Suit Talk with Dr. Stager, Pt. 1 : Speakers & Interviews

Mark? Are you out there Mark? I kinda liked your mustache. In fact, I gotta ask - why the heck did you shave it off? But goggles? Are you telling me you didn't wear goggles? Man. I feel for you bro. I wont even take a shower without mine! I guess to be serious here... you are exactly right. It is about who touches first. If all competitors wear this new technology then what have we proven? And what difference does it make? It only is effective if only some swimmers have access and not all swimmers. All we have done is create a "have and have not" scenario. Kinda like the weapons race during the "cold war". And who got rich on that one?

Who said anything about being intelligent? If I was intelligent I'd be making and manufacturing supposedly "squeezy and floaty" suits to the swimming community. While everyone else is left arguing about mechanism and rules, I'd be cashing in at my local bank buying up cheap stocks and empty houses. Or, making sure nobody else can wiggle through the holes I found in the rule book and make a similar killing. Me intelligent. I beg to differ!

Well guy, no... there were not suits like this prior to 2008. Not even Gen I (2000) and Gen II (2004). It is the "neoprene" like material and the impermeability of multiple layers that is the essence of all of this controversy. The aquablade is just another lycra spandex suit and does not exceed any existent rules on not aiding performance or altering buoyancy. Nuff said.

I hope you are kidding! My point is this... Mike could be ( should be) seen as an outlier. FYI, there just happens to be a book now on the NY Times best sellers list about that very thing. As a result, Michael skews the data making our predictions less valid. From a research perspective we'd rather deal with a population, or a sample of the population so as to able to generalize to all swimmers. Because of Phelps, our ability to generalize is weakened. But. The problem with the newest suits really comes down to - less about great coaching - and commitment- and talent and hard work and more about what you or your team can afford to wear. And with the economy being what it is... athletic directors will have an easier time than ever pulling the plug on a non revenue sport when faced with a $40,000 suit request from the coach. And the problem with that is with competitive swimming gone, I'll have to find something else to do. Hmmmmm. I'm not a bad mechanic. Anybody seen my crescent wrench?

He said there were no suits like this before 2000, but how about the aquablade? a full body racing suit that came out in 1996

Because scientists are intelligent enough to know that conclusions pertaining to "squeezing tightly" and "seems to float", or compression and buoyancy, cannot be drawn without the analysis of data. So we can't say that one is more squeezy or floaty than another...but hopefully the Counsilman Center has something to measure the squeezy and floaty dynamics...

Im so glad someone is looking into this with reason and numbers.

We all know the suit helps and it affects different people in different ways, but we will never know exactly how much.
Personally, I feel that coaches and swimmers should get more of the credit that's going to Speedo Tyr and BlueSeventy.
One concern though, is that there seems to be two kinds of suits--one that squeezes tight (tyr speedo, arena) and one that seems to float (blueseventy). Dr. Stager didn't seem to address these separately.

You can say what if all day. What if Mark Spitz wore goggles and and shaved that ridiculous mustache? Things change but at the end of the day it's still about racing and getting your hand on the wall first.

thank you, you're very kind, unlike some people

John Doe, please refrain from using this site unless you have comments on swimming and not attacking individual flo swim members.

@john doe, i'm kinda new to floswimming, only been here for about, less than a year

it is not surprisng at all that sprinters benefits more from the suits. it is just simply physics. Sprinters travel at much higher speeds. The power and resistance go up with the square of the speed. So when the speed doubles, the resistance will be four folds higher, so is the power required to generate that kind of speed. Therefore, the benefit of the suits will also be magnified at sprinting speeds.

In my experience sprinter tend to be heavier in the water to begin with...denser muscles, more muscles fast twitch muscle fiber vs. slow twitch etc....so it makes sense that make the less buoyant type out of the two would show improvement. For that reason it also makes sense that men would see greater effect than women. Women have a greater percentage of body fat on average than men even in competitive athletics.

Great interview...love then new reply etc. tools....This may be one of the most important interview done on floswimming so far. I hope it opens some eyes.

this has to be the most disscussed topic on floswimming

LOL! So statistically, being Michael Phelps is an unfair advantage! ;)

what if they had a huge meet where top swimmers in various events raced in speedos to compare the difference between either swimmers just getting better v. the suits making swimmers better

@everyone but garrett
I do what i want

Hey Garret, I don't know how much longer you're going to be in the indiana area, but you should come check out Notre Dame vs. Northwestern at Notre Dame on Friday, Jan 16th. The meet starts at 5 pm. It would be great to have you there!

First of all, no need for this @ stuff... Let's use the new comment system. Second, how the new technology affects different types of swimmers is my next question in part 2.... coming up tomorrow.

I like the interview especially the thought process that Dr. Stager has... excellent interview.

@david schultz and chris desantis,
another possibility as to why it affects sprinters more has to do with what i believe sean hutchinson said in another interview, and that is that many sprinters with too much muscle mass to move well through the water were abele to benefit from the buoyancy because now that muscles mass is less of a hindrance due to the added lift provided by the suit

when he says compression may now be a factor it is to say compression of the muscles does not improve muscular performance, and that does not concern the effects of surface anatomy

Some thoughts-
It is somewhat of a contradiction to say that compression is not a factor and then to say that the redesigning of the surface anatomy may help performance. It is probably near impossible to quantify with any certainty how the different traits of the different suits are enhancing the performances. They are all different in some form or fashion yet they are all (tyr, speedo, blue seventy and maybe others) enhancing the performances of the athletes yet they are all a little different. Maybe some work better for others because of the traits they offer or maybe they work better just because of fit and individual comfort. The bottom line issue is where does FINA draw the line on continual improvements moving forward. I don't see how they can undo what they have done. What is in the market is in the market for good. Somewhat disappointing that some memorable performances and records of years past get wiped out in a singular decision to allow this "new technology" to skew results so dramatically. It opens the door for how fast would _________ have been in a new suit? Once everyone adjusts to the paradigm shift of the new suits hopefully we can curtail any more drastic performance enhancing changes. I.e. new technology in suits.

@David Schultz,

Not necessarily. The impact on gross time should be greater for distance events. There is no way to account for the fact that Grant Hackett IMO just declined heavily over that time period. If you look at someone like Ous Mellouli or Erik Vendt and their improvement it makes more sense.
Now it may in fact be true that the % of time dropped was still greater for sprinters. My theory on this is that sprinters, because they reached a higher top speed would benefit more % from buoyancy because the buoyancy of the suit acts as a multiplier for the natural lift sprinters get from swimming really fast. Does that make sense?

He claims that buoyancy has a greater impact than compression. Does this mean that the blueseventy is faster than the LZR?

When he says "redesigning surface anatomy," it reminded me of this: (I also just wanted to try out the video comment thing). click on the speaker thingie. Hopefully I don't offend anyone

Two things seem in conflict regarding buoyancy. If buoyancy is likely the main asset, why wouldn't distance events see as much drastic improvement (2004-2008) as sprint events? Wouldn't distance events benefit from buoayancy as much if not more than sprint events?

Nice to see someone analyze this issue, rather than just whine about it (are you reading Craig Lord?) It will be interesting to see if the buoyancy issue can be proven as the main point of success for the garments.