10 Tips for Making Your Tech Suit Last

The tech suit is one of the most expensive investments you will ever make during your time as a competitive swimmer. Here’s some tips for making those expensive and best time-smashing suits last.

You’ve gone ahead and done it, or begged and begged your parents to pick one up for ya, and now it’s time to unleash all of your hard work while wrapped up in a tech suit designed by a bunch of space scientists in a lab somewhere.

You pull it gingerly out of the box, take a moment to think about how on earth you are going to squeeze in it, but it’s there, lurking…

The unavoidable peak of confidence that comes from holding a piece of expensive racing gear that is designed with one purpose and one purpose alone…

To help you go faster than you’ve ever gone before.

Inevitably, after a few swims you notice that it’s starting to stretch a little, or you snag it on something, or think it wise to wear it to practice for a few sessions, and suddenly that fancy new tech suit is looking a lot less new and a lot less techy.

Before you sheepishly head back to the local swim shop with a stack of Benjamins in your pocket, resolve to take better care of the suit.

Or if this is your first foray into the world of expensive racing suits pay special attention.

Take care of your tech suit and it will take care of you.

Here are 10 tips for making your tech suit last:

1. Don’t wear any more than you have to. Racing suits don’t last long. After about a dozen wears they begin to stretch and degrade fairly quickly. So yeah, don’t be the swimmer that wears a $600 LZR Racer X Kneeskin suit to practice.

2. Save them for the big meets. Unless you feel like burning through $400 for a new tech suit every couple of meets try to save your racing suits for the championship meets towards the end of your season.

3. Wear pants or shorts over the suit between races. Last thing you want to do is snag it on something. Avoid placing sharp objects around your suit. If you are particularly accident-prone consider bubble-wrapping yourself with Kevlar and stab-proof chain-mail.

4. Take it off slowly. If you’ve had a bad race resist the urge to rip it off as fast as you can. Don’t add a stretched suit to a bad swim.

5. Rinse it out with cold water in the shower. Avoid soap and shampizzle (even swimmer’s shampoos) on the suit. If you aren’t in the mood for a shower take it out of your swim bag when you get home and rinse it with cold water in the sink to get the chlorine out.

6. Put it in a towel and roll it up. Don’t wring it out or blow dry it.

See also: 6 Best Tech Suits for Breaststrokers

7. Do not put it in the dryer. Ever. Ever-ever. If you need to dry it between sessions lay out a towel when you get home or to the hotel room and let it air dry. Hot-breathe on it if necessary, but don’t put it in the dryer.

8. Put it on when you are completely dry. Putting on a wet tech suit requires pulling, yanking, and grimacing. Two of those things are not good for your suit.

9. Go to the bathroom before ya put it on. This is a toughie. Between the nerves and the 18 refills of your water bottle that you’ve anxiously been drinking going to the bathroom is inevitable. Time it so you don’t have to wrestle your way out of your suit before your race to hit the can.

See also: 6 Best Tech Suits for Women

10. Don’t hang it up to dry. The weight of the fabric, the clothes line or the hangers will often cause the suit to stretch. Remember what we talked about with rolling it up in a towel and laying it out?

Bonus tip: Cycle in your old tech suits to make the new one last longer. Use your older tech suits and jammers for preliminaries. It will help extend the shelf life of the new one you just bought.

Here’s a fun fact for ya: We recently put together a comprehensive tech suit guide that covers the background on why tech suits became all the rage (hint: the 2009 world championships have a lot to do with it), as well as a full tech buyer’s guide for swimmers that covers the major brands. Click here to give our tech suit guide a gander!

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sing
4 years ago

i snagged my brand new suit. any ways to fix it?

Arisha -swimmer
6 years ago

How do you shrink skins?

parent swimmers
6 years ago

For Male, do you wear tech brief before putting on the tech jammer suit?

kyle fong
Reply to  parent swimmers
6 years ago

No, because that wouldn’t do anything to help with the compression and drag resistance, which is what tech suits are for.

Skipper
7 years ago

If you have multiple swims in a session- should you change to a new suit each time ot leave it on(ladies taking down the shoulders obviously). Is taking it on and off worse for wear or leaving it on on to dry….. do you fully weat out one suit, or have multiple suits on the go.
Seen the one suit done for years, but now it seems like money is not a problem (or being wet is) and chop and change suits for each race.

Mikeh
7 years ago

“Go to the bathroom before ya put it on.”

OR…..you could just pee in the pool! (Blast of music)

Bwahahaha!!!

SwimKing
7 years ago

Or become an actually good swimmer at a national level. These suits are such a gimmick and waste of money for 99% of swimmers. Age groupers are just wasting their parents money by asking for these expensive suits.

Swummer
Reply to  SwimKing
7 years ago

I agree. However, I will say, as a collegiate swimmer, that tech suits do help me at my current level. Also, I think at the age group level, a suit is more for boosting your confidence than anything else. It’s hard to just “become a good swimmer”.

Swimmmer
7 years ago

#1 should obviously be don’t wear it at every meet you go to.

swamfan
7 years ago

This might be a dumb question, but why do people wear tech suits to practice? I never understood this.

pinodee
Reply to  swamfan
7 years ago

Sometimes my coach will have us suit up in practice and get on the blocks and race. Although we never use new suits, always just ones we’ve had from previous seasons. I wouldn’t see the point in a regular practice though, the whole point is when you put it on you feel fast! If you have it on all the time it kinda ruins the effect.

Just Keep Swimming
Reply to  pinodee
7 years ago

I would not be a happy camper if my child wore a $500 suit during practice!!!

Highschool Swimmer
Reply to  Just Keep Swimming
3 years ago

Sometimes the coaches make you put it on for sprints

College Swimmer
Reply to  swamfan
7 years ago

It is not a dumb question! As Pinodee said, when we wear them they are generally worn out. We will swim in our practice suit for a warm up set, do some heart rate stuff, open up the lungs then get out and put the suit on! The suit is worn to replicate race speed, race feel, and the race mind set. For example we suited up a few days ago (I wore an extremely used Arena Revo that was almost see through) and swam a intense set that consisted of 21 100s on 1:30 LCM, they were from a push and had to be fast. The suit aided in this set as it provided compression to my legs to… Read more »

FLSWIMMER19
Reply to  swamfan
7 years ago

YOLO

About Olivier Poirier-Leroy

Olivier Poirier-Leroy

Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer, swim coach, and best-selling author. His writing has been featured on USA Swimming, US Masters Swimming, NBC Sports Universal, the Olympic Channel, and much more. He has been involved in competitive swimming for most of his life. Starting off at the age of 6 …

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