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?
Because a situation already exists to some degree (and for women only), it should be made worse? Sorry, I think people with beer guts should pay the price in the pool rather than in the swim shop.
Are there really that many men with beer guts in B70s?
time for another poll
If there is, could the pollster please make sure that there are more choices for source of gut than 'beer', my gut is definately not from beer.
There is none if all use the same suit.
There may be no competitive advantage over other swimmers if people are wearing comparable suits. But some people like high-tech gear and also like swimming faster (regardless of the fact that everyone else is also faster), and so having the suits makes them like the sport more.
My 9-yo son thinks the suits are cool and asked to get one (I laughed and refused, of course. Plus our LSC doesn't allow swimmers 12 and under to wear them). My point is that kids perceive them as "cooler" than briefs or jammers and this may benefit the sport.
Back the competitive advantage thing...it worries me a little if the advantage is NOT uniform (eg, if it is dependent on body type).
The poll is going overwhelmingly in favor of the suits.I hope that FINA adopts the USA-S proposals though(except for the stopping at the knee rule as that makes no sense.)When the LZRs came out most swimmers couldn't get them.I don't think the average swimmer can get a Tracer Rise yet.I'd say grandfather in the existing suits,but come up with some real buoyancy tests for future suits.Ever since the FS-I suits have been made that hold air and are therefore buoyant,even though they don't test as buoyant to FINA.FINA also needs to get it's rules consistent so that there is no doubt what is legal and what is not.
Note to dolphin 2,while I have felt your paddle/fin ideas were weird,I'm afraid that if Kitajima showed up at the Olympics with a jet pack they'd look the other way and then "clarify"the rules to allow jet packs.
My vote is that if men are limited to wearing briefs only, women should be also.
I don't think you have been to too many Western Pennsylvania area YMCA masters swimming competitions. As a veteran of these myself, all I can say is:
Be careful what you wish for.
P.S.When Mr. Cyclist posed the legitimate question regarding "advantage" if everyone is wearing the same suit, I agree with Chris--the advantage, for me at least, is not so much over my contemporary competitors but over my younger self. As a semi-centenarian-plus, the idea that these suits help me swim times nowadays that I was doing in high school is both enormously satisfying and motivating, particularly as long as purists remain that suggest the benefit is mainly a placebo effect.Thanks to the latter, I can tell myself, "I do not need these magic shoes to dance with the stars--the power to do so has been within me the whole time. Nevertheless, I think I shall wear the magic shoes anyhow because I like how they look!"
To the self-enabling suit addict, it's easy to find reasons to wear these things even as we tell ourselves they don't make much of a difference.
All this notwithstanding, I do think the best argument against the suits is that, like with almost everything else in our quickly bankrupting country, such technological "improvements" once again confirm our status as capitalist tools. The genius of our species is to ferret out things we have evolved to want, then figure out ways to turn these into things we need, and sell them to us. From cocaine to feminine deodorant products to county fair elephant ears to high tech body suits, the consumer economy is built on stuff our prehominid ancestors could (and did) get along very well without but nevertheless probably would have bought themselves if A) money had been invented back then, and B) such products were available.
I can flesh out this argument in more detail to those who are interested; it seems i have had to leave out steps 3-87 for brevity's sake. But to simply sum up the conclusion:
We are an avaricious, status-driven, hierarchically-competitive species--easy pickings for our fellow apes who can sell us what is at the outset a putative advantage, but very quickly becomes a putative disadvantage for those who don't have it.
We can't help ourselves.
Oh, and we like to bicker, too. Which is why this definitive evolutionary-psychology-based explication of body suits will not, as it should, be the final word. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if some of our more primitive ape-brothers might even argue the basis for evolution itself! (even as they fork over fistfuls of luchre for the body suits...)
Sorry, I think people with beer guts should pay the price in the pool rather than in the swim shop.
Why do you want to pick on me?
So what about 2 suits...seems an odd practice to me...
Back the competitive advantage thing...it worries me a little if the advantage is NOT uniform (eg, if it is dependent on body type).
This is the point that gets at me in the debate over suits. We already have this situation without any tech suits. Big deal. All women wear body suits every time they swim (well, every time they swim in a sanctioned competition at least). They are free to wear them as tight as they like. Do you really think that some women don't benefit more from wearing a tight fitting standard competition suit than others? They are all different body types :applaud:. Without getting too graphic here, I've noticed that some of them are a bit lumpier than others. I would think that a standard suit is much more of an advantage to that type of swimmer. Why is it such a crime when men wear the same types of suits? Discrimination?
My vote is that if men are limited to wearing briefs only, women should be also.
...I've noticed that some of them are a bit lumpier than others. I would think that a standard suit is much more of an advantage to that type of swimmer. Why is it such a crime when men wear the same types of suits? Discrimination?
My vote is that if men are limited to wearing briefs only, women should be also.
NOOOOO!!! :afraid: :bolt:
Was there a time when men were limited to briefs? (I'm not familiar with swim history, being new to swimming.) In old pictures from the 40's and earlier, men are also wearing suits up to the neck, although with the fabrics of the time, there was probably no advantage. I'm guessing that the advent of briefs caused as much consternation as the advent of tech suits?
Is there an advantage to wearing an ordinary (women's) swimsuit a size smaller? It seems to me that lycra would relax enough in the water that it wouldn't really have much of a "smooshing" effect. Polyester, maybe, it has less stretch to begin with. Some lycra swimsuit fabric has 100% stretch in at least one direction, the polyester stuff that I buy has about 50% in both directions.
