Swimming is a weird sport. It is the only sport that has the athletes start from a block and compete for the majority of the race in the water. I will say that swimmers are an odd species. But hey, this is the sport that has produced the greatest athlete of all time, the one and only goat, the Michael Phelps. Alhtough I would make an exception for Katie Ledecky. There are plenty of weird words that go along with this special kind of sport. From a swimmer to a narp (non-athletic regular person), here are some key definitions that will make you sound like you know something about the sport of swimming.

Dryland

Swimmers call the workouts that we do on land dryland since we are not training in the water. These workouts may consist of yoga, weight training, running, and stretching.

Speedo/Brief/Jammer

Along with Speedo being a swimming brand, it is also the tiny suit that male swimmers wear. A brief is slightly more coverage and a jammer is the suit that typically younger male swimmers wear that goes down to their knees.

Jolyn

Jolyn is a very popular women's suit brand that creates stylish and wearable suits for training and outdoor activities. A lot of female swimmers wear the suits for training and then don the bikini for spending time outside.

Tech Suit (suited)

A tech suit is a suit worn by swimmers for their champioship swim meet. These suits are very expensive, very tight, but makes a swimmer feel like they are gliding above the water. Prices for these suits are around $150-300 and can take up to 45 minutes to put on. These suits do not last long. The typical wears for these types of suits is up to 10 times before it loses its benefits and becomes loose.

Taper

Swimmers love this T-word. When taper begins, they know that intervals will become easier and practices will not be as grueling. Swimmers begin to have more energy after practice and feeling great.

Shaved and Tapered

This is a term used for swimmers for their championship meet. They have tapered down for this spectacle and have gone through the process of shaving their bodies. Swimmers go for months without shaving to build up the drag on their body in training and racing. When their champioship meet comes, they shave down and feel extremely smooth in the water and rest assured that they do not have the excessive resistance of hair on their body, save for the eyebrows. There have been guy swimmers who have also gone to the extreme and shaved their heads for their meets. This experience is wonderful for swimmers who have spent months going through the grueling process of training and bettering themselves.

Short course and long course

Short course is swimming that is done in a 25-yard pool and sometimes in a 25-meter pool. Long course is 50-meters long and is the type of pool used for most professional meets, including the Olympics. Short course yards is the type of pool used for most collegiate level meets.

Individual Medley v. Medley relay

The individual medley is a race that involves one person who swims all four of the strokes. The begin the race with the butterfly, go to the backstroke, then the breaststroke, and then finish the race with the freestyle. The medley relay consists of four swimmers. The first person swims the backstroke, the second swims the breaststroke, the third swims the butterfly, and the final person anchors the freestyle.

Flags

The flags that are set up five yards from the wall are used to help backstrokers know where they are in the pool. Backstrokers use them to count their strokes into the wall before they have to turn or finish into the wall.

25, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000, 1650

I will be talking about these numbers in the sense of a short course pool. A lap is the length of the pool. This would be a 25. A 50 is two laps. A 100 is four, a 200 is eight, a 500 is twenty, a 1000 is forty, and a 1650 is 66 laps. And yes, we do swim that much in practice and in meets. And yes, we just might be superhuman.

Psych sheets

These sheets of paper are the holy grail of swim meets. They allow swimmers to know what event they are swimming and when. Especially for meets where there could be 20 heats of the same event, it is very important to have these papers to refer to. Swimmers use them for this purpose and to also look at their times and see what they have to go to faster.

Circle seeding

This is a method used at meets to make them more interesting for spectators. The faster swimmers get the middle lanes and then the outside lanes are filled with swimmers with slower times.

These are some of the basic terms for you narps to understand the swimmer lingo. So when the Olympics come back around in four years you will be able to understand more of what is going on OR you could take time and watch the NCAA Championships for swimming when they come around in March.