SwimSwam Pulse is a recurring feature tracking and analyzing the results of our periodic A3 Performance Polls. You can cast your vote in our newest poll on the SwimSwam homepage, about halfway down the page on the right side, or you can find the poll embedded at the bottom of this post.
Our most recent poll asked SwimSwam readers whether tech suit use should be restricted at younger ages:
RESULTS
Question: Should there be bans on tech suits in younger age groups?
- Yes – 56.2%
- No – 43.8%
Votes were very split on this issue, with just 62 more votes favoring bans than opposing them. The issue of tech suits for young swimmers seems to arise every time we report on a National Age Group record for swimmers in the 11-12 or 10 & Under age groups. The main concerns are generally money-based – having tech suits legal in younger age groups can cause parents to spend more on tech suits that kids will potentially outgrow in a short amount of time, and some caution that allowing tech suits gives an unfair advantage to swimmers from wealthier families.
Others argue, though, that there is no rule requiring tech suits, meaning families that want to buy them are able to, while swimmers who swim without tech suits can still see the progressions in their own times and make improvements up until they reach an age where they want to use tech suits. The main counterargument, of course, is that if tech suits help boost the times of enough swimmers nationwide, cut times for major meets go down, indirectly making it more difficult for non-suited swimmers to keep up.
Our next poll is sure to be just as contentious, at least based on the comment section of our Top 10 Swim of 2016 Swammy Award. Below, cast your vote for the best individual swim of 2016, excluding relay swims and relay splits.
Below, vote in our new A3 Performance Poll, which asks voters to pick the best individual swim of the year 2016:
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The A3 Performance Poll is courtesy of A3 Performance, a SwimSwam partner
Where in the USA rule book does it and LSC can modify suit rules????? It doesnt! You want to change it, it needs to be done at the USA level not LSC to LSC
Perhaps this discussion needs to consider the scientific purpose for wearing a suit. Muscle compression and core stability is provided by these suits. A 10 & under usually doesn’t have the muscle development to warrant a suit. This is the true basis for why 10 & unders don’t need tech suits. They also provide a false sense of security for which athletes will miss the point of swimming. But, we’ll have this discussion until the cows come home. Bravo to the parents who say no and tell the kid to work harder versus I’m gonna make my 10 year old happy and feel included by buying them a $300 suit.
NBAC Is the only club to be a gold medal club all eighteen years since the inception of this USA Swimming Program. They do not allow age group swimmers under 13 to wear anything but the black Aquablade team suit. At 13 swimmers could elect to wear a Fast Skin II but needed sectional cuts to earn the right to wear a knee skin. NBAC swimmers would still compete well in meets like the Elite Showcase Classic in Clearwater,FL often as 10-12 yr olds being the only swimmer on the awards podium in a regular suit. As a parent I am greatful for this rule and I also think it gives the swimmer something to work towards. Overall I don’t… Read more »
Most age-groupers already don’t get to use all the other cool swimming stuff that’s just been coming out – fins on blocks! backstroke wedges! – so I mean, should prolly get rid of that stuff, too.
The age groupers are still learning how to do everything legally; starts, turns, strokes. Those extras aren’t really needed for the 10 & Unders. If 11 & Over kids are excelling in the motivational standards and are attending bigger meets, then let them have access to the “extras” if their family can afford it. (And “prolly” isn’t a word. It’s “probably”.)
I am largely indifferent to SwimSwam’s upvote/downvote system, but I ALWAYS downvote for pedantry.
Has anyone actually done the research on how much these suits cost to make? Without a suit company influencing the findings? I may be wrong but let’s address the real problem………GREED! I’m guessing these new suits cost way less to produce than the old suits that were NASA engineered with rubber material (way more expensive than current materials). The problem happened when manufacturers realized what we/the market were willing to pay for a suit. So when all the new rules came into place rather than adjusting the price of a tech suit based on cost to produce they have kept the price closer to the old prices rather than the pre-supersuit prices! If we really want to address this problem… Read more »
Pretty sure the old suits were cheap as hell. Speedo’s LZR was all NASA’d up, but turns out the smarter thing to do was just get rid of all that and go full rubber. (Which is why all those suits got banned! Speedo’s R&D budget was no longer an advantage, so…everyone else has gotta go.)
It kinda seems like I’m wearing a tinfoil hat on this one, but that’s absolutely a big part of what happened.
That, in conjunction with Bob Bowman had a tantrum and started throwing around ultimatums.
You also have to think about all the money that went into researching and testing out the suits. That’s mostly why they’re so expensive. They have to spend years perfecting the shape and the materials they use and learn how each one behaves in the water to then use the best ones to make the suit.
If their argument is it makes cuts harder then why not just ban all tech suits from all levels so it’s all fair
I’ve coached in a large urban area for 12 years and my swimmers span all socio-economic backgrounds. I can count on one hand the amount of times that a swimmer’s family couldn’t come up with at least an entry level tech suit (10-12 yr olds included). I’ve found that parents are more than willing to go the extra mile for their kids and don’t even consider the cost a burden…its just part of the sport. I think people also underestimate these lower income families in another way…Do you think they would actually want every other swimmer to punished due to someone else’s situation? I’ve never even had that idea once amongst my families!
Your experience is valid, don’t get me wrong, but my experience in swimming was very different. I graduated in 2009, right at the peak of the supersuit insanity. My family couldn’t even afford the team suit for my high school team (Aquablade), let alone a tech suit. I just had an uber cheap practice suit from swimoutlet that I raced in, and a dragsuit that I trained in. At state, sectionals, etc., I would borrow old suits from teammates with more affluent families. At state my senior year, I wore an old pair of FS2 legs (with at least a dozen swims on it and very little compression remaining) against kids wearing the brand new LZR, and I don’t think… Read more »
I’m a high school coach and none of my boys swim on a club team, but I still had 7 of them qualify for the state meet. I was able to scrape together enough tech suits donated from those who had recently graduated to get nearly all of them suited up for the state meet. My club swimming girls donated their old suits to the girls who didn’t swim for club teams. They may not have had the same compression as a new suit but the mental boost it gave all of those swimmers made a huge difference. One of my freshman boys dropped 6 seconds off of his 100 breaststroke and I think the confidence having the ‘supersuit’ gave… Read more »
This generation is all about going fast and hurrying through things; being fast is rude and unbecoming for youngsters and will be the down fall of this great country! Put those young whippersnappers in a burlap sack and let them swim as slow as possible; just like God intended!