The Powerskin Carbon-Flex VX (open back) is a high-performance swimsuit from Arena, featuring their carbon cage fabric  that is designed for short and long-distance competitive swimming. This swimsuit has a V-Flex System, this allows for optimum freedom of movement around the hips, glutes and shoulders. This V-Flex System has been designed so the seams have been moved away from the sides of the suit to form a ‘flex line’ across the hip flexors for reduced resistance during starts, turns and breaststroke kicks. It has intelligent seam placement on the women’s suit to optimise strokes and kicks by anchoring all the tension at the centre back, the carbon fibre cage that’s integrated into the suit create a compression effect but providing support and control where it’s needed, it connects muscle groups and isolates upper and lower body movements to help improve the swimmers body position in the water.

As well as providing compression to specific muscle areas, it helps to streamline the body for reduced drag, the Infinity-Loop feature also helps to streamlined body position by running a continuous tape that anchors on the muscle chain in the upper body for extra support. It links the ribs to the hips while still allowing for freedom of movement, and connects this to the gluteus maximus (your butt) which helps keep your hips up high in the water and encourages the optimum body position when competing and training. The X-Pivot feature adds to the compression and anatomical support by isolating the movement in the upper and lower body with strategically-placed tape creating a brace which keeps the lower body and core muscles firm and supported while still allowing the upper body to rotate freely with each stroke, this helps ensure an even balance between the areas of the body that need to move and those that don’t. This is a serious suit for serious swimmers and comes in at a serious price, but if shaving seconds off your PB and beating your competitors is your end goal this might be a worthwhile investment. RRP £369

4.5 out of 5

Current Cheapest Price

Pros

Targeted compression

Infinity Loop with X-Pivot

Compression panels

Ultra-link

Encourages optimism body position

V-Flex system

Comfortable

Silicone grips around legs hold garment in place

Strategically placed seams