Anonymous wrote:I have a 21 year old (D3) college swimmer who has been wearing tech suits since he was 12 (before the rule changed). the less expensive ones last longer. Unfortunately, as they get older and better, the suits are more expensive and wear out after about three weekend meets. My swimmer likes to maintain his by wearing older tech suits for prelims and the newest ones for finals only. He usually gets two new ones per year.

Thanks, I am going to suggest this to my kid

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Anonymous wrote:At what point is a 12&U posting fast enough times that a tech suit will make a difference? I'm thinking here of the physics/drag, not of the comfort/psychological benefit (which I don't doubt could be genuine). Curious!

A coach once described it this way to my child: imagine a cake. It has no icing and tastes really, really good. If you add just so-so icing to it, it is still pretty good. If you add amazing icing to it, it will taste really good. And if your cake was terrible to begin with, no amount of icing will fix it.

Being a good swimmer is the cake. The suit is the icing. It has a very small effect beyond a psychological one, but when you are very good, that small effect matters.

I like this analogy! For the 12Us, most of the kids at the champs meets wear them, so that is usually the entry point for tech suits because the kid making one of those meets for the 1st time sees all the other kids wearing them. Then those kids wear them to their regular meets (PVS Opens, etc.), which is how you end up with whole swaths of a particular team wearing them, even the swimmers who won’t come close to making meets with cut times.

I tell my swimmers to save them for championship meets or later in the season if there is an event that they have not qualified for and need to. I want them qualifying in a regular suit, so when they "suit up" it will be a mental push.

NP I hope you are a coach not a parent.

This is our team’s policy - only for championship meets or meets with q times and prelims/finals. I support this - saves us all money from wearing out suits for regular meets

I have a 21 year old (D3) college swimmer who has been wearing tech suits since he was 12 (before the rule changed). the less expensive ones last longer. Unfortunately, as they get older and better, the suits are more expensive and wear out after about three weekend meets. My swimmer likes to maintain his by wearing older tech suits for prelims and the newest ones for finals only. He usually gets two new ones per year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At what point is a 12&U posting fast enough times that a tech suit will make a difference? I'm thinking here of the physics/drag, not of the comfort/psychological benefit (which I don't doubt could be genuine). Curious!

A coach once described it this way to my child: imagine a cake. It has no icing and tastes really, really good. If you add just so-so icing to it, it is still pretty good. If you add amazing icing to it, it will taste really good. And if your cake was terrible to begin with, no amount of icing will fix it.

Being a good swimmer is the cake. The suit is the icing. It has a very small effect beyond a psychological one, but when you are very good, that small effect matters.

I like this analogy! For the 12Us, most of the kids at the champs meets wear them, so that is usually the entry point for tech suits because the kid making one of those meets for the 1st time sees all the other kids wearing them. Then those kids wear them to their regular meets (PVS Opens, etc.), which is how you end up with whole swaths of a particular team wearing them, even the swimmers who won’t come close to making meets with cut times.

I tell my swimmers to save them for championship meets or later in the season if there is an event that they have not qualified for and need to. I want them qualifying in a regular suit, so when they "suit up" it will be a mental push.

NP I hope you are a coach not a parent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At what point is a 12&U posting fast enough times that a tech suit will make a difference? I'm thinking here of the physics/drag, not of the comfort/psychological benefit (which I don't doubt could be genuine). Curious!

A coach once described it this way to my child: imagine a cake. It has no icing and tastes really, really good. If you add just so-so icing to it, it is still pretty good. If you add amazing icing to it, it will taste really good. And if your cake was terrible to begin with, no amount of icing will fix it.

Being a good swimmer is the cake. The suit is the icing. It has a very small effect beyond a psychological one, but when you are very good, that small effect matters.

I like this analogy! For the 12Us, most of the kids at the champs meets wear them, so that is usually the entry point for tech suits because the kid making one of those meets for the 1st time sees all the other kids wearing them. Then those kids wear them to their regular meets (PVS Opens, etc.), which is how you end up with whole swaths of a particular team wearing them, even the swimmers who won’t come close to making meets with cut times.

I tell my swimmers to save them for championship meets or later in the season if there is an event that they have not qualified for and need to. I want them qualifying in a regular suit, so when they "suit up" it will be a mental push.

A slow swimmer in a tech suit is a bold move. Kids will make fun of your kid if they get decked out in the best gear you can buy and then post B times

I’ve never seen this. My DC has worn one to get a cut and may post a slow time in a stroke that is her weakest simply because they can’t change in and out of a tech suit during a meet. Few kids pull top times in all strokes.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At what point is a 12&U posting fast enough times that a tech suit will make a difference? I'm thinking here of the physics/drag, not of the comfort/psychological benefit (which I don't doubt could be genuine). Curious!

A coach once described it this way to my child: imagine a cake. It has no icing and tastes really, really good. If you add just so-so icing to it, it is still pretty good. If you add amazing icing to it, it will taste really good. And if your cake was terrible to begin with, no amount of icing will fix it.

Being a good swimmer is the cake. The suit is the icing. It has a very small effect beyond a psychological one, but when you are very good, that small effect matters.

I like this analogy! For the 12Us, most of the kids at the champs meets wear them, so that is usually the entry point for tech suits because the kid making one of those meets for the 1st time sees all the other kids wearing them. Then those kids wear them to their regular meets (PVS Opens, etc.), which is how you end up with whole swaths of a particular team wearing them, even the swimmers who won’t come close to making meets with cut times.

I tell my swimmers to save them for championship meets or later in the season if there is an event that they have not qualified for and need to. I want them qualifying in a regular suit, so when they "suit up" it will be a mental push.

A slow swimmer in a tech suit is a bold move. Kids will make fun of your kid if they get decked out in the best gear you can buy and then post B times

NP - well, then I hope you would correct those kids if you observed that dynamic. It's like thinking that slow runners don't deserve high quality running shoes. Snobbery around athletic performance is poor sportsmanship.

Clowning in posers buying expensive gear is always in style.

12u suits are not tech suits. They are race suits that are mostly made of polyamides(nylon), polyester, and/or spandex. I know that kids like to call them tech suits (my 11 year old does), but they are not the same. He wore his st powerskin until it was too small and fraying at the seat (probably more from sitting on concrete than from actual wear) and I believe it lasted 18 months. They are pretty sturdy. 13+ tech suits are thin and alarmingly fragile. My 16 year old has already churned through 4 suits since he started wearing them at 14.

Tech suits give a mentality to kids to help push them to be better, no matter how good or bad they are. Wearing a tech suit even for b finals or c finals makes swimmers want to be in the a finals. It gives them motivation to practice even harder so they can eventually accomplish that goal.