I got my Finis AMPhibian fullbody suit last night and I tried it on as soon as I got home. I’m a fair sized gentleman so I bought the biggest size available (34) and just hoped for the best on sizing. Usually the smallest suit I will attempt is a 36, but then again everyone uses a different sizing system and none of them make any sense so I just buy big and see what happens.

One of the oddities of this suit is that it has zippers on the bottoms of the legs. The upside is that it is really easy to step into and out of the suit. The downside is that you have little zippers fluttering right against the backs of your ankles. I haven’t gotten this suit wet yet so I don’t know if it’s a distraction in the water or not, but I think it might be. Plus if you have hairy legs it might be a little death defying to zip these things by yourself.

After being pleasantly surprised at how easily I stepped into the suit things took a turn for the worse. The waist was almost impossible for me to get past my hips. It has like zero stretch. You can see in some of the pictures that it trims my waist waaaay in. The jumping, wiggling and gyrations required of me to get into this thing were ridiculous. I would never put this on in a public locker room. This is a get-it-most-of-the-way-on-at-the-hotel kind of suit. Eventually I got it up and over my hips and then shoulders. It was on a little crooked but the thing is so tight that I couldn’t shift it around… and frankly I wasn’t going to take it off and try again. I was getting sweaty at this point for all the effort require to get in the goofy thing.

Heidi thinks that I look like a robot with the weird stomach panel. She also asked if it was a maternity escape hatch that could be removed in case of baby bump. I’ll admit the stomach thing is very odd. It also has some kind of strap across the middle that makes for some interesting lines if you’re a little doughy like me.

I’m not sure when or where I’m going to get to try this thing out in the water, but it feels like it would be fast. It might even end up on a friend of mine before I wear it underwater. The material is slick and the compression is borderline unreasonable. It’s not the type of suit that I would wear all day long at a meet like a B70 or my TYR Tracer Light. It would have to come off between events. On a skinnier person maybe not. No matter what happens, this seems like a pretty good deal for $60

I also bought a pair of Finis Hydrospeed race tights. They’re size 36 and might actually be too big for me. The waist is fine but they’re a touch too long. I recently got my hands on a pair of TYR Fusion 2 race tights and they’re also 36′s. The TYR suit fits tighter and isn’t as long. I think I’m going to try out both of these in practice to get a feel for them since I don’t have a pool meet until October to do my experiments. I’ll report back later.

I just saw this on Swimming World Magazine today… Finis is giving major discounts on their whole techsuit line up. I guess they really don’t want to be sitting on a big pile of non-FINA legal swimsuits come January 1st.

I’ve seen some of their AMPhibian suits at meets and it’s fair to say they’re interesting looking… some people might say ugly. I posted the link on Facebook and one of my friends called them “icky.” So take that for what it’s worth, just remember it is a $60 or less for a techsuit that retails at $350. I bought a bodysuit and some race tights as a science experiment. Not sure that I can fit into the bodysuit, but worst case scenario it goes into my techsuit loaner bag.

You can check out all the stuff they have on sale right now here.

Anybody that has one want to interject on what they think of the Finis AMPhibian suits?