The old flip turn debate! As a former long time non-flipper I could never see the point. While I was swimming with some tri friends I noticed the guy in the lane next to me was always beating me off the wall by a body length. This forced me to sprint to catch up. At the end of a set he wouldn't even be tired, while I was. I had to work much harder to maintain the same pace. After several sets I would get fatigued and form would suffer making it even more difficult. Once I learned how to do a proper flip turn I no longer got fatigued so quickly. Last year while training for a HIM, I ramped up to being able to do a straight 1.2 mile swim in a 25M pool by my second swim of the season even though I had done no swimming at all in the prior two years by utilizing flips.

There are many things we do in training that we don't use for racing to a great extent. We don't really use track intervals in a long distance race for example. We also don't do open turns off a wall and get an extra breath every 25-50 meters!

Perhaps the only way to settle this issue is to have a distance race between someone who only trains in open water and never flips, and someone who only trains in a pool and always flips.

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Don

Tri-ing to have fun. Anything else is just a bonus!