Its funny how many threads there are that ask for swimming help, but when the good swimmers speak up, its "that doesn't apply to triathlon". And people wonder where the stereotype of "can't excel at 1 so be mediocre at 3" comes from.

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Awww, Katy's not all THAT evil. Only slightly evil. In a good way. - JasoninHalifax

Wow. I know triathletes can argue just about anything, but it amazes me how emotional everyone gets about flip turns. Do them, don't do them, whatever.

What's distressing me is that a 32 HIM swim is now back of the pack. That's what I did at Cali 70.3 and it was a hair off top 20% (even worse, 33 at Wildflower was top 15%).

Of course, everyone knows the swim is pretty much irrelevant anyway for 99% of us

Splits should be pretty much the same or faster...for the most part, unless you are not a good spotter. I would be willing to bet that Michael Phelps open 500 time is pretty much the same as his pool 500...why... same effort. You do lose a little speed going into the flip turn that is made up on the push off... so should be similar.

If you don't care about flip turns, or learning to do them, don't try. But please don't try to dissuade those of us who use flip turns and turn us into open turners. That would be silly.

Someone's point earlier of paceline riding is very smart... I rarely use pacelines mainly because I train with one other person, we'll do them, but not in large groups....also, I will admit, I'm a 'fraidy cat when it comes to riding at 22 mph 1 inch or so from the person in front of me. BUT there IS a training advantage to them as with flip turns.

If you're going to take that argument, that you don't do them in tri so why learn: do you do track workouts? do you do intervals? you don't run around the track all that often in a triathlon, and you may toss in some pick-ups on the run during a tri, but really, how many people do on road intervals during a race...say 5*1000?

TRAINING is training/ Racing is racing. They are both related.

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Tiger for Life -- War Eagle!

Splits should be pretty much the same or faster...for the most part, unless you are not a good spotter. I would be willing to bet that Michael Phelps open 500 time is pretty much the same as his pool 500...why... same effort. You do lose a little speed going into the flip turn that is made up on the push off... so should be similar."

Actually, swims with more flip turns 25m v. 50 m are quite a bit faster. I can't remember the standard conversion that swimmers use but there is one. Something like .5 sec per turn. FLA Jill?

My 2 cents;

Flip turns make you a better swimmer, even in open water since they make you swim without a break at every wall. The "I get more swimming in by doing open turns" argument is bunk, you are just trying to make yourself feel better about taking the easy way out.

That said, check out www.goswim.tv for the Dave Denniston breastroke dvd for the fastest open turn I've ever seen, of course no triathlete I've ever seen does these.

Yes, you are faster in a 25 meter pool than in a 50 meter pool over the same distance. Check out the world records 25m vs 50m.
But this has nothing to do with whether triathletes should do flip turns.

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"I came to Alaska at the perfect time, the price of crab was high, they didn't think cocaine was addictive and there were no sexually transmitted diseases that couldn't be cured with antibiotics....the plan was to live fast and die young...I guess it didn't work out" Wayne Baker

Yes and yes!

As far as the whole debate goes, I had absolutely no idea that this was even debatable. I regard people I see doing open turns about the same way I regard people wearing jeans when they're skiing/snowboarding.

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

If you don't care about flip turns, or learning to do them, don't try. But please don't try to dissuade those of us who use flip turns and turn us into open turners

I wouldn't do that and haven't done that! Not once have I said "Don't do flip-turns" so who have I tried to dissuade? No one. I'm simply disagreeing with those trying to dissuade me from NOT doing flip-turns! The only true way to prove this in my opinion is to conduct a real study with two groups of BOP/MOP swimmers, neither of which can do or have ever done flip turns with an equal average ability and swim times. Split them into a flip-turn group, and an open turn group. Swimmers always swim alone, and flip-turn group will start to include the "normal" (whatever that is in swimming) amount of time learning to do flip turns. Here's the catch. The INSTANT they completely know the basics of the flip turn, have a race in open water and compare the splits/times. Not a year later, 5 years later, or even a month later. The very next day. I would bet money that the non-flip-turn group wins. If flip-turns truly improved freestyle swimming times, then the flip-turn group should win.

But what I read all of the "flip-turn" supporters saying is that the ability to do flip-turns is one of those "overall skills" that is a must-have for playing nice with other faster swimmers, hypoxic swimming, etc. So come back a year later (or 2, 3, 5, whatever) and retest everyone in open water. THEN, and only then, I think you would see the flip-turners faster. A couple people have said it already - Michael Phelps wasn't the faster swimmer, but because his flip-turns are so damn good that he passed the other guy every time in the turn/under water. So that means if their race had been in open water, the other guy would have won because Phelps would not have had the "non-swimming" advantage.

Again, in a previous post I stated I am likely being too pedantic & nit-picky because I am defining swimming as the actual stroke - the 15m portion of TomP's length that he's actually swimming, not gliding or dolphin kicking.

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I always just use the little application here in case I need to convert from SCM to LCM:

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/results/conversions.asp

I find that when someone is crowding the wall in my lane or is annoying me on another level I try to 'snap' my tuns and really hit the water good and hard to make a nice crisp splash. That usually works. I know back when I swam years ago if someone in street clothes or was dry was standing near the wall by our lane we used to try to splash them by snapping the turns. Of course more than once I've seen someone try this and nail their heel to the wall in a most painful way.

For the original poster, I simply do flip turns because they come naturally to me and I've been doing them for years and years and learned them when I was very young. In fact, on the rare occasion that someone is at the end of the lane or something causes me to do an open turn it seems like the next lap/length I am out of rhythm until I can get to the next wall and execute a proper turn.

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"I would be willing to bet that Michael Phelps open 500 time is pretty much the same as his pool 500...why... same effort"

You'd lose that bet.

Looking at last years USA Swimming reg book, every mens freestyle event world record is faster in 25 meter pools vs 50 meter pools from 50 m to 1500 m. For instance Grant Hackett has both short and long course meter world records in the 1500 and he is approx 24 seconds faster in short course.

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"I came to Alaska at the perfect time, the price of crab was high, they didn't think cocaine was addictive and there were no sexually transmitted diseases that couldn't be cured with antibiotics....the plan was to live fast and die young...I guess it didn't work out" Wayne Baker

WAIT! Do you mean that factual and documented data shows that the fewer flip-turns someone does in a race, the SLOWER they are? That's just impossible because all of the so-called experts on ST say it aint so.

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What if I told you I have it on good authority that the Fonz did flip turns, would that change your mind?

If the Fonz did flip turns, I will start doing them TONIGHT.

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http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/_Rainbow/Documents/bcc83b9f-5fc4-4f5c-8b9d-fa301a2836ae/Rulebook%20Records%20-%20Dec%2018%202007.pdf

"WAIT! Do you mean that factual and documented data shows that the fewer flip-turns someone does in a race, the SLOWER they are? That's just impossible because all of the so-called experts on ST say it aint so."

You are right and wrong both. Right in that fewer flips over the same distance = slower.
Wrong because no one said this wasn't true.

Learning and using flip turns will make you a faster open water swimmer.

No arguments about the benefits of flipturns. My question is about how to execute the push-offs ? On the back, on the side, on the belly ?

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"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Oscar Wilde

People who do open turns whilst in the pool, as flip turns supposedly have no relevance to the swim in a triathlon....

do you also wear your wetsuit everytime you swim in a pool, with your tri suit and heart rater monitor underneath? (if this is what you do in a race...)

huh ?
If you are targetting it to me, at least answer my question ;)
Flip turns are good, the bad thing is I suck at them :)

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"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Oscar Wilde

Most teaching sequences I have seen have you push off on your back and then corkscrew. The idea is that you minimize the axes of rotation when you learn. You'll probably naturally start to do it more on your side as you get better. Pushing off on your belly, seems like a lot of twisting necessary pull that off.

"pretty much" I don't mean millisecond same, but nothing so drastic as to warrant gasping at the difference.

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Tiger for Life -- War Eagle!

you should be pushing off completely on your back. start rolling onto your stomach as soon as you are off the wall.

but wouldnt it create less drag if you push off on your side ?

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"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative." Oscar Wilde

I've tried both ways, and I think she nailed it.

Because when you do flips you wind up swimming more and 'breaking' less.

There is no rule that say you have to do flip-turns with a super hard kick, 8 dolphins, and go back to freestyle halfway down the pool. You can immediately start freestyling right after the flip.

So - if you have 1 hour to swim and do flip turns versus open (and don't stay submerged), you will have done more strokes in that hour and maitained a higher HR that hour than if you had done open turns.

Copy?

 I regard people I see doing open turns about the same way I regard people wearing jeans when they're skiing/snowboarding.[/reply]