Choosing a Swimsuit for Serious Swimming

Video Transcript

"I'm Stephen Taylor, endurance coach and fitness trainer. My company is called STtrainer.com. I'm here to talk about the appropriate swimsuit to wear for serious swimming. A proper swimming suit for serious swim training are several options. For male, you can wear the traditional Speedo brief style swimsuit. But a lot of people aren't comfortable wearing something that's that revealing. Fortunately there are several other options. One option is a jammer style or trisuit style swimsuit which I'll show an example of here. And the feature here is that this swimsuit has a longer inseam so it's a little more modest. It covers up a little bit more of your hips and legs. This one is designed for triathlon and it has an extra pad on the seat of it for also cycling and running. They come for swimming without the pad in 'em. Here is my personal preference. This is called a drag suit. And you'll notice that the drag suit has on it a textured surface that creates more drag. It gives you more resistance while you're swimming. One thing that a male should not wear for serious swimming is a traditional pair of swim trunks that are long and lose, and baggy because that creates too much resistance. And you're clearly not serious about swimming if you're wearing those during your training session. For females, the options are a little more limited but it would be typically a one or two piece competitive style swimsuits. One other piece of swimsuit apparel that highly competitive swimmers wear is hydrodynamic swim skins that have revolutionized competitive swimming in the past couple of years. These are suits that have a extra slippery material and they cover most or all of the body of the swimmer. Most athletes, high school, college level of swimming, fitness swimmers or triathletes probably don't need to worry about these because they're highly expensive, they're very fragile, and they're of questionable competitive legality in the sport of swimming. So if you're serious about swimming training, be sure to get an appropriate swimsuit."