Swim Suit Technology Only the Beginning; A Visionary Report Into the Future of Aquatics

PHOENIX, Arizona, May 12. AS part of the Coca-Cola sponsorship of the Olympic Games, Schweppes Abbey Well, a Coca-Cola product, wanted to give its consumers the opportunity to find out what the swimming experience might look like in the future. Working together with The Future Laboratory, they looked at every aspect of the swimming experience and how that might evolve in the next 20 years.

Here are a few of their predictions…

Super Swimmers: The ‘transhumans' are coming. We can't expect gadget mania to stop at the handheld device so in the future, our bodies too will be temples to nano and bio technology, promising a future where swimming for several hours deep underwater without oxygen is as common as taking a long country walk.

The Swim Pod: Who said you needed water to enjoy the feeling and benefits of swimming? In the future, such physical limitations will be unimaginable as augmented reality, motion sensors and haptic technology (technology that interfaces with the user through the sense of touch) allow us to virtually experience just about any activity, even swimming.

Smart cubicles: Everyone who goes for a swim needs to spend time in the changing area. It's usually quite a bore. But in the future, these spaces will be multimedia Meccas, with body scans, ‘before' and ‘after' shots and heat detection lasers. In short, it will be like getting a digital health/fitness check whenever you go for a swim. What better way to stay motivated and on track with the training?

Digital Goggles: Today, the goggles we wear to swim just protect our eyes from the water; in the future, they will also feature screen technology so that swimmers can recreate whatever kind of experience they want to have underwater. If you want to swim through Australia's coral reef so be it…

Real-time Teaching: By having cameras along the floor and sides of the pool (aspects of which are already used in professional training), footage of the swimmer will be fed back to their digital goggles in real-time, offering them a stroke-by-stroke, perhaps side-on view, of their technique as they do it. "The advantage here," says futurologist Ian Pearson, "is that you don't have to get out of the water to then view how you did after the swim." Instead, the information is fed to the swimmer instantaneously.

Resistant Suits: One of the problems with swimming is the difference between what the coach tells you to do and what the swimmer actually does in the water. In the future, swimmers will wear programmable body suits to counteract that and they will actually feel what is the right stroke action to take is. Smart fabrics, especially electro fabrics, will be used so that electronic voltages will be passed across the material, compressing it in some places and not in others so the coach will be able to show the correct stroke action. This will then be recorded into the computer and then transmitted to the electro body suit. When the swimmer wearing the suit follows the same action as the coach, it will feel smooth; if the swimmer tries to deviate from the coach's form, they will have to push against the material and it will be hard to do. The more they train in this way, the quicker those movements get registered in the swimmer's brain. It really will be the fast track for learning how to swim well.

No-gills Swimming: One of the biggest challenges in swimming is the fact that you have to come up for air. In the future however, this will no longer be a problem. Developments in the field of nanotechnology will allow the human body to use artificial red blood cells that can store 200 times more oxygen and carbon dioxide than today's natural red blood cells.

Aqua Circuits: Just like in the gym, where different zones are for different exercises, swimming pools too will be divided up so swimmers move from one task to the next in a circuit training-esque set-up. "This trend is absolutely huge in Europe," says Ralph Riley, CEO of Zoggs who specialize in swimming equipment, "and it's getting more and more specialized in terms of the equipment." So, we will start to see specific equipment in the pool for people to use and build their muscle resistance in a low-impact environment.

Deep Tissue: We already have devices that measure body mass index (BMI) but these will get more sophisticated over time. In the future, swimmers will be able to have a thermal check of their body before and after the swim to see where the body heat is and therefore learn which parts of the body are red-hot after swimming. Using infrared lasers, the swimmer will know exactly which muscles have been worked by being able to see which areas are hotter than the rest.

Power Shower: Bodymetric scanning is becoming huge not only in the medical and sports industry but also for custom-made fashion. "The shower room is an ideal spot to get a body scan done" says Pearson. "Located in the middle of town, with shops nearby, it makes perfect sense that you would nip into the showers at the local sports centre to get your exact body measurements taken, before you head into town to order your custom-made wardrobe."

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Real time training as predicted by Schweppes Abbey Well.

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