Sleeved is faster

Whoops, ignore my previous comment, thought you were talking about the skinsuit, not wetsuits...

A good friend of mine regularly wipes the floor with the rest of the field on the swim, and she only owns a sleeveless suit.

thanks for the replies. I need every advantage I can get with the swim but I think I will stick with sleeveless for now. thanks again

Do more research

Sleeves ARE faster

I typically finish the swim about top 20% range, so not a speedster but not a BOP slowster anymore.

Theoretically, the added small lift and hydrodynamics from the sleeved suit SHOULD be faster, but for someone like myself that pretty much never does OWS until race day (I used to practice it regularly, but time/access is now a major limiter), I definitely swim faster with a sleeveless.

In fact, I swim even faster with NO wetsuit at all (yep, compared even to sleeveless or sleeved wetsuits - I own both), but it's mainly because since I haven't practiced swimming hard (or at all) with my wetsuits, I just can't push into the red zone like I can without a wetsuit.

The sleeved in particular, gives me mild arm extension fatigue as you describe that does limit me a little - if I train like 5-6x in OWS before the race, it totally goes away and I'd almost certainly be faster with the sleeved wetsuit, but as I said, that's just a luxury of time I don't have. I'm sure my suit fits right and is pulled up enough as well. I suspect this is what you're feeling as well.

My happy medium is going sleeveless whenever I can. Even if I swim 20-40 seconds slower per mile than I do without a wetsuit, I spend so much less energy (especially sighting) due to the buoyancy that it's worth it for me. I now only go sleeved in very cold water races (like March ocean races, yikes!)

https://www.slowtwitch.com/...ed_De_Soto_6779.html

As the article says

You are always faster in a wetsuit with sleeves except perhaps 1.5% of the population



It is NOT correct that Sleeves are just generally faster. The exception would be a very advanced Div 1 type college swimmer because they have such a refined stroke.” I've never found the D1 swimmer to be an exception to the "sleeves are faster” rule. Another Slowtwitcher decided it was the opposite: That the slowest swimmers would benefit from the sleeveless, because their technique isn't good enough to see the value of a full sleeve suit.

Nope. I never found that either. Further, no ITU athlete, male or female, feels that way. And I mean none of them or, if I'm wrong about that, you'll have to look very hard to find the exception to the rule. (I have a lot of swim start pics I can show you!)

You could always go sleevless, with arm sleeves. I ordered some TYR arm sleeves, but haven't triad them out yet.

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Athlinks / Strava

IIRC- sleeved suits are faster because of the additional buoyancy coupled with a greater surface area on your forearm (bigger forearm surface area allows for more water to be pulled, therefore, more propulsion).

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

if your arms are getting worn out from the suit there are a few things

1. the suit isn't the right suit for you
2. It's the right suit but in a wrong size
3. you didn't put it on correctly - and this happens waaaaaaaaaay more often than people think. It's also waaaaaaaaay more prevalent as you go further back in swimming ability


For about 98.5% of all people sleeved suits are faster. What are the odds you're in that 1.5%?

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Would you mind if I added?

4. You have a cheap inflexible POS full suit that may or may not be the right size

THANK YOU

I was hoping you would post in this thread