Wetsuit time conversion factor

Alex Leduc, winner of 1996's edition of International Traversee Lac St-Jean once did the first leg of a tri, wearing a wet suit. Alex's best 1500 in the pool at the time was near 15:15 (in this neighborhood). He reported being disrupted by the limited range of motion that a wet imposes compared to swimming without. He hated swimming with a wet because of this. There's at least a study that confirmed this fact, although I could not find it to include a reference to it to this post. So basically what I meant was that if you're an ultra fast swimmer, used to very large volumes of training (to win an FINA World Cup Event, gotta train at least 60-80k per week), that has a sophisticated high elbow (recovery / pull through) stroke, with a very efficient and economic two-beat kick may endup being slower performing with a wet full sleeve wetsuit. I too hate the feeling of swimming in a wetsuit (or a tech suit, for that matter). It doesn't mean that I'm swimming slower in it, just that it is unfamiliar. Was this person wearing a sleeveless wetsuit? Hard to believe it would affect his ROM. I don't have them handy right now, but I've seen a number of controlled studies of very fast swimmers (college level with training volumes similar to what you describe and presumably "sophisticated" strokes, whatever that means) with and without the wetsuit. The wetsuit always helped. I haven't used one often, but the only time I feel like it actually hurt my performance was when it filled with (a lot of) water.

Alex Leduc, winner of 1996's edition of International Traversee Lac St-Jean once did the first leg of a tri, wearing a wet suit. Alex's best 1500 in the pool at the time was near 15:15 (in this neighborhood). He reported being disrupted by the limited range of motion that a wet imposes compared to swimming without. He hated swimming with a wet because of this. There's at least a study that confirmed this fact, although I could not find it to include a reference to it to this post. So basically what I meant was that if you're an ultra fast swimmer, used to very large volumes of training (to win an FINA World Cup Event, gotta train at least 60-80k per week), that has a sophisticated high elbow (recovery / pull through) stroke, with a very efficient and economic two-beat kick may endup being slower performing with a wet full sleeve wetsuit. I too hate the feeling of swimming in a wetsuit (or a tech suit, for that matter). It doesn't mean that I'm swimming slower in it, just that it is unfamiliar. Was this person wearing a sleeveless wetsuit? Hard to believe it would affect his ROM. I don't have them handy right now, but I've seen a number of controlled studies of very fast swimmers (college level with training volumes similar to what you describe and presumably "sophisticated" strokes, whatever that means) with and without the wetsuit. The wetsuit always helped. I haven't used one often, but the only time I feel like it actually hurt my performance was when it filled with (a lot of) water.