hear hear...

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Playing devil's advocate, what if trying to flip turn puts them off so much they give up the sport because they hate swim training? I think that outcome would be detrimental to tri training!

There's option #3 for them....

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

The options are very loaded. I would like a 4th: I don't flip turn, but I don't think it would hurt if I did. Now, if the questions was is doing a flip turn and dolphin kicking half the length of the pool detrimental to tri (as I have seen done by more than 1 M-Dot swim cap wearer), I would have a different answer.

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Oui, mais pas de femme toute de suite (yes, but I am not ready for a woman straight away) -Stephen Roche's reply when asked whether he was okay after collapsing at the finish in the La Plagne stage of the 1987 Tour

Why would that be detrimental?

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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After reading this convincing argument, I assume they are contact the forum moderator to have their votes switched.

That may be so.
For me the time spent trying to learn to flip turn has been more wisely
spent doing other drills.
Reality of being an AOS is way too many bashed feet/heels on the pool deck and
lost a workout to throwing out my back b/c of a missed push off
Don't ask how just know that the regular life guards don't follow me up and
down the pool but the newbies do b/c they think I am going to drown.
I "drown" just good enough to have completed a dozen 1/2's and 3 IM Moo's
Plus- Slowman doesn't make them a necessity for his guppies

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"There are no problems in life, just many leadership and learning opportunities." SED

I can assure you that the person who is flip turning and is able to dolphin kick half the length of the pool is also a sub 55 min IM swimmer. That's not to say that you have to kick underwater half the length of the pool to be sub 55 IM swimmer, but the person who can be one with the dolphins for half the length of the pool is going to be top of the age group swim group. Pretty well guaranteed.

by the way, when my disc/nerve heals up, plan is to work my flip turns. They currently suck from before getting hurt and right now I have to be careful about certain angles. Doing a conservative open ended turn like in fly or breast is what I am stuck with.

So what are you saying? The newbie adult onset swimmer just needs to perfect flip turns and boom: 55 min IM swimmer? What if that would take them 3 years of misery and they quit the sport trying? I'm just saying there are people who do the sport who, without intensive efforts with a swim coach, will never perfect flip turns, but who still enjoy the sport. My spouse is one of them. Qualified for IM Worlds 70.3 multiple times. Never done a flip turn. Never will.

I wrote this way back in the day - one of my first pieces. Laugh away:

http://www.thomasgerlach.com/...turns-triathlon.html

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I agree with the time spent learning if an AOS. Also for an AOS it can be a O2 loss during a set. Same reason why I think Open water is the best training and shorter pools are terrible (wish I never swam in a 50M bc now 25 yd feels like running on one of those tiny indoor tracks that are about worthless. Its all contrived to work in its setting.

Obviously, thats exactly what Dev is saying. /pink

No, what he's saying is that if you can do that, then the correlation (not causation) is that you can swim a sub-55 because you've put the time in the pool over the years. If you can do "literally" half the length (12.5 yards) off every single turn, while swimming at pace, that takes some serious ability in the water.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

I think he was referring to the dolphin kick half the length of the pool part more than the flip turn part.

I flip turn like I play golf. I technically can golf, I have golfed, I just choose not to very often because I suck at golf and have no interest in being a better golfer.

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--Chris

why did you write that in pink? It's down to 11%

In the face of the evidence, I'd say TC was pretty convincing.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Agree with the first part, disagree with the second for the reasons Dev said (and as clarified).

People can flip turn or not, I know several fast swimmers that do open turns for whatever reasons. But don't say that because someone flip turns it's "detrimental" to their tri training. That's just silly.

The fourth option would be "I don't flip turn and do just fine."

It doesn't put me off per se, but I see it as a complete waste of my time for no gain, when there's so many other actually useful things I could be doing to improve my swim.

Dev, you go under option 4. I can flip turn, but I don't because of neck/back issues. I fall under option 4 periodically.

Not every 55 min Ironman swimmer will be able to do 12.5m underwater dolphin-ing at pace, but if you can do that, you are already a really good swimmer. I would not advocate this as the approach to sub 55 min IM swimming (I just picked that number, I suspect if you can do the half length on every turn at pace underwater, it's probably more like a 49 min Ironman swimmer....Jason, what do you think ? Rough guess....maybe 55 min is too slow

I'm the type of low-talent AOS swimmer that isn't fast enough to need to really sweat the fine details. Having a great EVF is almost irrelevant for me compared to just actually swimming enough, hard.

And despite all that, flip turns are absolutely worth learning - I seriously don't understand why people find it so hard. We're not talking super competitive fast flip turns - we're talking half-baked, get-yourself-over turns that are STILL a lot faster and smoother for continuous swim practice than 'good' open turns.

I'm sure guys who have really optimized their open turns are comparably fast, but for a middling AOS-swimmer like myself (my 34ish HIM is still better than 85% of the men, believe it or not) there's no comparison not just with the speed of the flip turn, but also the better continuity of the swim. Even 0.5sec sec/wall of rest is HUGE when you're hitting 4 walls on each 100.

I have no idea what my IM swim would be, but I'm pretty sure I'd be sub 55 if I'm in shape (on an honest course). I get 5 to 7m off each wall underwater.

I don't know of anyone in the world who could go 12m or yards off each and every wall unless they were really sandbagging it. Maybe Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps??

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

+1. Chances are they're just in "maintenance" training for their swim too.

For clarification, what Dev is saying is that any swimmer who has turns like that probably swam competitively when they were younger and has tens of thousands of kms of swimming under their belt.

For total nOObs I'd agree that teaching flip turns is counter productive. If I had to go by feel I'd guess once someone has been in a pool for 300 hours and is comfortable with the mechanics of freestyle they should be able to comfortably flip turn and streamline.

down to 8% - #tigerchik2020!

haha the tide has turned. it will be down to 0% soon