Whats the hyp with tech suits?
In the swimming world having a tech suit at a big or important meet is a must. Tech suits cut drag, improve your oxygen efficiency and shave time off your personal record, supposedly. Tech suits are made with water repellent material that doesn’t absorb any water theoretically making the swimmer faster. Tech suits are also extremely tight and form fitting to decrease the amount of drag. It takes the average female swimmer 20–30 minutes to put one of these death suits on. These suits are also known to cut off circulation in legs and cause bruising on the shoulders from the straps, (may or may not be speaking from personal experience). But because of this closer and slimmer fit it makes the streamline off each wall more sleek and faster than a swimmer without one. Compression also helps to improve circulation to the muscles, which can boost performance in a race. The compression of these suits helps to boost performance because the compression can help flush lactic acid, inflammatory cells and metabolic waste a little faster. (https://www.yourswimlog.com/tech-suits-guide/)
There are also specific suits made for specific strokes and races, which means that these suits are cut differently and meant to shape that swimmers body for the movement of that stroke. There are studies all around the world proving that tech suits do improve time and help the swimmer swim their race to the best of their ability. But one of these sutis, if you want to buy an effective one, is about $200 plus, which is on the cheaper side especially for a suit that lasts less than 10 swims/races.
As a swimmer of 15 years and a club swim coach I can see the benefits that these elite swimsuits provide if swimmers use them for big end of the season meets. Swimming more often than not comes down to the last millisecond to determine who gets the silver and who gets the gold. But if swimmers are not swimming at a high level, should parents or the swimmers themselves be expected to empty their wallets for a high performance suit that will take half a second off their best time? Advertisements for these suits make swimmers, especially the younger ones, believe that they need these suits to improve their time when in reality at a lower level of swimming that most children participate in, getting better times is almost all mental. But the big brands in the swimming world, Speedo, Arena, Blueseventy, Michael Phelps (brand), TYR, Nike and even Adidas are targeting ads to young people by portraying the “newest” technology in their ads. They market these suits as better than last years model just like Apple does. Making sure that the consumer understands that last year’s model was OK, but this new suit is better and has more compression than ever before.
The consumer and capitalistic society today drives people to have the newest and latest thing technology can make and money can buy. These big brands in swimming are driven by a profit motive, making these suits ridiculously expensive and letting the athletes in the swimming community believe that they need these suits in order to be fast. Now tech suits are a part of the culture of swimming and athletes as young as 8-years-old are wearing a $270 swimsuit.
This is because USA Swimming, which is the organization that runs club swimming is sponsored by Speedo, TYR and Arena. Their ads are everywhere in swimming magazines that USA Swimming sends to their members every month, which consists of everyone on a swimming club in the U.S. All athletes, parents and coaches see these ads for tech suits and over time have made them common among low level swimmers instead of just college athletes and olympians promoting an economic and social change in the culture of swimming. These swimsuits are ridiculously expensive and some coaches require their swimmers to be wearing them at multiple meets a year. A typical tech suit will last anywhere from three meets to five swim meets. With this expectation in mind, swimmers also use techsuits to gauge social status. Having the newest edition of a high level suit definitely gains social status among the cliques and different groups children inevitably create on their teams.
