Ok, I have never really done flip turns. My goal is to learn flip turns and join a masters program. I found the perfect five series video on the YouTube. It is extremely basic but perfect for me. You start with a noodle and flip through it so not to use your hands.
I did not feel that great going to the pool anyway last night. But when I did it I got sick to my stomach. Plus I was really bad at it. What is weird is I love every ride at Six Flags and really nothing makes me sick.
I find this just pathetic. But curios if anyone else has run into this problem.
I figure I will eventually get use to it. But geeze.
Don’t worry, you will get better at it. I am a swimmer who learnt how to swim as an adult. For me, nothing came easy. I only recently started doing the flip turns, and, I thought I had to scull my way into the flip turn with both hands. Turns out that the flip turn needs to be initiated from the neck.
Are you exhaling through your nose during the flip turn so as to not get water up your nose? Perhaps that’s the cause of the sickness?
I did it with a nose clip. Ultra dork. I also did it blowing out. For some reason it seemed like the nose clip made it worst. I felt a little better without it. But by that time I was already pretty sick.
I ended up practicing doing 3 or 4 flip turns with the noodle and swam laps for 15 minutes so my nasusea would settle and did it again.
I am really not one to give up. So I figure if it does not get better I will be able to practice 3 or 4 flip turns every 15 minutes. It might take much longer than I though but I will learn a flip turn. I am convinced that once I am doing them while swimming and only every 22 seconds or so it will no longer make me sick.
my husband tried to teach me flip turns one of the nights we went to the pool together (he comes with me once a week to do a few laps for fitness), and i’m pretty sure there have been squirrels that do a better job with them than i do it just seems to take me so dang long to get my head back above water that i completely run out of air, and am shagged for the next lap…
my solution: i gave up, and just do OWS instead to improve my overall endurance
I did it with a nose clip. Ultra dork. I also did it blowing out. For some reason it seemed like the nose clip made it worst. I felt a little better without it. But by that time I was already pretty sick.
I ended up practicing doing 3 or 4 flip turns with the noodle and swam laps for 15 minutes so my nasusea would settle and did it again.
I am really not one to give up. So I figure if it does not get better I will be able to practice 3 or 4 flip turns every 15 minutes. It might take much longer than I though but I will learn a flip turn. I am convinced that once I am doing them while swimming and only every 22 seconds or so it will no longer make me sick.
You might also want to try flipping every 2nd length. If you’re doing a set of 200m in a 25m pool, flip on the 1st and 3rd lengths - that gives you a more intermediate transition.
Just keep at it, man! I promise it would get easier.
get ear plugs if you don’t already have them. use them.
if you are strictly a ‘face down’ swimmer:
what helped me the most was simply getting more comfortable with different body orientations in the pool. push off the wall on your side, upside down, etc. no science behind that whatsoever- just my personal experience. I was able to wean off the ear plugs.
as for technique, the best advice I got was: start the flip turn with your leading arm as you approach the wall. follow your arm down with your head and flip STRAIGHT onto your back like you’ve been karate flipped onto a mattress. once you’ve done that, slowly turn to get back on your tummy with a gentle kick. Doing less twisting during the turn seemed to cut down on the nausea . you can always tighten things up after you can do them consistently without a bucket in your lane.
Flip turn take time and are hard to do at first because you have to teach your body to acclimate to the oxygen debt.
That oxygen debt greatly helps your V02 max in the long run…
I found a series to tutorials on YouTube and I think they are going to work great. The first step is just to do a flip within a noodle. This is what I am on. It teaches you to do the flip without your hands.
I will try ear plugs. Maybe that is why I am getting dizzy. Plus I ate way too big of a dinner last night. So I am off to the pull now feeling better then I went last night. So hopefully it will workout better
New to the flip turn too. The first couple of times I did it I could barely stand after the turn. In that first session I probably had 1 or 2 successful turns and many that left me laughing. Over time it has gotten a lot better and I no longer get dizzy from doing these.
I’m still incorporating them into my practice and probably use them about 60% of the time.
My suggestion: do your warm-up and main-set and then spend about 10-15 minutes at the end of your session just practicing them. You’ll get it.
–Sax
I suck at them, rarely do them. But to get to a lower level of suckitude I went to a pool that
I could just start 8m from the wall, do a FT, and then again, and again.
Then you’re not worried about the “I need to breathe now because I can’t until a long time
from now” and all the other crap.
I have a fear of shattering my heal doing my turn. I see folks flipping & their feet come six inches to a foot from the wall with pretty good force. I can see myself doing that and hitting my heal & shattering it. I’ll stick to OW turns.
Screw them flip turns. I did them for 12 years straight and can still do them inmy sleep. All they are good for is to learn how to explode off the wall. Okay maybe a little O2 deprivation training. Thats about it. They are of almost no importance in open water swimming.
I don’t see the point in learning them. They will not make me faster in a race. Also, I really don’t even push off on the way. I just push off enough so I’m not starting from a standstill.
You might also want to try flipping every 2nd length. If you’re doing a set of 200m in a 25m pool, flip on the 1st and 3rd lengths - that gives you a more intermediate transition.
Just keep at it, man! I promise it would get easier.
Great tip! I just did this for 1000m to practice flips (some good, some amusing) vs. giving up after a few 100m from the O2 issues.
Where is this youtube vid? I have done some flips but I have to scull my hand or else I don’t turn! I don’t flip normally because I use the end of each lap for an extra breath and this reduces me by one, which just messes things
it just seems to take me so dang long to get my head back above water that i completely run out of air, and am shagged for the next lap…
