Me. I had this same exact issue in my Roka Maverick every time (1st gen I raced in for 4 seasons). What suit are you in? I assumed the suit was pulling on muscles a bit that did't ordinarily get that lift without it, or maybe lengthening me a bit, however subtle. Who knows since I never figured it out. I never got quite to the point of feeling like spasms were coming, but it was sore without fail and then the first few miles of riding aero felt great to stretch it out.

Last season I switched over to Xterra Vengeance which was a suit that always intrigued me and haven't experienced it since. Not even once. And I love the suit. Could be your suit design on your body somehow. Probably not groundbreaking, but that was my experience.

Good luck.

Various athletes have had issues with this that I have heard of. A wetsuit can put you into a bit of sustained back extension and then the sighting doesn't help either.

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I have the exact same issue. I always figured it was from my legs/hips floating more in the wetsuit and putting some strain on my lower back. Did a lot of core/lower back strengthening last year. Helped a bit but not 100%

So far I've tried to wetsuits and Xterra and a zoot. I can move a lot more freely in the zoot and it has a lot more comfortable crotch area, lol but the back pain is the same between those two suits at least.it goes away relatively quickly after I'm up and moving but it can make the beginning parts of transition quite slow.

This is most likely due to your legs been more elevated. I get exactly the same thing, so I need to swim in wetsuits occasionally just to make sure I am used to the position. One thing that might help is cutting your wetsuit off at the knees to allow your ankles to drop slightly. Other than that, I would do a lot of core work, and get as flexible as possible in the hips/lower back. As mentioned above, sighting may also contribute. I had to pull out of an Ironman - that was particularly rough in the water - about halfway through the bike due to the reasons mentioned above.

Also, try to incorporate a bit of pull work in training - this may help simulate the position you will be in when in a wetsuit.

Yes. I thought it was just me, and partly due to long term lower back issues, but hearing others report it I wonder if there is something real going on.

I'm not a strong swimmer but have good body position so get relatively low (if any) benefit from the wetsuit and indeed recently decided to do a HIM without wetsuit. Somewhat to my surprise the lower back I'd had in previous races was completely absent.

I've been toying with the idea of sleeveless wetsuit but hadn't pulled the trigger. I wondered if less pressure on the shoulders would propagate down to less low back muscle lockup. Interested in other peoples' thoughts on that.

I've had this in the past and the key for me seemed to be remaining active throughout the core. The wetsuit puts you in a mini cobra position and on top of that you can be fairly lazy through the core all all this leads to the discs in the back being able to move around a bit and impinge some nerves. I found that keeping my core engaged - (even though you don't really need to!) keeps the muscles round the spine switched on, which helps stabilise the spine and prevent things from moving where they shouldn't.

So you're engaging your core while you swim? It seems like that would be rather hard to do as a conscious thing.

You should absolutely be doing that.

Try it with a PB

when you are swimming without a wetsuit you are using your core to produce power through arms and legs and you’ll constantly be hoilding your legs up subconsiously, when you put the wetsuit on you are using the same swimming form so your lower back will tighten up but there in much less resistance causing more extension through the low back worsened by extra resistance of stretching a wetsuit in the shoulders and like said before sighting.

a good tip would be swim in your wetsuit more, swim with a pull boey like some others have said and work on the flexability in your low back.

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