Why am I slower in a wetsuit?

Triathlon Forum
1

Hi!
I’m having the same problem as last year, wetsuit swimming is making me slow…
As a former swimmer I have what you would call a pooltechnique. My frequency is slow and I glide on every stroke before starting a new one. Looks like I’m just gliding when I’m really going hard. I was a breast and butterfly swimmer and never really got the hang of swimming fast freestyle.

In the pool I do 15x100m @ 1.30. I’m in at around 1.20.
In a suit I’m comfortable around 1.30, but when I try to go faster it feels as I have no feeling for the water, the depth In OW makes me loose any feel for speed and it just feels stressing.

Last year I was in a zoot prophet, this year a freak of nature.
No different feeling in the suits

2

How often do you train in your wetsuit?

3

How does your wetsuit fit? Are you pulling it all the way up in the under arms? Are you experiencing more than minimal restriction?

Are you swimming in a yard or meter pool?

You mention in open water you are comfortable at 1:30 pace. In the pool you are coming in at 1:20, are you coming in at a comfortable pace, or are you pushing harder?

Is it the perceived effort that you are lacking and struggling with, or the actual effort?

I have a longer stroke as well with glide between each stroke, and this is actual a period where I can see my speed.

If you are lacking "feel’ for the water, a sleeveless suit is an option that could counteract that feeling.

jake

4

Hi!
I’m having the same problem as last year, wetsuit swimming is making me slow…
As a former swimmer I have what you would call a pooltechnique. My frequency is slow and I glide on every stroke before starting a new one. Looks like I’m just gliding when I’m really going hard. I was a breast and butterfly swimmer and never really got the hang of swimming fast freestyle.

In the pool I do 15x100m @ 1.30. I’m in at around 1.20.
In a suit I’m comfortable around 1.30, but when I try to go faster it feels as I have no feeling for the water, the depth In OW makes me loose any feel for speed and it just feels stressing.

Last year I was in a zoot prophet, this year a freak of nature.
No different feeling in the suits
Last race my back and arms filled up with water…I swear

5

Last year I averaged 2-3 times a week with my zoot. This year I have made plans of 4-5 times a week to get over the wetsuit problems.
My wetsuit fit is good, but not great. I´m 189cm and 76kg (skinny dude who eats 5-6000 calories a day struggling to keep my weight). My TYR Freak of Nature is medium/large. It seems fine in terms of length, but I can feel water under the zipper when I swim and it feels as if my triceps is not big enough (i know,haha) and water gets between the arm and the suit. I have considered trying a new one, medium but I wonder if its long enough.

I swim in a 25m pool and I´m pushing a bit with 1.20. When outside 1.30 feels like strong cruising. But I have no chance of doing 1.20 in a suit, I loose every bit of feel for the water and just it feels stressful.

Sleeveless would have been great, but this is Norway and I´m doing Norseman which at its worse could be 14 celsius (57 F)

6

Three things to consider if you are a better pool swimmer than OW. Your push off the wall may be better than you think, your wetsuit might not fit you well, your navigation in the open water might not be as good as you think. Two years ago I was in your boat, last year I went with a Desoto Speed tube and a sleeveless top…much faster.

7

I’m confused, are you saying that in the pool with a wetsuit on you have trouble swimming sub 1;30, or do you mean in the OW? If you are comparing speedo pool swimming with OW wetsuit swimming, that could be your problem right there, so which is it?

8

In a suit with ultra flexible neoprene I can basically rule out restriction, but it sounds like your wetsuit fit is not good. That is a problem. To be honest, that’s a lot of money to invest in a wetsuit if the fit isn’t ideal. I don’t mean to chastise your purchase here, but fit is very important, even in a $1200 suit. It sounds like you have a good bit of water flushing through your suit. A little bit is natural, a lot is not. The area it is most likely to come in is at the top of the zipper. If you can feel it in the arms, the sleeves are probably too loose. I don’t know the FOK sizing, but I’d put you in a medium based on your weight. The length of the suit could be an issue, but you won’t know unless you give it a shot. If that suit doesn’t fit, I’d recommend trying something else. Something interesting I have noticed is that the top triathlete swimmers from that brand aren’t swimming in the FOK. There is likely a reason behind this. I’m not on the inside track, nor do I want to bring negativity to another brand, but there has to be a reason.

That said, I do think that swimming in the suit more often is key. Swimming in a pool can be very familiar, but getting in the open water and covering yourself in neoprene could be considered a very foreign feeling. The more you do it, the more second nature it becomes.

You mention that swimming in the suit can feel stressful…? How so?

When you say you are losing feel, is it that you are not getting the pull with your catch that you do in the pool without a wetsuit? Is your stroke changing in open water? Does it slow down to be even longer with more glide? If so, perhaps speed up the turnover?

Do you swim with others? When/ if you do, do you swim faster?

I can understand how a perceived effort could seem like it is harder in open water without visual cues to tell you how fast you are going, but when you are swimming with others, pacing yourself could be easier…

jake

9

I’m also a competitive swimmer, I swim mainly fly and breaststroke like yourself and am the same height as you, but I do weigh more than you (88kg, not on my arms, ha!), and I have felt very similar reactions to swimming open water as you have described. I think there will be some water that is going to go in the suit regardless, but if it feels like it is weighing you down, then something is not right. I wear an Xterra Vortex, Medium Long suit, which is a bit tight (an arena carbon pro jammer is infinitely harder to put on however haha) but I can still get it on with minimal difficulty, and I don’t imagine it’d be too radically different from the one you have in terms of size. The size you have is most likely ok I would estimate, you may want to consider a medium for your next purchase if you want to try a different size. If you went down to a medium, I don’t imagine that it would be too radically short for you, but you don’t know for sure until you try it on (and if it is just shave your legs :slight_smile: ).

I have found that in regards to comparing pool times to open water, best case scenario is adding on 10% of the pool time to get an open water time, which is about what you have done. I think this is normal, all my teammates that do triathlons add on at least that much time if not more from their pool times, and they are all different swimmer types (breaststroke sprint, freestyle sprint, distance free/im). I think some factors to this are the fact that: there is more disturbance in the water from not having lane ropes and waves, you do not have walls (huge difference!!!), the water being colder, every time you lift your head to sight and having to move around other swimmers makes a difference too. Also, water outside to me actually feels heavier to move through, though I don’t have a good explanation for this. Maybe it’s because my wetsuit sleeves are too tight? My next wetsuit I’m going to go sleeveless to see what it’s like, and you may want to give that a shot too. Even if the water is 57F, once you’d get up and moving past the first several hundred yards, I bet you’d be warm enough to feel fine.

Also in terms of technique, another breaststroke swimmer turned triathlete friend of mine (who has won plenty of sprints), had me shorten my stroke length (which is absolutely contradictory to what you want to do in the pool), had me swim with a higher turnover, getting the most propulsion out of the last phase of the stroke where you push through with your triceps. I was able to drop time, swim more efficiently and save more energy for the later parts of the race by doing this. I feel this is a very effective strategy for openwater swimming and would advise you to try that out as well.

I hope this helps you out, and if you end up trying any of this, let us know how it goes!

10

I swim a similar time to you in the pool without a wetsuit. With a wetsuit I will drop about 5 seconds per 100 and take 2 fewer strokes per 50.
I swim with an Xterra Vector Pro have found that having a bit of water in the arms of my wetsuit aids in mobility.

Yes you do lose a lot of feel, just have to trust your muscle memory.

I also agree that having a higher turnover is likely to help, especially open water.

11

+1 on the higher turnover. Open water swimming is much more choppy and the swim style doesn’t have to be super smooth. When you consider the waves, wind, other swimmers, and maybe even the sun in your eyes, there is a lot more for your senses to take in as it is. If you look at a lot of the ITU guys for example who swim a 1500 in 15 minutes they don’t always look very ‘smooth’ while doing it. Like others said, rely on your muscle memory since you can’t feel as much and additionally work on the turnover.

12

The suit might be a bit big, I´m going to try the medium. The suit is part of the deal my team has with TYR, so I´m fortunate to not having to pay for it.
I too have registered names like Potts using the hurricane instead of the freak of nature suit, latest at alcatraz.

What I mean by stressful is mainly caused by me not being able to know how fast I swim. It feels like my arms are just cutting trough the water and that I´m getting nowhere. In shallow water it feels better when I can see the bottom and “see” my speed.
When with others I don´t feel very good. The guys that have trouble keeping up in the pool are now matching me when I´m going hard in OW.

I do try to up my turnover and shorten my glide phase, but it just feels messy. Maybe its all about hours, we will eventually find out. I hope on being amongst the first out of the water at Norseman this year and I will have to swim around 52-53 mins to do so.

13

I was/am a swimmer.

When I started in triathlon I got a sleeveless wetsuit.

It was much easier for me to transition to open water in a sleeveless wetsuit where I could still feel the water and there wasn’t really big drop off in speed from full suit to sleeveless.

14

Hi!
I’m having the same problem as last year, wetsuit swimming is making me slow…
As a former swimmer I have what you would call a pooltechnique. My frequency is slow and I glide on every stroke before starting a new one. Looks like I’m just gliding when I’m really going hard. I was a breast and butterfly swimmer and never really got the hang of swimming fast freestyle.

In the pool I do 15x100m @ 1.30. I’m in at around 1.20.
In a suit I’m comfortable around 1.30, but when I try to go faster it feels as I have no feeling for the water, the depth In OW makes me loose any feel for speed and it just feels stressing.

Last year I was in a zoot prophet, this year a freak of nature.
No different feeling in the suits

And what if it’s not the wetsuit but your swim style that is holding you back?
Check the SwimSmooth website. They have identified different swim types and 2 of them are Smooth and Swinger. As you’ll find a Smooth has a very nice style of swimming and is very good in the pool while a Swinger has a more choppy style of swimming but is extremely efficient in open water.
You’re saying here that you have a slow frequency and a long glide but this is not the most optimal way of swimming in open water.
Check out the Brownlee brothers swim style in open water. It’s not what you can call nice and smooth but very efficient.

I hope this helps you looking at a different angle to your problem.

.

15

I’d be interested to hear how the fit of the smaller suit it.

As for in the water, I think that a lot of this is likely in your head.

Some slower pool swimmers get a great deal of speed from a wetsuit. This is sometimes an unfortunate leveling of the playing field.

One good thing for you, is that if you have put in the yardage, you’ll be able to sustain that pace all day, whereas, some slower swimmers may not.

Have you tried swimming with your hands in fists while swimming in the wetsuit? This could show you the kind of propulsion you are seeing with your arms.

jake

16

I’ll come back to you on how the medium feels in comparason.
The fist drill is a good idea, haven’t though of that.

I’ll try the medium suit and two weeks with 4-5 sessions in OW, see how it goes. Focus on upping my frequency and drills

17

I’ll come back to you on how the medium feels in comparason.
The fist drill is a good idea, haven’t though of that. I’ll try the medium suit and two weeks with 4-5 sessions in OW, see how it goes. Focus on upping my frequency and drills

I think Mike200fly’s suggestion of trying a sleeveless wetsuit might be the ticket. I’ve only ever swum in a sleeveless so I don’t know how it would feel with sleeves on, but it sounds like it is seriously interfering with your feel for the water. With the water at 57-ish, I think you’d be OK for a 52-53 min swim in a sleeveless. I’ve done 25 min swims in 57 degree water with no wetsuit, so I think I’d be OK for 50-55 in a sleeveless, but I can’t say for sure. If you can find 57-ish water near where you live, you could just try an hour swim in the sleeveless and see how cold you feel at the end.

18

I’m 75kg and closer to 190cm tall, 57 degress for me is freezing :slight_smile:
.

19

I’m 75kg and closer to 190cm tall, 57 degress for me is freezing :slight_smile:

The 57 was freezing to me too as I’m about 188 cm and about 73 kg. Anyway, just a thought that perhaps the sleeveless might be your best solution.

20

Last year I was in a zoot prophet, this year a freak of nature.
No different feeling in the suits

I have always said that it is possible for rubber to be too stretchy. That is what is probably the case with your Freak (which is made of Yamamoto #40). You may need a smaller size in order to get a proper fit. We tested Yamamoto #40 years ago, and found that we needed make our wetsuits smaller in order to accommodate for the additional stretch. Smaller wetsuits = less rubber = less buoyancy.

I will not comment on the Zoot Prophet, as you already have.

Proper fitting and the correct wetsuit will definitely change you and YOU WILL SWIM FASTER.

If you ever interested in learning about T1 Wetsuits, send me an email.