Don't know of anyone by choice but do know of two who had to switch to open turns due to injury.

I think you'll find no relation to open water swim times and open or flip turns. It's what you do between the turns that matters.

you will find a correlation, actually. not causation (necessarily) but certainly correlation.

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Flip-turns vs no flip turns. here we go again.

I'm sure that Ous Mellouli just did open turns as he was preparing for the Olympics.. 99% positive that he doesn't flip turn. Ever....

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Thomas gerlach does t flip. He is faster than you.

Best Olympic split is 32ish. Can't imagine how slow it would be if I did flip turns in training. Seems I better stick to no flips to get the extra strokes in.

For actual consideration, though, I have dropped my 100/yd from about 2:20 to 1:50 over the last few months. I'm doing work and making gains. Whenever I tell my wife about my gains (she's an actual swimmer) she always says, "We gotta get you doing turns. You'll pick up so much time." Then when I ask how that helps me in OWS, we just look at each other in silence. It's actually pretty comical.

I keep trying those damn things. Best I can tell, I just don't have the confidence to actually throw my feet over my head for fear of hitting the wall with my heels. Thing is, I get 2-3 hours in the pool a week. There's no time to practice turns.

I don't flip turn, I open turn, BUT saying that your limited time in the pool is best spent SWIMMING, rather than practicing SWIM TECHNIQUE is failed reasoning. This is true of cycling and running as well. If doing flip turns will improve your swim times, why wouldn't you practice them? I'm asking my swim coach to do a flip turn clinic this spring so I can learn, because I suspect that not half pausing at each wall to take a deep breath will improve my overall swim endurance. I generally swim well the first 150 or so open water and then see a drop off in pace that sort of hits me like a wall, I somewhat attribute that to my pool swims that never actually amount to more than 25 yd intervals due to the open turn.

I wouldn't call my open turn a pause. While I can't be sure since I don't flip, I don't think I'm getting more air. Maybe I am. I do try to touch and go. There's no grabbing/holding/pausing.

I do stroke technique out the ass. I also streamline when I push off the open turn. I just don't flip and practice that technique. I will some day. For now, I'm working on the other 21 yards. Baby steps!

And, if the extra air in training is impacting my OWS, I don't see that because I don't swim fast enough to tire myself out!

Is that just since he was world champ at 1500m in the pool? Did he not use flip turns in the pool for the 1500 in London? Your comment makes it sound like he has given up on flip turns and I find that hard to believe.

It would be interesting, if he truly has eschewed all flip turns in his pool training, to hear from someone who made a deliberate choice, from a position of clearly knowing how and being very comfortable with very high level pool swimming. So many naysayers about flip turns are folks who do not wish to learn or state that they never really got good at them, or similar arguments. Also, most of us here online at ST are not at a level like Ous. Hearing from a guy discussing a decision to quit flip turns while swimming 25 minutes for 1500m is not that interesting to me. Hearing from a guy who swam 14:37 minutes for 1500m and took gold at the world and Olympic level and made the decision to stop flipping in the pool as he transitioned to open water is VERY interesting to me.

So much open water swim training in done in a pool, for a variety of reasons, so this sort of training question, separated from the typical ST personal slamming (not accusing you or anyone in particular, just noting the ST trends), would be an interesting discussion. Technical issues with training and possible avenues for improvement are things that I like to come here to seek out.

That being said, and to deflect a potential sidetrack, it should be mentioned that Ous is also a convicted drug cheat and served an 18 month suspension for PEDs and had his results from the 2007 worlds wiped out. Whether he should or should not be allowed to compete and whether we should or should not take advice or lessons from him based on this are not of interest to me. Strictly from a training strategy point of view, this info is irrelevant to the discussion.

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Alan Stewart

No.

If you do flip turns *properly* you can save up to 10 seconds per 100y, at least. This is just an estimation based on 25 years of experience in the water.

Over the course of a 2000 yard set you would thus save up to 200 seconds. You could then use this time to do an extra 200-300 yards. This will more than make up for any "extra strokes" you would miss.

IMO flip turns better represent OWS in that you have continuity of stroke. Touching the wall and turning around completely destroys your momentum.

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Strava

I am a touch and go swimmer. I get crushed, to just challenged on the turns depending on who I am swimming and I have no choice but to keep pace. I think it has helped me immensely, but then again I bike the majority of bike miles with a 60lb, poor rolling, aero disaster bike and thoroughly enjoy being handicapped.

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Is this true?

psst. I was being sarcastic.....

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These, my friend, are very good points. You have persuaded me to put more effort into the turns.

should have been in pink:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G60uErRGmJk

I was sat right in line with the blocks and I don't follow swimming to the extent that I'd know who he was. He wandered out and I said to a colleague - oh tunisia, that stronghold of swimmers........anyway, off came the trackie, they get going and I was like holy S**t, it was amazing, then they mentioned the silver in the 10k at London (is that right), he was amazing and the really shocking thing was the spread across the field in the two sessions

I beat him out of the water every time we raced together (though that was before he went pro) and I rarely do flip turns in training. Best Oly split was the first year I raced Chicago. Hit transition in 19:25 (17:52 out of the water). That said, I can flip well as I was a sprint free guy through high school. I simply don't enjoy doing it, and since I don't train seriously with a team anymore, I don't have a need unless there's someone loafing at the wall in my lane and I want to piss them off.

Huh? You might take one more stroke coming into the wall on a touch and go, or simply glide the last 2 feet rather than flip. On the push off, you really don't lose any distance with a touch/go vs. a flip, and some people actually go farther if they get an extra breath at the turn, so you may take fewer strokes overall. Regardless of how I turn, I'm 14-16 strokes/length (depends on the intensity and distance of the interval, usually starts at 14 and migrates up 1-2 over a 1k for time since I'm in poor swim shape most of the year).

I flip some and don't flip some. My first year swimming I never flipped, swam low 23's (zero swim background 1 year of swimming), but was swimming more. Now I flip more, but swim less and swim slower. Sooo...maybe I swim slower because I swim less. Go figure :)

I had no idea there were pro triathletes that don't flip turn. That seems crazy....lol.

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With all the blather about open turns and open water, I was a bit surprised that you would come up with this, cuz it sounded like you were agreeing with a no flip approach. I should have figured that one out but I was getting pulled in too many different directions by work this morning. I would love to hear that an open water CHAMPION swimmer had done away with flip turns because I would love to hear the thinking from a really good swimmer.

I can't imagine anyone seriously competing in open water swimming doing away flip turns so I jumped on your statement, hoping to find the exception that proves the rule: swim like swimmers, run like runners, bike like bikers. When we dumb down the three aspects of tri, all we do is dumb down the overall sport.

I shoulda stuck to billable work and stayed off Slowtwitch.

Nevermind (cue Rosanne Rosadannadanna, for you guys old enough to remember early SNL)

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Alan Stewart

Aside from the usual arguments in favor of flip turns, why would someone training specifically for an open water swim where they need to be prepared to deal with rough seas and rougher competitors skip out on an opportunity to stick their head underwater and tumble upside down every 15-20 seconds? That sounds like perfect ows training to me.

Do flip turns help your open water swim?
Well no.

But why do something badly, when you don't have to?

Learning to do anything well, usually involves "learning."

Refusing to do something that will greatly improve your pool swimming because you don't want to learn!

That doesn't bode well for ones ability to learn other things.

I don't do pink.

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