions.
If the suits help men more than women, I wonder why? I would expect these suits -- any version, including previous years' (which did not have a measurable effect) -- would more significantly affect the hydrodynamics of women swimmers. So perhaps something else -- such as changing the body position -- is a more dominant factor.
Maybe it's something to do with the core stabilization? Perhaps this feature of the suit helps men more. Perhaps women's suits have always affected core stabilization while only the current crop of suits have helped men in this regard. One problem with this theory is full body suits on men are still not universal. Phelps, for example, only used the full body during freestyle races if I remember correctly.
