What Swimmers Wear

To add on to not only the idea of competitive swimming, but also swim jargon, here’s what swimmers wear or use and why:

Swimsuit: The suit covers the skin for modesty. Competitive swimwear seeks to improve upon bare human skin for a speed advantage. For extra speed, a swimmer wears a body suit, which has rubber or plastic bumps that break up the water close to the body and provides a small amount of thrust—just barely enough to help a swimmer swim faster.

Swim Cap: Swimmers wear caps in order to keep hair out of the way in order to reduce drag. Caps can be made of latex, silicone, or spandex.

Goggles: Goggles help to keep the chlorine and water out of a swimmer’s eyes. Goggles are often tinted in order to counteract glare at outdoor pools. Some goggles even are prescribed because it’s hard to keep contacts in while swimming, so wearing prescription goggles is easier.

During swimming, men usually wear briefs or jammers and usually swim bare-chested unless they are wearing a full body suit. There has been much controversy after the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, when many Olympic swimmers broke records an unprecedented number of times using revolutionary swimsuits. To highlight the issue, considering that it is rare to break world records, but in 2008, 70 world records were broken in one year, and 66 Olympic records were broken in one Olympic Games. Despite many of his records having been won in these suits, Michael Phelps stated that he might boycott the competition after his record was beaten by another swimmer with a more advanced suit.

As of New Year's Day 2010, men are only allowed to wear suits from the waist to above the knees. They are also only permitted to wear one piece of swimwear; they cannot wear speedos underneath jammers. This rule was enacted after the controversy in the Beijing Olympics and Rome World Championships.

Women wear one-piece suits with different backs for competition, though there are two-piece suits that can be worn to compete as well. Backs vary mainly in strap thickness and geometric design. Most common styles include: racerback, axel back, corset, diamondback, and butterfly-back/Fly-Back. There are also different style lengths: three-quarter length (reaches the knees), regular length (shoulders to hips), and bikini style (two-piece). Also as of New Year's 2010, in competition, women are only allowed to wear suits that do not go past the knees or shoulders

Drag shorts like drag suits are worn in training and are also used to increase drag so that when taken off in racing it feels easier and the wearer feels less resistance. Other forms of drag wear include nylons, old suits, and T-shirts; the point is to increase friction in the water to build strength during training, and increase speed once drag items are removed for competition. Drag wear is not normally worn during competitions.