by
Olivier Poirier-Leroy
Ready to take down some personal best times at your next swim meet? Here’s what you need to gear up for race day success.
Competitive swimmers work hard over the course of the season to have that “perfect” swim on race day.
When races, gold medals, and personal best times are decided by hundredths of a second, having the right swim gear for competition is crucial.
The right swim gear for racing, whether it’s swim goggles, racing suit, foam roller or parka provides everything from increased speed and endurance to a race-ready mindset.
Whether you are gearing up for your first big swim meet or you are a seasoned Olympian, having these items at your disposal will help you hit the water with confidence.
Let’s dive in.
The essential items swimmers need to dominate their personal best times on race day include:
Next, we will look at each type of gear, how they can help swimmers perform better in competition, and offer some recommendations for where to invest in gear for swim meets.
Tech suits are high-performance racing swimsuits designed especially for competitive swimmers.
Made with advanced fabrics and tested exhaustively in labs and with Olympic champions, tech suits feature a tight, compressive fit and water-repellant fabrics to reduce drag, increase muscle support, and boost speed in the water.
Early racing suits during the late 2000s, like the Speedo FastSkin, which used lots of polyurethane (giving them the nickname “rubber suits”) reduced drag by a whopping 6-8%. FINA (now World Aquatics) clamped down on these suits and have restrictions on racing swimwear according to specific fabrics.
While not as fast, contemporary racing suits made with textiles (like polyamide and elastane) have been shown to have a smaller but still measurable impact on swim performances, estimated at ~1.0% to ~1.5% effort in most races (Morales et al., 2019).
Choosing the right tech suit is a personal process, with each swimmer depending on a brand, cut, and compression level that matches their specific goals in the water.
Sprint swimmers should look for a stiffer tech suit that provides increased compression, while stroke and distance swimmers opt for racing swimsuits that provide compression and range of motion.
The best place to shop around for a new tech suit is SwimOutlet, who offers free shipping on orders of $49 or more (that threshold is no problem with the pricing on tech suits!) and fit guarantees.
💡 Tip: To extend the lifespan of your premium tech suits, cycle them with a mid-tier racing suit (the Arena Powerskin ST 2.0 is a perfect example of this exact type of racing swimsuit) during heats of championship meets and during in-season meets.
Swim goggles are one of two no-questions-asked essentials when it comes to gear for competition.
Not only do they protect your eyes from chlorine, allow you to see clearly under the surface of the water, but racing goggles give you the ability to properly time walls, a perfect finish, and keep a close eye on competitors.
Racing swim goggles differ from training swim goggles by virtue of having an extra thin lens design (reduces drag and sinks the goggles into the face, almost eliminating the likelihood of the goggles getting knocked loose when diving into the pool), side bars to reduce drag, and curved goggle lens for peripheral vision.
The best swim goggles include TheMagic5 Swim Goggles, Arena Cobra Ultra Swipe, and the Speedo Speed Socket 2.0 Goggles. Each have a slim goggle profile, multiple tint options, and sleek performance features like slim goggle straps and side arms for improved fit and stability.
And most importantly… they don’t leak.
TheMagic5 Swim Goggles in particular stand apart thanks to the customized gasket developed specifically for the unique dimensions of your face. The low-profile design of the goggles also leads the pack in terms of drag reduction.
+ Custom fit for your face
+ Comfortable for extended wear and reducing headaches
+ Extremely slim lens profile
+ Available in 11 colors/tints and discounts on bundles
Swim caps reduce drag in the water and keep your hair from blocking vision or getting drawn into your mouth when gulping for some of that sweet air while charging towards the finish on race day.
Swimming caps come in a few different shapes and materials. The fastest swim caps, perfect for competition, are domed silicone swim caps. They have an extra smooth finish, with no wrinkles for creating excess drag, and flatten goggle straps under the cap for added streamlining.
Silicone swim caps are an excellent racing and training hybrid cap but might be too warm for swim pools with toastier water temperatures.
For those swimmers and temperatures, consider a latex swim cap. Latex swim caps are breathable but wrinkle up a bit and aren’t as durable as silicone swim caps.
For swimmers who choose to wear two swim caps on race day, use a silicone cap as the outer and a Lycra or latex swim cap as the base layer.
The fastest swim cap for racing is the Arena 3D Soft Swim Cap. It has a smooth silicone dome shape that eliminates wrinkles and resistance.
Arena offers the cap in several different colors and sizes, and the 3D Soft Cap is FINA-approved for competition.
Swim meets are always a bit of a gong show.
First, you’ve got to get there, park, and find a place in the stands or pool deck for your swim bag. Next, some deck space to stretch and get warm. And then your actual meet warm-up in the water, with hundreds or even thousands of other swimmers. A frothy, bubbling morass of shaved arms and legs. Joy!
But then… the waiting.
Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes an hour, but usually longer.
To keep warm between the time of your warm-up and those quiet moments before the starter’s gun goes off, keep toasty with a swim parka.
Swimming parkas feature a heat-trapping fleece inner liner that helps retain the heat you worked hard to develop during your warm-up.
They also have lined hoods to keep wet hair from sending chills down your spine. Pockets for storing your racing goggles and other essentials (which you will double, triple, and quadruple check, ten times over, on your way to the blocks.)
Swim parkas also have a thick shell and lining to serve as a nice buffer between your wet bottomed swimsuit and the cold metal bleachers below.
The best swim parka for swimmers is the Arena Team Parka. Arena is a partner with USA Swimming, so it’s no surprise that a lot of their swimmers were rocking this swim parka at the Paris Olympics in 2024.
The Arena Team Parka is lightweight, is lined with fleece to keep your body warm between races, and Arena offers the parka in youth and adult sizes. Stay warm and race fast!
The mighty foam roller is a killer dryland tool for competition to aid in recovery between multi-race, multi-session swim meets.
Unless we are on the national team, we don’t have a masseuse on hand to give us a massage after each race and session.
That’s where a foam roller, a high-density foam self-massaging device, steps in.
A foam roller, in my opinion, is even better than a personal masseuse as it can be used at any point during the swim meet.
For example:
A study published in the Journal of Athletic Training titled “Foam rolling for delayed-onset muscle soreness and recovery of dynamic performance measures” found that athletes bounced back faster after vigorous training when foam rolling post-workout (Pearcey et al., 2015).
Foam rolling is also helpful for reducing muscle soreness (Macdonald et al., 2014) and improving range of motion (Mohr et al., 2014).
The best foam rollers on the pool deck are also the original, the TriggerPoint Foam Roller.
They are available in a huge range of colors and sizes, from full size rollers for local swim meets where you can lug a ton of gear to the pool to small, hand-held rollers that can fit into your swim bag for travel meets.
At the 2024 US Olympic Trials, the warm-up pool in Indianapolis had a lane that was dedicated to something specific and peculiar to those unfamiliar with high-performance swimming: a lane for just stretch cord and resistance tubing use!
Resistance tubing is the gear of choice for swimmers who want to take advantage of the benefits of post-activation potentiation (PAP) and swim fast when it matters most. PAP is a training methodology that creates a short term burst in performance following high-output resistance with the use of resisted swimming tools.
As in, using resistance tubing in the pool to swim against it and then racing a short time later.
A study published in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research had swimmers perform either a regular warm-up or a warm-up that included a PAP protocol of 4×10 seconds maximum effort using a power tower. Eight minutes later, all the swimmers got up on the blocks and did a 100m for time.
The result?
Compared to the control group, the PAP condition yielded times that averaged 0.54 seconds faster. A very not insignificant amount of time in a group of experienced swimmers.
Power towers are rarely (e.g. never) available for warm-ups at swim meets, but resistance tubing is a close second.
Find somewhere to anchor yourself, do several very short bursts but high output efforts, and use the power of post-activation potentiation to swim to new best times on race day.
The best resistance tubing for swimmers to kick butt in competition is the StretchCordz SuperStroke Short Belt.
It has an extra thick elastic tubing for maximum resistance and the short cord length means you can find a corner of the pool and perform some quick resisted-swimming efforts to prime yourself for success when stepping up on the blocks.
Swimming is 90% physical and 98% mental. Don’t check my math on that.
But more seriously, swim meets are often high-pressure, high-stakes environments with races where you feel like the whole season is on the line.
Maybe you are the “practice swimmer,” who can always bang out near-PBs in training but never replicate it on race day. Or you are the kind of swimmer who gets too excited and fired up that you end up blowing a tire on the first lap of all your races. Or you are the swimmer who struggles to deal with pre-race nerves in competition.
A mental training skills book, like Conquer the Pool (yes, I’m the author), can help swimmers develop the resilience and laser focus to excel in swim competitions.
Whether it is using mental skills like self-talk, performance cues, visualization and goal setting, or putting action plans for bulletproof confidence into motion in the week leading up to the Big Meet, mental training workbooks for swimmers can help prepare you for success.
By adding mental skills work to your competition preparation, you can be confident knowing that your hard work won’t go to waste.
Conquer the Pool is the best-selling mental skills book for swimmers on the planet, used by countless programs and swimmers.
The workbook gives swimmers all of the mental tools to perform better on race day, including how to manage pre-race nerves, build a process and pre-race routine for success, how to navigate confidence issues, and much more.
Ultimately, a swim meet should be a place where you celebrate the hard work you do in training during all of those dark and cold winter months, the early mornings, and the training camps.
By outfitting yourself with the proper gear and essential accessories, like racing goggles, a tech suit or two (hey, ya never know—rips and tears happen!), caps for competition, and advanced tools like resistance tubing and a mental skills workbook, you give yourself the best chance for success.
Invest in the right gear, work hard, and let it all fly on race day!
Olivier Poirier-Leroy Olivier Poirier-Leroy is the founder of YourSwimLog.com. He is an author, former national level swimmer, two-time Olympic Trials qualifier, and swim coach.
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