Over 6 Years of Fun in Wet Clothes

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Swimming

Book Tip:
Welcome to our swimming section and photo service. The Olympics pictures come from a video feed via satellite, hence their quality is not as good as our other photos. However, they still convey the feeling and the ideas. Although some of you may not consider Lycra/Spandex suits as part of the wetlook scene, there are many who just love it. This section is for those readers.

Swimming Research

Lactate levels vary with different training conditions. Find out how to use clothes for your swimming training.

Ten moderately trained male swimmers volunteered to take part in a recent study. They were divided into two groups:

1. five swimmers swam the front crawl stroke (crawl stroke group)
2. five swam the breaststroke (breaststroke group)

All subjects swam wearing conventional swimsuits, typically used by competitive swimmers (swimsuit); they also wore training shirts, pants, and shoes (training clothes).

Both groups would swim as fast as they could for 60 seconds, first wearing training clothes and then wearing swimsuits.

During each swimming period the measurements taken were:

1. swimming speed
2. stroke rates
3. distance covered per stroke
4. heart rate
5. oxygen intake

Peak ammonia and lactate concentrations in the blood were measured after each swimming exercise, wearing a swimsuit and training clothes.

This study demonstrated that the average speed decreased considerably when the subjects wore training clothes compared to wearing swimsuits in both the crawl stroke and breaststroke groups.

Speed
The average swimming speed wearing training clothes decreased much more in the crawl stroke than in the breaststroke in comparison with wearing swimsuits.

Stroke Rates
The stroke rates of swimmers wearing training clothes were lower than those wearing swimsuits in the crawl stroke, however, there was no significant stroke difference found in the breaststroke.

Distance
The distance covered per stroke of those wearing training clothes was shorter than those wearing swimsuits in the crawl stroke and the breaststroke.

Heart Rate & Oxygen Uptake
Both the heart rate and the oxygen uptake during the swimming exercise were not significantly different between those subjects wearing training clothes and swimsuits in the crawl stroke and in the breaststroke.

Ammonia & Lactate
The peak blood ammonia and lactate concentrations after swimming with swimsuits were significantly higher than with training clothes in the crawl stroke. However, there were no significant differences in the blood ammonia and lactate concentrations between swimmers wearing training clothes and swimsuits in the breaststroke.

Findings
These findings demonstrated that the decrease of the average speed in the crawl stroke wearing training clothes might be due to the decrease in the stroke rate and distance per stroke. It could also be explained by the decrease of glycogen break down and the purine nucleotide degradation.

What does that mean for us?
Lactate is what makes your muscles go tired and lowers your training efficiency. Keeping it low is an advantage. The front crawl stroke in training clothes thus seems to yield the highest load on the muscles while not wearing them out as quickly due to lower blood ammonia and lactate concentrations.

Interval Training
You can enhance this effect with interval training. Take short breaks (10-20 seconds) between each length to allow the blood to remove some of the lactate from your muscles. You will then be able to swim another length at a higher speed and muscle effort.