News

If you have decided to take the plunge to invest in your first piece of performance swimwear, there are many factors to consider. We know that every second counts, so making small but important improvements to your next purchase will be to your advantage.

This is where the guide comes in. Let’s dive right in:

Performance Swimwear Features to Consider When Buying

Switching to performance swimwear can be a challenging decision, especially when it comes to researching the features to consider before purchasing a new suit. This is where Sporty Swim can support you. In this blog post, we will provide a straightforward guide to assist you in selecting the most suitable swimwear for your individual needs.

Pool vs Open-Water Swimming

Both open-water and pool swimming require different performance swimwear features. Open-water swimming demands specialist, resilient equipment to combat the challenges posed by cold temperatures, buoyancy requirements, and sun exposure. By contrast, pool swimwear is engineered to withstand chlorine resistance, prioritising lightweight materials and enhanced speed.

Competition vs Training 

It is first important to consider the intended use of the swimwear. Competition suits are designed to provide a precise fit, optimising speed and minimising resistance in the water. Training suits (or practice suits) are designed for recreational swimmers seeking to advance their training and prioritising comfort. These suits are engineered to accommodate stretching and pulling at any speed, ensuring optimal performance and comfort for the athlete.

Fabric

Polyester is a less stretchy fabric and, due to its durability, is ideal for performance swimwear. In comparison, more fashionable styles such as Lycra and spandex can become saggy and see-through over the course of a single season.

Recycled nylon and polyester are increasingly popular options for those who are environmentally conscious. Nylon is a softer fabric and is usually combined with other fabrics, such as Lycra, to produce a more form-fitting suit with a longer life.

Neoprene swimsuits are designed specifically for open-water racing, offering increased buoyancy to maximise speed in cool water conditions.

Leg Line

Legline is a performance swimwear feature that ultimately comes down to personal preference:

• The jammer-style leg line compresses the body to reduce drag and minimise muscle fatigue by supporting blood flow.

• High, standard, or lower-cut leg lines allow a full range of leg movement.

Straps

The thickness of the strap is directly proportional to the level of chest and suit support provided. However, bear in mind that your neck and shoulders shouldn't be in any pain from straps that are too tight.

Manufacturers carefully engineer performance swimwear after meticulous scientific research and development. Ultimately, choosing the right swimwear comes down to finding the right fit for your body, goals, and routine.

Sporty Swim offers a full range of performance swimwear from the world's best swimwear brands, which streamlines not only style but is also designed to optimise performance.

The stopwatch in your hand matters more than you might think. From poolside training sets to club galas to tracking a swimmer's progress across a season, the right one keeps your timing accurate, your data organised, and your eyes on the pool rather than on the device.

Watch the swimmer, not the watch

There's a piece of coaching wisdom worth repeating: your most valuable tool isn't the stopwatch, it's your eyes. Your job is to watch your swimmers, their turns, their underwater work, their breakouts, because there are plenty of ways to capture a time, but only your own attention can assess technique. The trap many coaches fall into is spending the race watching the watch instead of watching the swimmer.

This is exactly where the right equipment earns its place. A good memory stopwatch lets you click a button without looking down, then review every split after the swim is over, so your focus stays where it belongs. The more your watch remembers for you, the less you have to.

Why splits matter for your memory stopwatch

Your phone’s stopwatch gives you a running time and little else. A memory stopwatch records every lap and split during a session and stores them, so you can review the whole set once it's finished, with no stopping mid-swim to scribble numbers onto a soggy notepad.

If you're coaching a squad, you're rarely watching just one swimmer. Multi-lane memory lets you track several swimmers in parallel and keep their times separate, which is where a three-timer watch earns its place on the lanyard. The Nixie 3/300 is built for exactly this, offering multi-lane split memory in a compact, waterproof body that handles a full squad session without losing track. You time everything in the moment, then review cumulative splits, lap splits, fastest and slowest laps, and average lap times afterwards.

Don't overlook stroke rate mode

Here's the feature that separates a good training stopwatch from a great one: stroke rate mode.

Interestingly, even coaches who preach "don't time, just watch" make an exception for stroke rate, because it's central to race strategy. The technique is simple. Switch the watch to stroke rate mode, start it as the swimmer's fingertips enter the water, count three full stroke cycles, and the watch tells you how many strokes per minute they'd do at that rate.

Stroke rate tells you how efficiently a swimmer is moving, not just how fast, and it's a feature simply not available on most stopwatches. That's part of what makes both Nixie 3/60 and 3/300 stand out: it brings a genuinely high-end coaching tool into a far more accessible price bracket. If you're developing competitive swimmers, stroke rate mode is well worth prioritising.

Matching the watch to the job

A quick way to narrow it down:

• Casual coaching or parents at poolside: a simple, reliable waterproof stopwatch for swimming does the job such as the Fastime 01.

• Club and squad coaches: look for multi-lane memory and a large split capacity so you can time whole sessions and review afterwards.

• Performance and competitive coaching: prioritise stroke rate mode, 1/100-second accuracy, and full performance review.

The bottom line

The best swimming stopwatch is the one that lets you stop watching the watch and start watching your swimmers. For most clubs and competitive setups, that means a multi-lane memory stopwatch with strong recall and stroke rate analysis, giving you premium performance without the premium price tag. The Nixie range delivers exactly that, which is why it's become a favourite for coaches who want professional features that punch above their cost.

Ready to find yours? Browse the full stopwatch collection at SportySwim and make every second count.

High-performance swimwear is a crucial tool that can significantly impact an athlete’s performance. The right swimwear minimises drag, helping you to glide through the water with ease. Every second counts, and every techsuit feature matters. This blog will explain why: 

How are manufacturers using hydrodynamics in performance swimwear?

Human skin is actually not very efficient at moving through water, as it is relatively loose compared to the skin of aquatic creatures, which creates drag. Human skin is also not hydrophobic enough, producing natural oils that create highly viscous drag, or skin friction, which is the resistance force exerted on an object moving through a fluid. Speedo used this information to develop a polyurethane coating for swimsuits, creating an exceptionally hydrodynamic surface.

Performance swimwear is also made of lightweight fabric to prevent swimmers from being weighed down by their suits. One example is carbon fibre, which Arena uses to boost speed and endurance. 

In addition to being lightweight, tech suits are often made with water-repellent fabric. This reduces water saturation and creates a frictionless surface that decreases drag. 

These suits are also almost completely seamless, which reduces drag and enables a tighter fit.

How much faster does high-performance swimwear actually make you?

For swimmers, even a small improvement in drag resistance can be a game-changer in competitions. In fact, after the 2009 World Swimming Championships, Speedo's LZR suits were banned by World Aquatics in 2010, as swimmers wearing full-body polyurethane suits broke almost every world record.

However, one study (Hagedorn, 2013) tested the current range of tech suits for performance. In just over 5 metres, there was an average increase in speed of 0.27 seconds when wearing a tech suit and a domed cap.

While 0.27 seconds may not seem like much, it could mean the difference between gold and silver.

The right material and the right fit

When choosing performance swimwear, there are a few key features worth prioritising:

A snug, supportive fit: The right racing suit should feel close to the body without restricting movement. You should be able to move naturally, with no pinching, rubbing, or chafing around the straps, legs, or seams.

Targeted compression: All performance swimwear offers varying degrees of compression, which improves blood flow to your muscles and reduces lactic acid build-up. This is important for preventing tiredness and muscle pain during exercise, like swimming.

High-quality materials: Most racing swimwear uses technical fabrics such as nylon, polyester, and elastane. Look for options designed to repel water, minimise drag, and withstand chlorine for longer-lasting wear.

Performance-led design details: Features like bonded seams, engineered panels, and buoyancy-focused construction can help create a more streamlined shape and improve body position in the water—especially at speed.

Propel your swimming performance with Sporty Swim

While working hard at training your swimming skills, adding the right high-performance swimwear to the equation will help you achieve peak performance. In addition to physical benefits, these suits improve psychological needs as swimmers feel faster.

If you want to make the change from everyday swimwear to training swimwear, athletic swimwear will be an investment that might not suit everyone. Training swimwear offers a range of benefits for swimmers gearing up for races, and these features will give swimmers a competitive edge.

Here is everything you need to know about the differences between the two suits, in case you want to dive in further:

Training vs Everyday

Ultimately, everyday swimwear is made for recreational use, with a wide variety of strap styles and fits. training swimwear , on the other hand, is designed to stay in place, allowing athletes to swim at high speeds without worrying about their swimwear falling off. 

Features such as fit, fabric, strength, and construction are the main features that set training swimwear apart from everyday swimwear.

Let's take a closer look at what sets them apart, so you can choose the right swimwear for your aquatic adventures.

Fit and Compression

One of the main differences is that training swimwear is designed to be snug to prioritise muscle compression while still allowing for stretching and breathability. Training swimwear is also designed to help train for swimming races and competitions.

Compression is a key element of training swimwear design, providing muscle support and reducing muscle vibration. 

The tightness of swimsuits can also reduce the build-up of lactic acid in your muscles. Lactic acid is the main culprit for your muscles feeling tired or getting a stitch when you perform an aerobic exercise like swimming, and it is produced when your body breaks down fat during exercise. Training swimwear aids with compression to build up stamina for training.

Fabric Technology and Durability

Human skin naturally produces oils, which is a major factor in the design of training swimwear, which is coated in a water-repellent material. Training swimwear has exceptional strength and can retain its durability far beyond other elastane swimwear fabrics.

Regular bikinis are often made from standard nylon-spandex blends that look great, but can quickly lose their shape and fade in the sun or degrade in chlorine over time, whereas training swimwear is durable and engineered to withstand the test of time.

Drag Reduction and Hydrodynamics

The main goal is to minimise friction as much as possible through textile technology, compression, and design. Professional swimmers will even shave most of the hair on their bodies to reduce drag. Training swimwear helps add to hydrodynamics in the construction and design.

Form-fitting suits reduce "form drag", where baggy material acts like a parachute, by ensuring that the body is supported and the suit fits snugly.

Seam Construction and Design

While everyday swimwear can lose its shape after a season, Sporty Swim’s training range is built to last, whether you swim weekly or only pack a suit for holidays. The difference is in the construction:

• Secure, stay-put design: From reinforced bikini fastenings to men’s swimwear with supportive waistbands and reliable drawcords, swimsuits for training are made to hold their shape and stay in place; no slipping, no constant readjustment.
  

• Comfort-first support: Wider, more durable straps on women’s styles help prevent digging, while men’s jammers and briefs are designed with a streamlined, secure fit that won’t feel restrictive during longer sessions.Final Lap

The bottom line is that it's all about what you like and what feels right for you. 

Regular swimwear is looser and easier to move in, both in and out of the water, and is therefore perfect for lounging. Training swimwear will provide a snug fit and help you reach your peak performance while doing laps.

Want to create a splash next time you hit the pool? Check out the Sporty Swim collection, stocked with big-name brands.

Sporty Swim work with TORQ Nutrition to provide not only the best natural fuelling products on the market but SportySwim educates it's staff to provide the correct guidance and advice surrounding fuelling and recovery guidance. Nutrition and Hydration is an often overlooked part of a swimmers routine in what is a such a rewarding but at times brutal sport. Torq Nutrition is a great way to keep your body fuelled before, during and after exercise.

They originally developed our range of performance nutrition products through a need to offer the highest standard of support to the athletes we worked with and TORQ has since evolved into the most desirable, respected and integral Performance Nutrition brand on the market today. TORQ use the purest potent natural ingredients to achieve our goals. Where possible, their products are certified Organic by the Soil Association, or carry the Fairtrade mark, providing farmers in developing countries a fair price for their produce. 

They don’t use chemical sweeteners, colours or artificial flavours, yet we work meticulously to deliver the finest natural flavour profiles available in any food product, let alone the niche sector TORQ is represented in. From product function, through to usability, flavour and packaging quality and design, they accept absolutely no compromise and always strive for perfection.

At SportySwim we stock a range of TORQ products to help you with your nutrition. Take a look at the range of the products below. 

See more information on nutrition here. Essential reading for any swimmer and parent.

Download PDF