I would appreciate any thoughts on how to complete a safe flip turn in the shallow end of a neighborhood pool.
I am able to more or less turn where I come off the wall on my back and rotate after the push off. At first I would simply stay on my back after the turn and do a stroke or two of backstroke before rotating into freestyle.
But, my summer pool has a 3 foot deep end and I am so far unwilling to try flip turns in 3 feet of water.
I have observed that the true fish seemingly adjust their turn by 90 degrees such that they go into the wall on their side and then come off the wall on their side, never going deep, when turning at the 3 foot end.
3 feet of water is more than enough to do a flip turn and not even approach the bottom of the pool. My entire body, start to finish, doesn’t make it any lower than the ‘t’ painted on the end wall. The trick is to push off perpendicular to the wall and parallel to the bottom of the pool while staying in a tight, rigid streamline. Rotate slowly. Another trick that I have learned, and is quite effective, is that I never rotate past my side. I stay on my side and pull with my bottom arm for my first stroke. This will automatically rotate your body and set yourself up for the next stroke.
It sounds like maybe you’re hitting the wall with your feet a bit too early. That is, when you push off the wall your feet are above you, and you push downwards off the wall. If you continue your flip a bit more so your feet are directly behind you, you should push straight off the wall.
As for the last part of your post, there isn’t/shouldn’t be any difference whatsoever with turning in shallow vs. deep water.
Pushing off on your side is the proper way to do it, no matter how deep the water is. Do a half turn as you are flipping and your feet should hit the wall with your toes pointing at the side. The flip and the rotation onto your side are all done in one coordinated motion.
Ideally, you are not diving down or sinking as part of the turn. Never really thought about it but it might have something to do with how fast one gets there legs over. Good swimmers’ turns are fast so there is not much if any time to be sinking. If anything, those that are really good at flip turns have to work at getting depth, not work on avoiding being too deep. (Those that are really good at this are pushing off downward to get enough depth to do effective dolphin kicks). If you are doing the perfect flip turn, your feet will be hitting the wall just a few inches under the water (unless you decide you want them deeper). That’s certainly a stetch for most mortals but the faster you get over, the less you will sink in the process.
Another thing that happens on less than perfect turns is getting too close to the wall. That gets you all scrunched up and makes it alot harder to control exactly how you are going to come off and control your depth on the push off and glide.