SWIM SUITS

[Q.]

I know this has been discussed before but I'm down to about one of the two pairs of trunks that I have worn for everything, vacation, lap swimming, going to the river, etc. They are both Speedo brand but are the shorts-looking kind. However, I can't find anything that doesn't hang down to your knees anymore!!!

On the Total Immersion discussion site, a couple of people have recommended Speedo's Jammer style. I like the shorter leg but am still not totally convinced about the TIGHT versus LOOSE style.
http://www.speedousa.com/index.cfm/f...8439/search/1/

By the way, I'm looking for something to lap swim in. I'll keep my last swim trunks style for vacation and the river but it'll last longer if I have something else for the pool.

Anybody got any good leads on SWIM TRUNKS! Yes, I'm from the generation where basketball shorts were actually SHORT!

[ODB]

Jammers rock! I wear them for training and have baggies for recreation. I too am from the shorts are short generation but am learning to deal with the newer styles.

[Q.]

Is there a functional difference between the longer legs or the shorter ones like in the pic I posted the link to? They mention thigh support in the ads but I didn't know if that was for real or not.

[ODB]

Some like the muscle constriction or the long ones, some just like that they don't have to shave their legs to be competitive. Mine are like the shorter ones. I like those.

[RobLL]

Q - when you find the sort of swim suit you like buy two or three of them, they are the quirkiest thing to find off season. I had to look three months once to find one that fit, finally ended up getting a larger childs size. I now keep a drawer of them. If you wear a small, buy one whenever you see it, most stores will not carry them, including Costco.

[Q.]

Rob,

Yep, that's why I had two but I guess I should have bought more. I just assumed they would keep making 'em... wrong!

[swiminto]

Personally, I am not too keen on the Jammer style....the legs can ride up when doing certain strokes, plus, as they stretch out, the support for the boys is gone. When I wore a jammer, after a few weeks of training sessions, I would HAVE to put a speedo brief on under it.

I prefer to train in the Mesh Square Drag suit...it is mesh nylon, but they have a style that is just nylon and not the mesh type. The nylon is more chlorine resistant and retains its shape better then Lycra suits.

Just my .02 worth.

[Q.]

Originally Posted by swiminto

Personally, I am not too keen on the Jammer style....the legs can ride up when doing certain strokes, plus, as they stretch out, the support for the boys is gone. When I wore a jammer, after a few weeks of training sessions, I would HAVE to put a speedo brief on under it.

I prefer to train in the Mesh Square Drag suit...it is mesh nylon, but they have a style that is just nylon and not the mesh type. The nylon is more chlorine resistant and retains its shape better then Lycra suits.

Just my .02 worth.

Something like this?
http://www.tyr.com/Merchant2/merchan...tegory_Code=36

How about this?
http://www.speedousa.com/index.cfm/f...-ca605661ba0e/
If not, show me please!

[swiminto]

The suit, in the second link, from Speedo is the exact suit that I train in.

[emartin10]

I train with the jammer style speedo, similar to the second link, but longer, like you were talking about before. Unlike swiminto, I really only train freestyle and backstroke. Occasionally I'll do fly, just to warm up. I haven't had problems with the legs riding or a lack of support.

E

[Q.]

Thanks for the feedback! So, if you train in a drag suit, do you compete in something else?

[emartin10]

I would. I always race in my TYR tri shorts.

E

[ODB]

Originally Posted by Q.

Thanks for the feedback! So, if you train in a drag suit, do you compete in something else?

Oh YES! Don't need no drag in a race!

[swiminto]

If I am racing in a meet then yes, I will switch my suits to a jammer or speedo brief, when swimming a freestyle event. If I am doing a Breastroke event, it is a speedo brief.

[gardener]

From the October 1 NY Times Magazine--

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/ma...nny_humor.html

October 1, 2006
THE FUNNY PAGES | TRUE LIFE TALES
Free Man in Paris
By PAULGREENBERG
* The sign over the pool attendant’s window depicted two men. The message was plain, irrefutable but unacceptable. The first wore normal bathing trunks. The second wore underwear. The normal man had an X through his crotch. The underwear man did not. My girlfriend squeezed my hand, and a bellow came out of my chest.
“No!”
“Yes, yes!” the attendant answered. “For health reasons.”
“You mean—”
“Yes. It is obligatory. For health reasons you cannot wear your American bathing suit. You must wear the maillot de bain sportif.”
A maillot de bain sportif. Translated, a “bathing suit for sport.” In other words, a Speedo.
I had been cooperative with the French. I tolerated the common protest bof! and I learned to pronounce my oui on a breathy, Parisian inhale. When a local I had hired told me, “I will not do what you ask because it is not a part of my mission,” I just smiled. But the Speedo was my Maginot Line. No “health reason” would ever persuade me to wear a Lycra fig leaf in public.
My resistance wasn’t just cosmetic. By invoking Speedo law, the pool attendant had unwittingly summoned, madeleine-like, a disturbing remembrance. It was 1979. My divorced father and I were on a court-allotted August vacation along with my brother. Dad had started wearing a medallion, and his new favorite song was “Hot Stuff.” We ate Spaghetti-O’s from the can and played poker till midnight.
The fun ended on the third morning. Dad’s meditation timer sounded, and my brother and I waited on the deck. When the motel’s glass door finally slid open, shame permeated the moist air.
“But that’s underwear!”
“No,” Dad said, offering his newly defined profile. “It’s a Speedo.”
“Does it make you swim fast?”
?No. It makes you feel free.”
“Why isn’t it called a Freedo?”
He turned his back on us and walked over the dunes. My brother and I followed, heads held low. Dad strode ahead, widening the distance between us, and scanned the beach for action.
Now, decades later, I was obliged to show my own hot stuff all over Paris.
I phoned a fellow expat, hoping he would share my outrage at the Speedo law and the bogus “health reason” that pretended to justify it. But to my dismay, 10 years of a decadent Left Bank lifestyle had turned my friend into a fervent advocate of what the French call a penis cast.
“Look,” he said with trumped-up Gallic indignity, “an American swimsuit is simply shorts. A person could wear one all over the city — on a filthy bus, a park bench. And then he could just jump in the pool, covered in germs!”
Germs? Bof! The more I thought about it, the more my xenophobe-in-exile logic crystallized around the central point: The French didn’t care about germs. What the French cared about was sexiness. And one proven way of being officially sexy in France was to be in a uniform. The garbage men wore bright green uniforms; the phone company, bright blue. If you went jogging, you wore a jogging uniform. And so the Speedo law made perfect, if humiliating, sense. It satisfied the French uniform jones while at the same time institutionally mandating sexiness. The Speedo was in fact the official sexy uniform of the swimming pool.
As for me, I refused to enlist.
Six months of protest did not change pool policy. Moreover, my girlfriend, who normally answered no to the question “Am I fat?” observed one day that my strategy of replacing morning exercise with double croissants had generated a dimple below my right shoulder blade. Straining before the mirror to catch a glimpse, I lifted my head and stared in horror. Staring back was a man in early middle age, his gut rolling generously over his Jockey briefs. The resemblance was uncanny. It was my father circa 1979.
I bought my own maillot the next day. To my surprise, I felt quite free. Furthermore, I moved through the water at great speed. And over the weeks my Francophobia diminished as my gut shrank to a sleeker, more hydrodynamic plane. “The cheese maker is in great shape!” I thought, watching my neighborhood fromager slip out of the pool. Looking good in a Speedo takes some work, and perhaps this is the “health reason” the pool attendant was talking about.
My back dimple vanished. My Paris assignment ended. The taxi coming down the street the morning of my departure put a sad pinch in my chest. I took one last look at my Speedo, drying on the balcony. A penis cast on Long Island beaches would lead to many assumptions, and it seemed best just to leave it there.
But times change. America might someday regret its spurning of certain French positions. The taxi honked. The green-uniformed garbage men down below swept and hosed. Furtively, I stuffed my Speedo in my suitcase, wondering when I’d wear it next.
Paul Greenberg is the author of the novel “Leaving Katya.”