I’ve always made it a practice to train in regular, baggy swim trunks rather than tight swimming jams or tri shorts or even worse, a speedo. My philosphy was wearing the baggy shorts and keeping the hair during training will make me feel, and in actuality be, a much faster swimmer on race day with no hair and a wetsuit or a tri race suit. I also figured that this could only build more strength in the water, which also would help me on race day.
Is this a good practice? All the other swimmers I see have the sleek swim stuff on, so I always wondered. Thanks.
Sort of like cycling with an open jacket to get a parachute effect to make you a faster cyclist? Sorry, I don’t buy your arguement. Admit the truth - you’re swimming in baggies because you’re too modest.
You’re right. I do an open water swim in my wetsuit about once a month to retain the feel of the water in my wetsuit. Maybe I should do more. It is just hard to find open water around here.
A guy in my swim class got lower back problems from swimming in baggy shorts. He tells everyone to avoid it and is quite adamant about it. Watch your back!
I don’t think you would say that if you saw me lubing up my krotch at my last race ;-). You are right though, the theory is the same as running backs and track stars running with weights and/or parachutes attached to them or setting your trainer resistance to high so that when you hit the flats it feels like nothing. Eddie George was famous for his workouts with a parachute. He always said he made him faster and you can’t disagree with those results.
I dont see how you could hold the same position in the water with baggy shorts unless you constantly use a bouy.
Maybe if you are a very very fast swimmer with perfect form adding some resistance could help. But I dont think it would help as much as high intensity paddle/fins work, or swimming with a band.
But then again, what Tri’s are you winning coming out of the water?
so tell us about your results and the benefits you are finding. are you indeed stronger from doing this?
i’m thinking you are going to be making stroke and glide adjustments among others to the drag, which may or may not be very equal. that in turn could do about as much harm, if not more, compared to the hoped for benefit.
You could also build strength in the water by swimming faster and longer.
If you are swimming with a lot of slower swimmers and want to stay with them then that would work for you. Personally I would use a drag suit for that.
Hmmm, I don’t know. I’ve never run experiments or compared, b/c I’ve always done this. I am definitely faster on race day in my wetsuit, but who isn’t.
My old swim coach used to swear that baggy trunks messed with your stroke. I don’t know if that’s true, but after wearing speedos and jammers for years, it feels really weird to swim in regular trunks. If you really want to train with a suit that has extra resistance, try polyester mesh shorts like these: http://www.swimoutlet.com/product_p/1609.htm. Yeah, they look like booty shorts, but they work.
Also, if you look around, you can find some shorts like the ones in the link except they have pockets all around the suit. Those bastards will give you a killer workout.
No. No elite swimmer trains in baggy shorts, no intermediate swimmers train in baggy shorts. Only self-concious 10-year olds wear baggy shorts (except nowadays the fad is to wear a jammer… still stupid because that tan isn’t going to go away by covering it up!).
Use a regular suit and add more yardage. If you’re kicking properly baggy shorts also restrict your leg movements. If you’re not kicking properly then you’ll never learn how to kick properly wearing baggy shorts. Once you get some decent swim times then you CAN add a drag suit if you like (like an above poster gave a link to), but even that is not widely adopted (most elite swimmers just go with the speedo).
Are we the only country in the world that wears those big baggy shorts. They are not for swimming they are for hanging out at the beach, they stay wet, get cold, rub your legs if you try to run in them.
It reminds me of people who wear running shorts over their tights in the winter. Where do these things start.
In our culture it seems that women styles are to wear very little and men oversized everything. I could care less about the style but what works in sport and oversized stuff usually doesn’t work well.
Hyrdodynamic resistance increases as a square of the speed. As does aerodynamic resistance on a bike. Therefore the faster you swim the more important good technique is. If you are swimming at 3Kph instead of 4Kph (round numbers) then you will not feel the correct resistance and more importantly your technique will not adjust accordingly.
We’ve thrashed to death the fact that the most important thing in swimming is pure volume. More is More ;-). However that is not at the expense of all speed work.
Hence, it makes sense in swim sessions to do work at faster speeds to ensure the development of good technique to combat resistance.
Thus the following items appear somewhere in most training plans
- Fins, Paddles
- Pull Boys
- 100m, 200m 400m sprint sets
- Wetsuit or full body swimsuit if the pool allows it.
Nice idea, but you also need to train in what you plan to race in. Both training practices have a purpose.
I train what I race in in swimming, biking and running - and I am perplexed to see that I am almost always the ONLY one on the trail running in tri-shorts. For one, I don’t see why tri-shorts have never caught on with runners; I trained in tri-shorts all year last year training for Alcatraz and IMFL, and never once used Body Glide and never once chaffed. (Seals use tri-shorts during hell week for this reason). And any time I ever wear running shorts, I ALWAYS chaffe at the seams.
Second, I am always surprised to see fellow triathletes wearing those little running shorts? It seems like they would know better.
I don’t know man. I wasn’t really worried about style all that much. I just swim in what I happen to have. As for staying wet etc, I don’t wear the shorts at work after my swim nor would I ever try to run in them (do people really try to run in swim shorts), so it really doesn’t matter. They go into the wash at the YMCA and they bring them back to me clean and dry as a whistle.
As for the skimpy vs. oversized, personally I would rather see, as I think most of society would, a woman’s body in a skimpy suit rather than some hairy, misproportioned men’s body in a small speedo with his gut hanging over the shorts (which is the average male body over the age of 30), but maybe that’s just me.
I swim at the beach. When I am done I often do a run or bike brick. Why do you think that because you don’t do something no one does. I really like swimming in the ocean then do some running when I get hot I swim some more.
I don’t know that mens body’s are ugly, or that women’s body’s stay in shape longer. Why is a 40 year old womens body ok in a small suit and a 40 year old mans body not. Sounds sexist to me. Why do you think covering up an extra 5-6 inches will make a difference? Ugly is ugly, in shape is in shape. My point is wear what works , I don’t run in cut off jeans,bike in baggy clothes, swim in those big baggy shorts if you do it’s ok with me. I hear people say all the time " I would never bike in that spandex" I wonder why, if enough people feel the way you do then I guess only women can bike in spandex
. In all seriousness though, I could do both, faster, longer with slower shorts and hair.