One of the on-going debates in triathlon is the flip turn. There are a great many triathletes who support doing flip turns in the pool. It seems a lot of them are former swimmers. There are just as many who prefer open turns and argue that flip turns are pointless as there are no walls in the lake, river, or ocean. These are quite often people without a competitive swimming background.
Perhaps the most sensible argument I've seen either way was on the Swim Smooth video, where a lifeguard and experienced open water swimmer demonstrates an efficient method of navigating turn markers. And if you've never seen the video of Olympic gold medalist Bill Kirby, check it out. It is a great visualization tool.
Mike Ricci, who coached me to my first successful Ironman, is a firm believer in the flip turn. He counters the "no walls in the open water" argument by pointing out that the lack of walls for flip turns makes it quite difficult to grab the wall and rest at the end of each lap. And those of us who do open turns have to be honest with ourselves. I know that my turn time gets longer and longer the further I swim.
Mike knows that mastering flip turns takes work. To help, he created and posted a video showing some drills to help in the learning process. It goes through several steps beginning at "do sommersaults in the lane" to the final product. Again, just having the video to help with visualizing a good flip turn is a huge plus.
This morning, I decided to start putting effort into flip turns. And it's not for any of the reasons commonly used to support them. It's really just because they look cool. In keeping with my abilities in the other disciplines of triathlon, I will never be an elite swimmer. I'm happy just to pull out anything less than 2:15/100 yds for anything over 3000 yards.
But I can LOOK fast. And how can I look fast? By doing flip turns. Face it, when you're at the pool and see someone doing flip turns, you KNOW they are a good swimmer. If you take two people swimming at roughly the same pace, the one doing flip turns MUST be the better swimmer. The facts don't matter. Only perception. So, I'm going to master flip turns so I can LOOK faster. Maybe if I fake it enough, I'll start to live up to the perception.
And just to prove that I do occassionally learn something useful, here's a little tidbit I picked up, today. Coach Mike's first step is to do sommersaults in the shallow end, just to get the feel of flipping in the water. As a rank amateur, I can confirm that is more difficult than it looks. One of the dolphins with whom I often swim was doing some aquajogging and made a very helpful suggestion. Move to the deep end and use kickboards to help with the flip.
The trick is to use two kickboards to support your hands. By pushing down on the kickboards, you can flip around them. It helps keep the torso aligned and the hands in the right general area. I really struggled with sommersaults in the shallow end. Using the kickboards in the deep end felt more natural. Using Coach Mike's progression, I was then able to do a few sommersaults (again, with the kickboards), and land my feet on the wall.
Happy swimming! Just don't flip, too much.
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