Finding the Best Wetsuits for Female Triathletes (or just for this female triathlete)

Most triathletes rave about wetsuits because, well, wetsuits make them swim fast and look hot. I, as I have learned through trying numerous wetsuits, am not like most triathletes. Wetsuits don’t make me fast and hot. They make me slow and dumpy. And that, I think, is completely unfair. So, I set out on a mission to find a wetsuit that fits me comfortably and makes me fast (a flattering fit would be a bonus).

I’ve read tons of reviews of wetsuits. They’re great, but they’re all written by men. Here’s the problem: I’m a woman. A suit that fits a guy pretty well will probably fit me a little… differently.

A few things you should know about me: I’m 5’11” (with most of my height in my torso) and I come from a competitive swimming background. I may not be shaped like the “typical” woman, but I’m fairly confident that I’m not the only female triathlete who struggles to find a fast and comfortable wetsuit.

And so I began my quest for the perfect wetsuit. Of course, I can only hope to find the perfect wetsuit for me, but I hope my findings help other women find the perfect wetsuit for them.

The Protocol:

Part I: Pool

• Perform eight trials
• Each trial will consist of 4 x 100 yards, descending at 1:30
• The first trial will be naked (i.e. no wetsuit), the second trial will be in my current wetsuit and the following six trials will be in test wetsuits
• The pool testing process will be spread over a period of weeks

Part II: Open Water

• Swim a buoyed course in open water, once in each of the test wetsuits

Of course, as every scientist knows, experimental design is rarely perfect on the first (or second or third) try so we made some modifications along the way.

Wetsuits are clearly not designed for pool swimming, so most of the suits took on a lot of water during flipturns or when I was streamlining off the wall. To account for the increasingly heavy suit, I had to take extra time after each 100 to dump the excess water. As a result, we scratched the 1:30 interval for all wetsuit tests (we used it for the wetsuit-less test), but continued to descend the four 100s. 

Meanwhile, open water testing proved more difficult than we expected. We finally settled on a course from a buoy to the boat launch at Crystal Lake in Gray, ME. We performed all of the open water swims in a single day when the water was calm and there was a slight headwind. I swam each trial at a moderate effort and wore a Garmin 910XT to collect data. GPS data estimated the distance of each swim at approximately 130 yards.

Our data include “stroke efficiency” which is defined by Garmin as the time it takes to swim 25 yards + the number of strokes it takes to cover that distance. A lower number indicates a higher efficiency.

The Results

Baseline: 4 x 100 descend @ 1:30 naked (i.e. no wetsuit)

1:22

1:21

1:17

1:15

Xterra – Women’s Large (Not a test wetsuit)

This is my old wetsuit, the suit I wore throughout 2011. It is too big/too small and makes me feel like a pregnant gray whale (large, bloated and bumpy*), but before I started this review, it was the best I had found to date. As I mentioned above, I’m just under 6-feet tall and have an extremely long torso. The Xterra was more flexible than any suit I tried before, which meant that it stretched over my torso instead of crushing my shoulders. In doing so, it didn’t even touch my back (allowing plenty of extra space between my back and the back of the wetsuit), BUT it didn’t hurt my shoulders. I thought the absence of shoulder pain was a good thing, until my back started hurting from the excessive arching.

The extra space between the wetsuit and my back is like a bucket, collecting all the water that pours in through the wrists and the neck. Of course, after the water collects in the back bucket, it sloshes throughout the rest of the suit, making me feel swollen and heavy—again, like a pregnant gray whale. And another thing: This suit is also extremely buoyant, forcing me to expend a lot of extra (mostly fruitless) effort to push my chest down in an attempt to bring my legs and butt to the surface of the water.

Bottom Line: This suit and I don’t get along, but Xterra has improved their sizing options since I purchased my suit. It’s possible that I would get along just fine with a newer, better-fitting model.

*The bumpiness is a result of the plethora of repairs. I suspect that this suit was a lemon. By the third wear, it looked like piranhas had attacked it.

1:15

1:14

I was worried that I might do some serious damage to my lower back so I only completed two 100s in this suit and vowed to never ever wear it again. In other words, this suit was not part of open water testing.

Orca Alpha – Women’s Large

Let me start by being brutally honest: This suit was my favorite. So, if you think I’m biased, you’re right. My two favorite features are the flexibility and the lack of buoyancy (except in the butt, which is where I need it). I am a swimmer, but I’m also a sinker. I’ve been swimming as a sinker for years, which means I’ve adapted my stroke to my sinkable nature. So, when a wetsuit makes my arms, chest and legs buoyant I have a really hard time finding my stroke. But, when a suit makes my butt buoyant, well, that’s a treat. The buoyancy in the butt, but lack of buoyancy in the chest in the Orca Alpha helped me get into proper body position. (I find that buoyancy in the chest tends to cancel out buoyancy in the butt, leaving me either with the same body position I have without a wetsuit or much worse off.) I have one complaint about this suit: Water came in through the wrists and ended up causing me to carry quite a bit of water inside the suit. On each 100 I swam in the pool, waterlogging caused the second 50 to be significantly slower than the first. I was only able to try one size of this suit. It’s possible that a women’s medium would have solved this problem.

Pool:

1:15

1:15

1:12

1:10

Open water:

1:50

36 spm

40 stroke efficiency

2XU Velocity –Women’s Medium

I was nervous about the fit of the 2XU suits. I’d seen a lot of athletes wearing 2XU suits, but they were all tiny women. I am not a tiny woman. I was sure the suits would be too small, but I was wrong. The suits were in fact too big. Actually, they fit well in my torso, but they were too big in the shoulders and upper arms, which was odd. I think this is the first time an article of clothing has ever been too large in the shoulders. That extra space in the shoulders and upper arms provided a perfect place for water to collect. And the water went in, stayed in and made me feel heavy.

This suit has nifty channels on the chest. My understanding is that these channels are speed channels. I didn’t notice much of a zooming effect when I was swimming in open water or in the pool, except when I was approaching the wall in the pool. At first this last minute zoomage annoyed me because, by unexpectedly zooming into the wall, I was forced to do some cramped flip turns. Of course, A.) One shouldn’t judge a wetsuit on its flip-turn performance and B.) I got used to it and kind of enjoyed riding the wave into my turn. I’m not sure how this would carry over to open water, however. My guess is that the channels maximized the effect of the backsplash from the wall. Perhaps this means that you could deal better with a current or waves in open water. Finally, this suit is very buoyant throughout, which is not ideal for me, but may make some people very happy.

Pool:

1:16

1:16

1:13

1:12

Open water:

1:55

36 spm

38.8 stroke efficiency

2XU T:3 –Women’s Medium

The fit on the T:3 was the same as that of  the Velocity, which was discussed at length above. This suit kept me warm and was fairly comfortable, but it wasn’t fast. I felt like I was wearing leggings and a fitted t-shirt. Also, there was an oily coating on the neoprene that didn’t go away, even after two pool swims and two open water swims.

Note: The time for the fourth 100 in this suit was comparable to those in the blueseventy and both Huub suits, but the swim was completely different. The fast 100s in the Helix, Archimedes and Aura were feel-good fast. This one was not. It was the miserable result of my stubborn competitiveness. In other words, someone was swimming in the lane next to me and I refused to let that someone beat me.

Pool:
1:17

1:15

1:14

1:09

Open water:

1:55

35 spm

43 stroke efficiency

Huub Archimedes 4:4 –Unisex Medium

Huub is a new company, but they’re not at all new to wetsuits—speed or swimming. The company has blueseventy roots, connections to the gurus of Swim Smooth and is named after Dutch movement scientist Huub Tousaint. (Huub, by the way, rhymes with dude.) The Archimedes 4:4 has all sorts of nifty features. The X-O Skeleton is designed to improve body alignment while the arm crossover alignment feature prevents arm crossover. The bicep release is designed to enable a high elbow catch and the calf release improves blood circulation in the lower leg.

The Archimedes fit me well, but there was a little extra room in my back because the torso wasn’t quite long enough. This suit was by far the hardest to get on (especially when wet or sweaty), but the easiest to get off once unzipped. The zipper is supposed to be secure (with triple Velcro) and quick release. The triple Velcro was indeed secure—so secure that I never succeeded in undoing it myself. This was my only complaint about this suit (other than wishing it had another centimeter or so of torso length). I just wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing this suit for a triathlon because there’s a very real possibility I wouldn’t be able to get it off. Overall, this suit is comfortable and fast. With a couple tiny tweaks it would be my absolute favorite.

Pool:

1:16

1:12

1:12

1:08

Open Water:

1:53

35 spm

36.1 Stroke Efficiency

Huub Aura 3:3 –Women’s Medium

This suit was too small/too big for me (made for a shorter, larger woman) and yet it was surprisingly comfortable. In fact, it’s the most comfortable wetsuit I’ve ever experienced. The inside of the suit is weirdly soft and cozy and, this is something I’ve never considered before, but if I were to snuggle up in a wetsuit, this is the one I’d choose. The suit was comfortable and fast, but because of the sizing it collected water.

Pool:

1:13

1:14

1:12

1:08

Open Water:

1:51

37 spm

40.8 stroke efficiency

Blueseventy Helix –Women’s Medium

I’ve had blueseventy wetsuits in the past. I’ve wanted to like them. I’ve wanted to love them, but the torso has been too short, crushing my shoulders. I was optimistic that things might be different with the high-end suit. They were different… a little bit. The torso was not long enough for me, which created a gap in the back, but it didn’t cause shoulder pain. The sleeves on the Helix were nice and tight so no water came in through the wrists. (Water did, however, come in through the neck, creating the usual waterlogging effect.) 

More about those nice tight sleeves: The underside of the sleeves is made of NeroTX fabric (like a rashguard). The point of this feature is to allow the swimmer to feel the water better. I’m a big fan of this concept, but in reality, it was cold. This might not be much of an issue if you’re swimming in fairly warm waters or if you only wear this suit when you’re racing at balls-to-the-wall speeds. But if you’re training in the ocean in Maine, you may want to put some serious thought into your need for warmth. This all sounds fairly negative, but it’s not. This suit is fast and would be comfortable if the torso were just a little bit longer.

One more (totally random) positive feature I discovered while coaching in open water: Swimming backstroke in the Helix is quite comfortable. Backstroke-ability probably isn’t a deal-maker or -breaker for a normal athlete and it’s not something I tested in every suit, but it’s a nice feature for those of us who coach while swimming.

Pool:

1:16

1:13

1:13

1:09

Open Water:

1:51

36 spm

42.6 stroke efficiency

HUGE THANK YOUS to: Doug Welling, Orca, Huub, 2XU, blueseventy and TriSports.com!