Our Hamden North Haven Swim Team (the YMCA Typhoons) will always hear us, as we coach our Juniors and Seniors, that there are a lot of factors that go into swimming a faster time.  The easiest change for swimmers, in my opinion, is the speed, efficiency, and power of the flip turn.

If you look at a majority of swimmers who use flip turns in their long axis strokes, the start to finish time (last stroke to feet leaving the wall) is around :01.25 give or take a few tenths.  A few things to keep in mind as you analyze your flip turns in your next practice:

• Am I hitting the correct stroke count prior to starting my turn.  If not, you will either be taking an “aligator arm” stroke, or wait an extremely long time prior to starting the turn.
• Am I taking a breath before the turn.  If you are, try to control your breathing and not take a breathe prior to the turn.  With our swimmers, we try to encourage them not to take a breath after they hit the flags and not to take a breath prior to their breakout strokes from the turns.
• Am I tucking hard and rotating the body at the neck and not the hips.  If you rotate at the neck you will be at the proper depth rather than rotating at the hips which may bring your body to the surface too much.  If you are not tucking properly you could be wasting energy and movement by essentially flinging your legs over your body.
• Am I streamlined on my back prior to my feet hitting the wall.  The ideal body position for the flip turn is in a streamline backstroke position with your feet poised to explode off of the wall.
• Am I cushioning the explosion from the push-off.  A lot of swimmers use more momentum than they should; as their feet hit the wall they bend as the knee and don’t explode soon enough.  In other words, they spend a significantly long time “on the wall”.  To make this better, don’t bend at the knee, but explode from the wall; pretend that the wall is a hot frying pan and you just want to get off and as far away of that hot surface as fast as humanly possible.
• Am I utlizing the speed from the turn in my underwater work.  The best way to utilize the speed built off of the turn is to have a nice, strong, quick, dolphin kick.  We, for age-group swimmers, suggest 4 fly kicks as you gradually (and naturally) rotate from the streamlined back position to a streamlined freestyle position and into the breakout kick/stroke.

We’ll always say that working on stroke technique is one of the most important focal points for all swimmers, but in order to provide a little more advantage swimmers can try to concentrate on their flip turns.  I hope this post helps some swimmers out there, but if you have any questions, comments, concerns feel free to leave a comment on here or e-mail me at any point!  All the best, and happy swimming!  Go Typhoons!