How to prevent shoulder fatigue with full sleeve wetsuits?

Triathlon Forum
1

I’ll start out by saying that I am a poor swimmer and am new to swimming. My swimming has improved a lot however, I can now swim ~2000 yards nonstop in the pool at ~1:55/100 pace. Last year I bought a 2XU full sleeve wetsuit, but could not tolerate it. During sprint distance races, my arms felt like they wanted to fall off. I ended up buying a used sleeveless wetsuit and it worked well, no issues with shoulder fatigue. Since most of my Tri buddies said a full sleeve suit would be faster, plus to deal with many of the early season cold races, I purchased a full sleeve suit again this year. I tried out a handful of buddies suits ahead of time, and always noticed that my shoulders burned and became fatigued super fast.

Because of my problems with shoulder fatigue, I went pretty high end on my wetsuit to avoid this. I purchased the ROKA Maverick Pro. I must say, it is an amazing suit. I feel very comfortable in the suit, love many of the features, and it looks bad ass! When I first tested it out, it seemed perfect. No complaints of shoulder fatigue. But this was because I didn’t push the pace, I just glided along in the pool (it was mid winter when I made the purchase). I’ve now taken it in open water twice and I have noticed that if I try to get anywhere near my pool pace (~2:00/100 yards), my shoulders start to become quite fatigued. It is NOTHING like my previous 2XU suit and nothing like the others I have tried out. It is, however enough that I will likely choose my cheap sleeveless for most races, which doesn’t make sense when I have a $800 wetsuit!

I’ve always followed sizing charts to pick the right suit. I am 5’11, 152 lbs and went with the small/tall ROKA, which places me in the smaller end in both height and weight for that suit, so I’m sure I didn’t get a suit that is too small. Plus, I was able to zip it up myself, which is usually a sign that it is not too small!

I’m starting to think that it is just me. I am VERY new to swimming (less than 1 year of training). Last year I could not swim more than 100 yards straight. I have a fairly strong upper body (can do 20 pull-ups, rep my body weight in bench press, etc…) so know that pure upper body strength is not the problem, but I may be weak in swim specific upper body strength.

Have you found that full sleeve wetsuits are more comfortable on swimmers with more experience and more swim specific strength? Could I do something like use bands to help improve this?

I’ll take all the advice I get. If the shoulder fatigue doesn’t improve, I may have to sell the ROKA and stick with my $50 used sleeveless suit…

2

Same wet suit, 5/8 in taller, +1kg higher on weight with arms about .5-1in longer than normal for height.

I’ve stood next to a lot of people wearing this suit at a race. Most of them had more material below the shoulders both in the body and arms then i did. You need to pull wet suits up, any wet suit. For most people they don’t pull them up enough. After pulling up the torso to what you think is proper, bend over at the waist. See those wrinkles? Those need to be pulled up to the top of tyour body. It should be snug in your crotch. Then you need to pull all the extra material in the arms up above your shoulder joint.

80% of of wet suit problems can be fixed with installing it on yourself correctly.

I put this suit on for the first time right before a race, took me about 10 min or so to get it all pulled up where it should be. No issues when swimming, no shoulder fatigue. I dropped my entire wave at the first buoy and never saw any of them again until 2 cokes after finishing the race.

EDIT: lay off the weights, strength is almost never the solution to going faster in endurance sports

3

Yup - Pull it up!

Whenever I forget to wear my wetsuit properly, I get horrible shoulder fatigue. If, however, I take the time to pull it up as high as it goes against the crotch, then get in the water and adjust it once it’s a bit more slippery - it feels perfect.

4

Desert dude is right on about most wearing the Roka, or any suit for that matter, too low. Get that suit snug to the crotch.
You’ve got one of the stretchiest suits, it’s time to take full advantage of it!
Make sure your fingernails are trimmed. Get yourself some TriSlide. Spray your arms and shoulders generously (I get my lower legs too). There is alot of slack/stretchability in the arms that you need to pull towards the shoulders. The trislide will help big time. Sometimes you can just push up that extra sleeve material with an open hand, but I’ve found with my new, tighter fitting suit, that I need to grab at it to pull up. So again, make sure your fingernails are trimmed and also take your time. Your shoulders will be much happier.

5

A few things could be going on here. The others are right that you have to have a full one piece suit pulled all the way up in the crotch, or there can be a lot of pull on the shoulders. Other problem could be that you have a suit that is not suited for your torso. Unfortunately suit makers have to pick some general pattern for crotch to shoulder distance, and it is not one size fits all. I remember the old orca patterns were super short, so if you had any upper body length as compared to leg length, then you were just screwed.Others have taken the opposite approach and make them all long. Some are in the middle. Really hard to tell unless you can wear them all, or find some threads where it talks about torso length between different suits.

Or you could go the two piece DeSoto route(which i have done) and it does not matter since the top is not connected to the bottom. And you can also get a different size top if you need it, either because you are tall and skinny, or because you are a power lifter in your day job. This alleviates all the shoulder pull problems from the get go.

6

Agreed, spend the time to hike it up!

7

As the others said:

Step 1: pull it up
Step 2: pull it up some more
Step 3: once you’re in the water, pull it up even more.

Also, for me, a straighter arm recovery seems to help with shoulder fatigue.

8

Yeah, pull it up and I’ll add SWIM MORE!