What’s up with tight swim suits

When watching competitive swimming, people often wonder why swimmers chose to wear skin tight everything. From suits all the way to caps and goggles, swimmers wear gear that is as tight as possible for one main reason: it reduces drag.

As swimmers progress and get faster and faster, they develop technique that allows them to pull themselves through the water much faster. This technique can be easily defeated with any sort of dragging cloth or bulky suit which causes the swimmer to go slower with their technique.

Picture a rocket ship sitting on the launch pad. When you glance up, the entire surface is clean and smooth. Why? Because it decreases drag on its ascent. Any small amount of drag will cause the rocket to spend more fuel to get to the same speed, or it might not even reach that speed at all. This is the same idea with swimming, which is just traveling through a much thicker substance than air.

Experienced swimmers will oftentimes stop wearing swim trunks altogether after wearing tight swim suits for years of practice. You’ll never find a competitive high school swimmer wearing something other than a tight suit. But for new and younger swimmers, is it really that important?

The short answer? No.

New swimmers are in the process of learning the foundations of swimming. Those who are not familiar with the foundations of swimming, like floating, oftentimes are assisted by the increased drag caused by regular swim trunks because the trunks naturally force their body into the proper position.

However, like with experienced swimmers, they still must pull this increased drag through the water as they swim, tiring them out quicker. Using a tight swim suit will allow them to swim more efficiently, but the fundamentals just aren’t developed enough to take full advantage of this decreased drag. This decreased drag actually causes them to sink quicker!

At the Tidal Waves, we’ve seen many new swimmers with both types of suits. Swimmers who have even just a year of swimming experience are able to benefit from a tight suit because they have had the time to develop their technique in each of the major strokes. Those who may have only done a handful of swim lessons benefit greatly from the extra bagginess of the swim trunks.

When it all comes down to business, the type of swim suit is not what is going to determine the experience your child has while learning to swim…it’s how swimming is presented to the new swimmer.