I grew up around water.  Most summers in my childhood, my mom would drop my brothers and I off at the local pool first thing in the morning and not pick us up until closing time.  It got to the point where the pool staff would be worried if I did not show up and once called my home to make sure I was ok.  As a logical progression I joined the swim team, volunteered as an assistant swim instructor, became a lifeguard and taught swimming lessons the moment I was old enough.  The only problem was, I hated staring at the black line on the bottom of the pool and had no real motivation to swim and train hard or even consistently for that matter.  As a result of this history I am a good swimmer by general standards, but average in the triathlon world.

So the question on everyone’s mind…how do I get faster?  When I began training for triathlon it had been several years since I had done any kind of structured swim training, I had played water polo in college, but that was not the same as “swimming.”  As I got reacquainted with the water and that ever so entertaining black line I found I was muscling my way through workouts, much like a powerful, yet inefficient tug boat.  I took the popular newbie tack of “the faster I moved my arms the better!!”  Well as you can imagine this didn’t work very well or for very long. 

A training buddy of mine and former all-American swimmer in college took pity on me and decided to help me out!  The first thing we did was go back to basics and rebuild my technique, although I have know this for sometime now, I am still amazed at how mechanics trumps all else in the water.  The water is really unforgiving and every hand position or hip movement has an influence of how easily you can slip through the water.  For the last 4 years I have been working on my technique and performing drills almost every time I get in the water. 

Recently I attend a swim clinic by Doug Stern, one of the great swim coaches in the country.  Aside from the ab workout I got listening to his stories and thoughts on life I learned a lot about my stroke.  A picture is really worth a thousand words, as I had not seen a video of myself swimming in a very long time.  Doug gave me several aspects of my stroke to tweak and practice. 

Initially my times got slower and the frustration mounted, however, I took a week or so and didn’t worry about the clock, I did nothing but focus on perfect technique and performed countless numbers of drills. Although it was, is, and will be at times a frustrating process, ever once and awhile I had a fleeting glimpse of a stroke here or there that just felt really good, but then it was gone.  As I practiced my swim over the next few weeks those glimpses of a perfect stroke began to occur more frequently and I began to feel like a speed boat slipping through the water.  Before I knew it my times began to drop and now I am swimming faster with less effort!!  I am at the point where my new stroke it not yet automatic, I still need to be EXTREMELY cognizant of my mechanics, but I’m getting there.

There are a million dills out there.  Some that I find most affective are as follows: Distance Per Stroke (DPS) - see how few strokes you can take per length, focus on body rotation, pulling yourself past the water and gliding, Finger Tip Drag - relax your hand and arm during the recovery, Fists - swim noramlly with fists, and concentrating on using your forearm to pull the water, Single Arm - focus on hip drive as you catch the water, Skulling - work on your “feel” for the water and efficiency in your catch, Side Kick w/ switch - kick on your side for 6-8 beats and take one storke and do the same on the other side, work on body rotation and comfort swimming on your side.

Having just swam a PR at Ironman California 70.3 you might think I am done working on my speed boat technique and will now focus entirely on aerobic fitness in the water.  NOT SO!!!  If there is one thing that I have learned in the past 4 years it is that swim technique (much like my desire to become a good cook) is a never ending process.
Swim Fast, Bike Strong, Run Hard

-Alex M&M

So, what is the difference, besides the obvious one, of a sleeveless vs. non-sleeveless wetsuit? Overall, the differences can be described in terms of “comfort,” with comfort breaking down into two categories - temperature differences and stroke differences.

If you are fighting for a podium spot that you routinely miss by a couple seconds, then, yes, a sleeved wetsuit will be faster in terms of strict hydrodynamics. But for most triathletes, the issue of hydrodynamics and fractions of a second of speed should take a back seat to comfort in the wetsuit.

In warm water, close to the 78F cutoff, a sleeveless wetsuit can keep you from overheating during the swim. Especially if it is sunny out, and you are in a black rubber suit, the extra cooling of water on your arms and a little more flow through the suit can make a big difference. In colder water, keeping water from flowing through the suit during the swim, as well as keeping your arms covered, can help make the swim a much more pleasant experience.

But beyond comfort with regards to water temperature, there is also the issue of swimming effectively in a wetsuit. A wetsuit should make you swim faster for a couple reasons. First off, it has a very, very smooth skin (which is why you paid for a fancy QR suit instead of a BodyGlove surf suit) which has a very, very low skin friction coefficient.

Think gliding across ice vs. gliding across, say, a pile of boulders. Secondly, it makes you more buoyant, so you float easier, which for many super-skinny runner/cyclist types, can be a big boon. It also provides that buoyancy in an engineered fashion, lifting your hips up especially high, to put you in what is known as a “downhill position,” which makes swimming with proper technique easier. Both sleeveless and sleeved wetsuits do this basically equally well.

The sleeves *can* get in the way of proper swimming, though. For some athletes, their rotator cuffs are not strong enough to flex the suit for an entire 1.2 or 2.4 miles of swimming. Moving the rubber shoulder, which is obviously molded to want to stay in one position, can be tremendously tiring.

Some companies, including Quintana Roo, have put a tremendous amount of effort into making the shoulders as flexible as possible. The ribbed, 0.5mm shoulders of the QR suit are paper thin. BUT, they are still less flexible than having nothing there. Especially over an IM, if you don’t posses the deltoids of a boxer, moving your arms can become tiring enough without needing to worry about flexing a suit as well.

If you feel this way, a sleeveless suit may very well end up being faster for you than a sleeved suit. I talk to many triathletes who bought sleeved suits because they think they are the fastest, without any sort of regard to how they would work for them specifically.

Wetsuits are a very individual item, just like a bike saddle or shoes. Don’t pick a suit just based on who swims in one. The right suit for the fellow leading the swim at an IM may not be the right suit for you. Of course it might be, but that’s just coincidence.

Many retailers have excellent exchange policies on suits that have only been used in the pool (with an obvious preference towards ones that have also not been peed in!). So try suits out. And, of course, make sure to try both sleeved and sleeveless to see which one works best for YOU.