Hi everyone,
I am conducting a product research again. So I have a question about the buoyancy profile in wetsuits. Are the 3:5 wetsuits more popular than the 4:4? Does it really help with sinking legs and are there a lot of people who want this feature.
4:4 is for faster swimmers who already have a good body position IE ex college/HS/age group swimmers. Under 19 minutes in the 1650 or 1500 ? I wear a 4:4 & usually swim 1500m around 17:15 (25m pool) in a masters swim meet. For most over 19 or 20 minutes the 3:5 will be helpful.
Are we talking about the thickness, upper and lower? So a 3:5 would give you only 3mm up top and the 5mm in the lower to raise the legs if I have this right?
But is it true that more than 80% of triathletes come from a background different than swimming, so they are poor swimmers and need that extra buoyancy?
Maybe 80% of Elites but not the sport on the whole.
Hi everyone,
I am conducting a product research again. So I have a question about the buoyancy profile in wetsuits. Are the 3:5 wetsuits more popular than the 4:4? Does it really help with sinking legs and are there a lot of people who want this feature.
The vast majority of triathletes will benefit from a 3:5 profile (maybe even more extreme than that, e.g. 2:5 or 1:5). Yes it really does help raise the legs. The people who won’t benefit are the very fast swimmers (ex high school or ex collegiate or people who’ve worked their ass off for years) but if you look at the distribution of swim times at most races you’ll see that sub 20/1500m is pretty rare. Probably less than 5% of competitors.
Hi everyone,
I am conducting a product research again. So I have a question about the buoyancy profile in wetsuits. Are the 3:5 wetsuits more popular than the 4:4? Does it really help with sinking legs and are there a lot of people who want this feature.
The vast majority of triathletes will benefit from a 3:5 profile (maybe even more extreme than that, e.g. 2:5 or 1:5). Yes it really does help raise the legs. The people who won’t benefit are the very fast swimmers (ex high school or ex collegiate or people who’ve worked their ass off for years) but if you look at the distribution of swim times at most races you’ll see that sub 20/1500m is pretty rare. Probably less than 5% of competitors.
^^^^^^This.
95% of triathletes are better off in a 3:5 than a 4:4.
I have found over the years swimming in literally 100’s of wetsuits, and swimming with 100’s of different people in wetsuits, that the more rubber you use, the faster the suit. It is only recently that companies have come out with different thickness wetsuits and touting one as being better than another. Then people pick up on that and begin to assign so and so swimmers will do better in this vs that.
Basic floating principal is that the higher you float, the faster you swim(all things being equal of course). I see no advantage to using less rubber anywhere on a wetsuit, and the whole body position thing is really just made up. Just float all yourself high, you will swim fastest. But of course companies need to reinvent the wetsuit every 5 or so years, and the latest version is to mix up thinner rubber.