Stretching wetsuits

Soak it in water a few days before your OWS. Also when you get in the water, let lotsa water get in and around the inside of the shoulders, arms, and legs. Then do some warmup strokes before actually starting your swim.

I find that if I have any tightness in the top part of my suit it is because I have not worked enough material up.  I start with working it up from the knees/hips giving me as much as I  can get to then work up through my waist and finally up around my shoulders.  It is a process that can take a bit of time to keep working the material up.  If the suits fits OK overall when properly installed you really should have very little tightness in your upper body.

Edited by popsracer 2014-06-02 4:00 PM

I didn't soak it before yesterday's race, but I did get in the water early and warm up. I kept having to interrupt my warm up to try to adjust it (I was also unable to zip it without help). We were called out of the water before I could ever get it just the way I wanted. It really messed with the swim portion of the race because I felt so restricted.

I applied Triglide before I put on the suit then took my time to work everything in place. I even ended up with a little extra through my stomach. It was just too tight through the chest and shoulders and couldn't be pulled up anymore. It fit last year, but my chest is definitely expanding. I see the same thing with the way my bras fit.

Very interesting. It may be possible you need to pull more of the wetsuit arms up towards your shoulders such that your armpits are in contact with that part of the suit. You shouldn't necessarily need someone to zip up your suit for you. I also think you may need to break in the wetsuit some more. How many times have you used it?

It may be indeed you're bigger in the chest area such that you cannot use this wetsuit comfortably anymore.

You do not want lots of water inside your wetsuit before training or racing. It should not constrict around the shoulders/shoulder rotation at all. Pull it on starting low from the ankles up to your neck, down to wrists; over shoulders and snug up into armpits. Sounds too tight/small from what I am reading. Is it possible you gained weight since you bought it last year? How did it fit when you first tried it on?

I agree that it is possible that his wetsuit is too small but it is hard to know and I think pretty unlikely.

I personally believe that if you can zip your wetsuit yourself that it is probably too big for you. Wetsuits should fit tight. When you buy it and put it on, dry, in your house, your first thought should be, "there is no way I can tolerate something this tight....." If you think that, it still might be a size too big There are way more people swimming in wetsuits that are too big for them than wetsuits that are too small.

With that being said, there is a tremendous amount of variability in how wetsuits fit. I am on my fourth wetsuit and have finally reached wetsuit nirvana. It just fits right. There is no way I could zip it myself. I did back to back swims in my new wetsuit and my old wetsuit two weeks ago and I was amazed at how much better, and faster, the swim was in my new wetsuit (which is smaller than my old one but probably more flexible). If you would have asked me in the past I would have said the old wetsuit was perfect but now I know how wrong I was.

When you put on the wetsuit it should be pulled up to your crotch high enough that you might feel just a little bit violated....... Once it is over your shoulders and zipped you need to keep working the arms and upper body up on to your shoulders by pinching the suit and gently pulling it up. This is a several minute process. There are many youtube vidoes showing how, some better than others. Lastly, you want to get a little layer of water inside the wetsuit, down in to the arms and around the shoulders to lubricate the wetsuit so it can move a little bit on your skin and so you can start warming up that layer of water.

Couple things:

Sleeveless wetsuits are perfect for shoulder ROM, and the benefits from a buoyancy standpoint are nonexistent with a sleeved suit. I would suggest also look at other wetsuits as they are all very variable in fit, what might fit one person perfectly might not fit another, and the most expensive suit on a production line might not be the best fitting or the fastest either.

Curious about the breathing comment. Breathe to often? Like every stroke? IMO you can never breathe too much, your body requires oxygen and in endurance races that is paramount. Sacrificing oxygen seems a bit backwards to me.

If I have to buy a new wetsuit (I am trying to avoid the expense), I might try the sleeveless to help with the range of motion. It just seems a shame to buy a wetsuit and use it for less than a year.

With the breathing, every time I take a breath, my feet go down and my lower arm pushes down instead of back. Basically, my form goes to heck. It isn't about sacrificing oxygen, it is about training my lungs to hold more air and use it more efficiently to smooth out my stroke. For someone who grew up swimming recreationally, I really am a mess in the water. Both the swimming coach and the clinic instructor were triathletes, and they both told me almost identical things, so I don't have a reason to doubt them. The told me to work on increasing my lung capacity, among other things. It took surprisingly little effort to do so, and with the other changes I have gotten faster (I was MOP on Sunday's swim instead of my typical BOP), but it also made my ribcage expand.