Yes, you suck. ;-)

My point is that people who want to get fast, do the things necessary to get fast. It's a mental thing, not a physical thing.

There are exceptions to every rule... I can understand that some people get sick when doing a flip turn. Nothing wrong with that.
Out of curiosity.. do you know why you get sick? Simple motion sickness, or a medical condition?

Jill...I agree with all of your reasons PLUS i was always scratching up my wedding ring on the side of the pool!
I also find that flip turns just help my continuity of my workout, prevent me from hanging out on the wall and improves my overall breathing during a set. Because they are faster I know that I am more productive during my workouts when time is limited.

So are you saying that if we do flip turns in an outdoor pool then we can even our tan by comming off the wall on our back to get more sun exposure on our front using the pool water as magnification medium?

Silly me, I didn't think of that before :)

jaretj

Outdoor pool? Work in a backstroke set!

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

Not sure. I overheard my coach talking to the Dr. during my VO2 test a couple of months ago about my flip-turn nausea. Whilst running so hard that I was about to collapse during the test I heard the Dr. say that a flip-turn like that can cause imbalances or rapid changes in blood pressure in some people - resulting symptom is nausea. The part I know I heard for sure is when she asked, "can this be resolved" and the Dr. said "No".

They make me sick - deathly ill - so I don't do them. And I'm at peace with that.

I repeat, "pretty much" however I guess pretty much for swimming was a bit general, so I apologize. But basically stating that flipturning will not make MOP or BOP THAT much faster... I didn't mean to get in that much of a discussion. I am a FOP swimmer.... MOP for bike, and b/w Front and mid for the run, but have been swimming nearly my entire life. When I was competing strictly pool I didn't pay that much attention to differences in my 50m split for 100m in short course vs. long course. Maybe I should have!! HA!

If I weren't learning something new everyday, I'd be dead, so thanks for the example and math on the % slower.

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Tiger for Life -- War Eagle!

Why? Why do anything in the pool?
I walked onto the the pool deck at California Luthern University (CLU) on Monday. The USA Olympic Water Polo Team had begun trainng there for the upcoming 2008 games. The team was doing 25yd drill sprints on 20 seconds--- lots and lots of sprinting. They were doing drills of butterfly with flutter kick---yes, fly arms with freestyle leg kicking. I asked the assistant coach who was nearby why that? He replied 'makes you tough'. Fly arms flutter kick!

So if you are wondering why you should do flip turns and what that can do for your swimming, I suggest: Do your flip turns, and get tough!

not on the bike

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"A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."
John Sawhill

Thank you. I will now be doing flip turns to the best of my ability.

Wow!! 8 pages of comments on flip turns. I guess since everyone else has chimed in, I shouldn't feel bad about throwing in a few random comments.

• One of this years goals is to learn to swim like a swimmer -- flip turns, kick sets, IM sets, etc.
• I'm no where near podium level for triathlons -- for oly distance I need to be about 15 minutes faster and 15 years older. For people like me it just doesn't make sense to narrowly focus on training for triathlon races. If the training itself doesn't come with some tangible reward I won't be motivated to get up at 5AM to do it. I need that sense of accomplishment that comes from learning a new skill, beating a time on a clock, moving up a lane, etc.
• With this perspective I just don't relate to the idea of purposely doing slower turns in a pool just so that you can simulate open water swimming.
• For the same reason I don't get why some people commit to breathing every three strokes on their main sets when every two is faster. (I alternate breathing side on each length. Always breathe to the side of the faster lane -- more motivation.) I guess that's for a different thread though.
• I still do mostly open turns in master's workouts. It's really hard to wean myself off of that extra breath, and I'm not confident enough with the flips to keep from interrupting lane mates, and ending up on the "Strange Denizens of the Pool" thread.
  
• Open turns don't have to be slow. I beat a lot of flip turners off the wall in my neighboring lanes. The key is to swim all the way to the wall and get a strong streamlined push off. I'm guessing that it's the same key for flip turns, but I don't have the experience to back it up. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have the experience and this comment will be moot for me.
• My totally unscientific study of people in my master's group says that the break point that divides the flip turners in the faster lanes from the open turners in the slower lanes is 1:35/100yd(sc). Guess where I am exactly.

John

I agree with everything you said about how important they are, etc. I question the first sentence above, in that it could very well be that people like me (who just can't seem to ever do them primarily because of needing to breathe, despite SERIOUS dedication to it) were weeded out from every becoming swimmers because of that. I don't know that lung capacity "develops".

On the second point, I hadn't heard that open turns were nasty for shoulders. Since mine are always complaining, what's the issue and is there a way to avoid it (other than flip turns)?

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

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My understanding is that you should avoid flipturns if you have back issues.

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COtrimom

I agree. Every time I see a trigeek swimming at the pool and not doing flip turns, I say to my self....Chooch.

I'm certainly not a great flip turner. In fact I've just looked at the article on Beginner Triathlete on Flip turns and realised that I'm doing them completely wrong anyway. (I actually touch the wall with 1 hand as I'm doing the turn and also I start to twist way too early). Neevertheless we did our club 1500m early season time trial on Tuesday night and I was shooting for 25 minutes. Was doing alright till about 1100 meters, pretty much hitting 1m40 per lap consistently. Then I got out of breath a bit and thought I'd skip a few flip turns. I threw in 2x 1m45s and screwed up my target. I recovered a bit on the last two laps and went back to the flip turns, but the damage was done. 25m03. :-(

I'm lucky in that I have a 50m pool that a regularly train in. However sometimes I go to a 25m pool and whenever I time myself it just seems ridiculously fast. More turns = faster, flip turns = even faster.

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TriRaceBook.com
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Hawaii Qualification Analysis

Jack, do you get dizzy while swimming in general? As a kid I would get horribly dizzy from swimming laps, I never swam competitively then but swam a lot with friends. Wasn't until my adult years due to some health issues found out I have a horribly screwed up equilibrium and discovered that the flushing of water in and out of my ears when turning my head to breathe caused severe vertigo. I have to swim with good ear plugs and the problem is solved.

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A friend will give you an alibi, a best friend will help you burn the body.

Best post in this thread, IMHO.

Forgive me if posting on this thread brings back any bad memories! But... I have an N=1 account to add to the thread in the PRO-flipturn camp.

I'm an accomplished flip turner from competitive days. Injured abdomen prevented doing flip turns or dolphin kicks for a few months - during that time I became an accomplished open turner - this was a painful journey after 30+ years of flip turning, but there was really no other option so I became pretty good at open turns, despite having excellent flip turning skills. Now the abs are healed enough to swim "normally" again and it took a couple of weeks of regular swimming to get back into the flip turn groove.

What I learned: Flip turns are harder. No question about it. The dolphin kicks are tiring, the oxygen debt is a big deal, it takes more energy than a non-flip turn overall. Even though I had progressed to pretty fast open turns, there was always an extra breath, and an occaissional conscious "mini-break" on some hard sets that just isn't possible when doing flip turns. My biggest impression - actual swim distance per length (LCM) was probably greater for open turns, because I was swimming 45 meters instead of the 40 meters possible with good flips + dolphining -but I felt the open turns made a 500m swim into 10x50m, while the flip turns allowed a "continuous" 500m. So, if they are harder and allow you to swim more continuously, they should be superior for any swim training, including triathlon.

Sorry if this just recapitulates conclusions from previous posts on the thread.

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some days you're the windshield some days the bug

Only on ST could we have a 192-post thread on flip turns...

;-)

Since I started doing proper flip turns, the hotties have been throwing it at me like Nolan Ryan.

It worked for me! It can work for you, too!

Learn and do flip turns.

That said. As a former college swimmer with a love of flip turns (I think I might actually have rested a bit on them) I stopped doing flip turns 6 months ago because of back pain. I was bored out of my mind when I swam but I think it kept me aggressive lap after lap because I had to make up my loss to keep up with the fast kids.

You don't need to do flip turns to go fast. I didn't lose a spot this summer in the swim leg of my races.

As the OP of this post 9 months, 195 posts and 190,000 yds ago, I can say definitively that…[/url] I have no idea whether flip turns have helped me or not.

The facts are:
- I started doing flip turns a few days after this thread started
- I was probably a 30min swimmer for the oly leg.
- I am now a 25-26 min oly leg swimmer.
- I’ve swum pretty consistently 3x a week for the past 9 months

Too many variables to attribute my improvement to flipturns, but it sure does make me feel cooler.

Yes, and then you will be able to join Masters workouts which will surprisingly make you a faster triathlete. (even though I don't agree many of the workouts are the best 4k open water prep).

It will also lead you to further perversions such as backstroke which will reinforce body position and rotation + core, breaststroke which will reinforce, uhhh....?. And the butterfly which is useful only for impressing women*.

S.

* Dear instructors, I can bring cash or PayPal details

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