When watching the olympic swimming its interesting the special swim suits they wear which I guess reduce drag.
Here is my question. Lets just suppose, all the swimmers agreed to do a competitive swimming event totally in the nude (except for goggles and maybe headgear). Now I’m not asking this to be dirty - it could be at night when the facility is cleared out. No cameras. Purely scientific.
Would there be a different outcome to a race by swimming nude? Would a certain body type be a disadvantage? I guess they might all swim a little slower but if they are all nude they would all be the same.
I have never worn a competitive swim suit but I have swam nude many times. You can swim noticeably faster nude than you can with a standard swimsuit on. Normal swimsuits introduce drag and reduce freedom of movement.
There are high-tech suits that have even lower resistance in water than human skin but they have been banned from most major competitions including the Olympics. Competitive swimmers actually wanted those versions to cover as much skin as possible before they were banned.
“More than 130 swimming world records have been broken from 2008 through 2009 by the use of these high-tech swimsuits, but as of the beginning of 2010, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) have unanimously voted to ban the use of these suits in official competition.[1] The banned suits are polyurethane based, and guidelines as of 2015 simply require that suits “Be permeable to water, contain no metal, rubber or polyurethane” as well as coverage requirements which ban the use of neck-to-ankle suits for both men’s and women’s competition.[2]”
The physiological response to chilly water proves that nature had swimming competitions high on its list of functional requirements for males. As soon as it senses you are in the water, it automatically retracts the anchor.
The banned suits were Buoyancy suits. Low-drag materials are still legal, but it’s not clear that they have major advantages: the suppliers claim up to 5%, independent testing suggests down to less than 0.5%.
No, they would not. Olympic swimmers have tested themselves nude and reported that while they felt like they were swimming faster they were noticeably slower. I’m not sure if that was compared to the current suits or the buoyancy suits. In my experience there’s no doubt that swimming in the nude is slower than swimming with a proper suit, especially with the modern suits.
These suits were quite thin, and worn very tight. Leading to some spectacular ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ while wearing them. The poster boy for this, of course, isRicky Berens, who had his suit split just before the start of the World Swimming Championship in Rome in 2009. FINA banned them soon after this public display.
About Rickt Berens
He was hoping to win this heat, but was a little behind all the way.
He had hoped to break the world record, but only got a little crack at it.
He still proved to be a buttress of support for his team.
After they qualified, the team went for a celebration dinner of rump roast.
… And way too many other jokes to include here.
What is the definition of a ‘proper suit’ though? I don’t doubt you in general but there has to be some sort of limit. Regular men’s bathing suits are like wet shorts and create significant drag. I would guess that they really do slow you down like a lesser version of swimming in wet jeans and a T-shirt. There isn’t much material on a Speedo type suit at all so I can believe they have little effect or a small positive one on swim time.
With women, I would still guess that typical one piece suits slow them down because they create more drag than bare skin. Is that not true? I am referring to the typical one piece bathing suit that you would expect to see someone wearing at the beach.
Why would you guess this? There’s no law of nature that says that human skin has the lowest possible drag coefficient in water. If anything, you’d think that evolutionary factors would prioritize other characteristics, like flexibility and durability. So it’s entirely possible that common synthetic fabrics create less drag than bare skin.
Obviously, much is going to depend not only on the fabric of the suit but on the cut, and since bathing suits designed for beachwear purposes aren’t built for speed, yeah, they may well tend to slow you down. But bathing suits designed for performance swimming? I see no reason to assume that they would create more drag than swimming in the nip.
Competitive swimmers don’t use those, so it’s not really relevant to the conversation. Racing suits not only don’t add drag, they lessen drag by smoothing out the body surface. Modern speed suits do so even better.
A lot of the competition suits are compression suits, they are tight and hard to put on. The jammer/knee length suits most wear in the Olympics are supposed to help, though I’m not sure why being tight helps that much. The women’s suits can really help pull in the breasts, I’ve known some well endowed women that you’d be hard to tell they were in a higher end suit. I imagine that they are not that comfortable though after awhile.
I own a few of those old tech suits, though not the ones that help with buoyancy, and they pull in the skin and help the streamline. Any kind of loose skin will slow you down, at least in high end competition. When I swim I can tell the difference between a workout suit and a suit most people wear.
As for the OP, I can imagine that swimming nude would be at least a slight bit slower, maybe not so much for the men, but I can’t imagine any kind of movement with the breasts not slowing a woman down at least a bit. If I remember, and I can talk to the right woman, I will ask her what they think at my next workout.
