What to wear?

[sebbie]

A wrestling singlet makes perfect sense as workout garb for a competitive rower. Unlike what Bill and Joe have been wearing, basically a compression tee along with a separate pair of compression shorts, a wrestling singlet, like the ones Tony and Donavon are wearing is all one piece.

Bill and Joe have always admired the “swimmers build” of young athletes their age, but the path to getting there is not always clear. The so-called swimmers build is common to 19 year old male competitive swimmers. I guess the key characteristics of a swimmers build would be 1. Low body fat, 2. Narrow waist, typically around 30 inches 3. Broad shoulders, 4. Large lateral muscles or lats, giving the chest a distinct triangular shape uncommon in non-athletes, and 5.tight (6-pack) revealing abdominal muscles. Strong swimmers often also have oversized thigh muscles too, although these are most common with competitive divers.

All of this is possible using swimming as the main exercise. But any competitive swimmer nowadays spend nearly as much time working out in the gym and weight room than in the pool. The gym work builds particularly the upper body chest, shoulders and related muscles necessary to swim fast.

A lot of this is the same, pretty much for college-level competitive rowers. Like swimming, competitive rowing is very much a full body exercise, but if anything is even more of a workout for the upper body, shoulders, lats, abs and thigh muscles. Given this, competitive rowing could be a faster and steadier route to a swimmers build than competitive swimming. Rowing really puts the emphasis on building the shoulders and upper body.

Wrestling singlets provide a fun fit, at least as snug as the compression gear that Bill and Joe are wearing, with one important difference. They are one piece, and are held in place via shoulder straps. The rowing exercise builds shoulders, and as shoulder muscles grow, the shoulder straps have to go up over progressively bigger and stronger shoulders. And as this happens, the wrestling singlet is going to. keep pressing up tighter and snugger into the groin area. This is, well, interesting as more and more pressure will be placed on a guy’s private parts, and the more the guy works out, the snugger this is going to get.

A related issue is what, if anything, does a competitive rower wear under the singlet, underwear, a strap or maybe nothing at all. If nothing at all, the singlet is going to be at least as revealing of body parts as any simmers jammer. An interesting topic top research on the Web is what is the recommended wear for under compression gear, whether the gear is shorts, cycling gear, or a wrestling singlet. There seems to be little agreement on this.
What is happening now is that Tony and Donovan are standing there getting ready to do a workout of the stationary rowing machines at the gym. Bill and Joe are engaging Tony and Donovan in a pleasant conversation, but silently checking out what they are wearing and how it fits on their “rowers’ bodies. Both Bill and Joe are thinking exactly the same thing, as in “I want to get myself one of those.” Meanwhile, Dylan too is starting to think that this is exactly where he wants to be too.

None of what is going on is lost on any of the participants. Nor is the “rower’s body” lost on them. Need to make another visit to the big-box sporting goods store. Maybe Dylan would like to go along on the trip.

….To be continued