There's also a good guide here:
http://www.goswim.tv/archives.php
search the page for Freestyle Flip Turn. It's a 5 part guide that you can probably skip a few steps of.

Ok, I get that and agree...However, should you be doing flip turns in a 4.5 foot deep pool or only in deeper water? I can tottally see getting a TBI from the MAC lap pools attempting this.

Bob

Hahaha, that was a great post.

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Existence precedes Essence.

I'm curious if there is anyone who is proficient at flip turns but doesn't because they think there is no difference.



Hasn't this topic been beat to death in the past with similar results.

"Doing flip-turns makes you a faster swimmer. This is where I call bullshit. Your ability to flip under water, kick off a wall, then start your swim the other direction in no-way impacts your ability to swim faster between the flip turns."

Rather than your island hypothetical, how about if we take your typical triathlon and after the swim I will pick 10 swimmers from the pack that do flip turns, and 10 who don't. I bet I could hit 100%. ;-)

I would compare it to learning to corner well on a bike so that you can ride with a better group of riders. Even if your race somehow had no turns on the bike, you'd still want to train with better riders so you'd learn to corner.

Learning to do an effective flip turn allows you to train with faster swimmers. Training with faster swimmers will push your limits and should improve your triathlon swimming speed, even if you don't do flip turns in your race. There is a limit to how high up the swimming ladder you can climb without doing flip turns.

Plus you'll look like a swimmer instead of a triathlete. ;)

From TomP:
---"I only swim about 15 of every 25m lap, I make the hard send-offs. I never swim open water more than 1x/ week. I never exit slower than 54 (or 27 at 70.3). It is a matter of pride and skill."

You sound like a much better swimmer than me -- so I should take your advice.. BUT - why is swimming only 15m of every 25m lap a good thing? In a triathlon, you stroke every meter of the course. I would think race day performance would depend on the number of strokes you take in practice, not on the number of lengths you swim. Why would you want to cheat yourself out of all those strokes by such hard push-offs? You're not going to be doing that on race day. I'd think you'd want to take as many strokes as possible.

Sounds like you have a rationale... I'd like to know what it is.

Thanks,

Alex

4.5 feet shouldn't be a big problem. But learning them and practicing them in the deep end of the pool seems prudent. At least for a few days until you have it down.

i don't do tumble turns anymore and i don't push off either. what it means for me is that i am able to maintain identical splits and interval times regardless of whether i'm in a 25m pool or 50m pool. which is really useful for me to monitor my progress.

eganski,
i love you...

how is the P.I.G. coming along? 4 blog posts in 5 days, then nothing for 3??? i was expecting better. you are way overdue.

I started learning flip turns last summer in a pool that had a deep end, but the other end was only about 3 ft. I wound up on my back a few times, lying on the bottom of the pool looking up. Jill's point about learning to cope with disorientation definitely hit a chord with me. When I tried to learn years ago, I wound up at least once completely vertical, but with my head pointing towards the bottom of the pool. Good times.

From my limited experience as a runner/biker swimming with a fish friend, I think it is definitely worth learning. I could tell that it was more consistently aerobic than the open turns.

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there was no one chasing us... distance is its own reward.

Thanks. I'll check out the article.

As for the open turn push off, I specifically try to avoid it and standing. When I reach the wall I ball up, push a little with the arm(s), fall over away from the wall, stretch out, and begin the next lap.

If you need to noticably shorten your stroke to accelerate, you're not doing it right. Instead, it should be a matter of increasing power applied/stroke rate rather than decreasing stroke length.

What a crock of slowtwitch shit. I must've missed that survey. I've been to Kona, I swim in the top 3% at IM's, top 15% at Hawaii. Never kick turn, never will. When I do an open turn, I like to barely touch off the wall. That way, I get more swimming done and less gliding.

Usually the only people that argue against flip turns are those that don't know how to do them. You are faster and there is less interupption with them thus simulating open water condtions more. You don't get that extra half second rest and huge breath on the turn with flip turn. Multiply that big breath by 70, 100, however many times you turn in a pool and it adds up over time. That hypoxic breathing involved in swimming adds up faster with flip turn v.s open turns thus increasing your swim fitness. Not to mention it's less stress on your shoulder that you grab the wall with every time. I have seen shoulder injuries from open turns.
My question is if you can flip turn give me one reason not to do them?

I suppose, in the end, there is a difference between....

......doing an activity for the sake of doing the activity, immersing yourself in that activity and possibly improving at that activity............

.....and doing an activity for the sole reason of convincing oneself that by doing the activity in a very specific and narrow manner, one is going to somehow alter the numerical arrangement of some lonely finishing numbers on some lonely triathlon results page somewhere.

You've set up a false dichotomy. Even if it weren't a false dichotomy, whose to say that either one of these motivations is intrinsically more righteous than the other?

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Mike Sparks


I have competed well, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

flip turns make you artificially faster than you actually are.

and nobody asked you to grab the wall in an open turn.

i can flip turn, but i don't do them because when i do 500m i actually want to swim 500m and not 450m, or 445m or 455m. it's just an added variable that is easily eliminated from training. come to think of it, it's not so much the turn but the pushing off i have a problem with. it works for me though. my 500m PB in the pool is something like 8:30; my 1500m PB in OW is 24:xx and it wasn't short.

Why do you dismiss my test and provide your own which doesn't really prove a causal relationship, nor does it provide a control group? You are missing my point entirely, and your example proves that you're mixing the two claims together. I agree that 10/10 will be flip-turners. But there's no control for your test. We already know that 90% or more people who are top swimmers, do flip turns. But that doesn't mean the flip turn made them faster swimmers. Maybe the flip-turns made them better "practicers". But if all I do is sit there all day and do flip-turns over and over, my swim stroke will NEVER improve. At some point I actually have to SWIM! You're just taking anecdotal evidence to try and prove something for which there is no proof.

If they made pools the same way they make tracks, do you think anyone would be doing flip turns? I think there are many other examples. How about in the bike...a fast transition does not make you a faster biker, runner, etc. Although knowing how to do a running mount/dismount will speed up your bike split, it does not make you bike faster. How about I take the top 10 finishers in the typical bike race and see how many of them can do a running mount and dismount? I would bet 1/10, and the 1 would be lucky not to slip and fall.

Maybe I'm being way too pedantic with this, but when I read "flip-turns make you swim faster", the purist in me says no they don't!

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I'm new to triathlon and swimming, but I'm making the effort to learn flip turns right now. No, flip turns won't directly benefit open water swimming, but I believe they will make training in the pool more effective which will benefit open water swimming.

The main reason as I see it is that swimming becomes more continuous. Instead of the wall being a "mini break" while swimming, it becomes more challenging as you have to hold your breath longer while exhaling at the right time to keep water out of the nose. Then recover while swimming the next length. That's my point of view as a new swimmer, and granted may not apply for more seasoned swimmers. Also worthy of mention.. many areas (like my town) have early season triathlons with a friday evening swim leg at a pool, and then stagger start the bike the following morning. Not flip turning would be a handicap in that case.

Reading through this thread, I see plenty of other compelling reasons to keep working at it. Ab workout? Oh yeah!!! =)

My question is if you can flip turn give me one reason not to do them?

In an open water swim? ;-)

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flip turns won't directly benefit open water swimming, but I believe they will make training in the pool more effective which will benefit open water swimming

Thank you. One point though - could it be possible that when people move from pool swimming to open water swimming, their splits go up because their "100m" time in the pool is artificially inflated due to the flip-turns? If TomP is only swimming 15m out of 25m because of his efficient flip turns and pushoffs, and he's swimming the entire 25m/25m in open water, I'm curious what his splits are in each.

TomP - in a typical race-pace set in the pool, what's your average 100m split? In the open water, same conditions (calm, no wetsuit), what's your point-to-point 100m split. For MOST I bet it is slower.

I bet Michael Phelps' 100m splits are much slower in a calm open water setting mainly because he loses his flip-turn advantage. To me this means the flip-turn speeds up his time from wall to wall, over and over. But in a straight point to point swim, the flip-turns have done nothing to help him.

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What a crock of slowtwitch shit. I must've missed that survey. I've been to Kona, I swim in the top 3% at IM's, top 15% at Hawaii. Never kick turn, never will. When I do an open turn, I like to barely touch off the wall. That way, I get more swimming done and less gliding.

Exactly.

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Till last season I did most of my swim training in the ocean. So I did not see any reason to learn flip turns. Now I'm spending more time training in the pool (: SO! I'm going to learn how to do flip turns:)

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Train safe & smart
Bob

Maybe theoretically. Maybe. But in practice, that's what happens. Think about your water polo games--when you change direction all of sudden, aren't your first few strokes short and choppy as you get up to speed, and then they lengthen and smooth out? Mine are (or more truthfully, were; haven't played water polo in a long time).

I think the bottom line with flip turns is that a mediocre swimmer can realize some significant benefits by learning flip turns though improved "water feel" and better streamlined body positioning, and keeping the strokes in long, efficient cruising mode. Then the secondary benefits of cardiovascular benefits of breath control and swimming in the fast lane. Last and probably least, the psychological factor: if you feel faster you'll be faster, just like on a new bike.

I used to not to flip turns because it was not a movement important for open water swimming.

The problem with not doing them, though, as identified above, is that the tiny break one gets for just touching the wall and turning around gives you an extra breath that you will NOT get when swimming in open water.

Even though I'm a decent swimmer, losing my breath on the open water swim used to be my big hurdle. Simply swimming more while primarily doing flip turns has helped that.

Now that said, I don't do flip turns when I use a buoy and I find my self often just doing flip turns at one end of the pool when I"m taking it easy - they just aren't that fun if you do them right (meaning push off hard and get in 2 strokes before taking a breath). But I'm less worried about losing my breath in the open water now.