Why Most Swimmers Run Out Of Air In Flip Turns

Most swimmers either avoid flip turns or they are completely out of breath after they do one. If that's you, it is not your fitness, it is your technique. In this video, I'm going to share with you the simple step-by-step method that you can learn to do a tumble turn or a flip turn, and that way you can actually save energy on the turns, you can be a lot faster in them, and you can also keep up with the people next to you who are doing those flip turns and coming off with more speed and more rhythm. So, let's get stuck into this video where you're going to learn exactly how to do a flip turn without being out of breath or feeling dizzy at the end of it. The first step is to approach the wall smoothly. At the bottom of each lane, there is often a black T, and that T is to show you where you are from the wall, and you can use that to help gauge how far you are from the wall. Now, if your pool doesn't have it, you're probably going to have to look slightly forwards to see how far you are from the wall, but most pools are going to have these T's, and they are usually the same distance out from the wall every single time, so that you can reliably know how far away you are as you are approaching the wall. So, each turn is going to be the same, no matter which pool you are swimming in. Now, when you come into the wall, we don't want to slow down as we're going into it, because a rule of thumb that you might hear from coaches all the time is that the faster you go into the wall, the faster you'll come out of the wall, and that is certainly true once you get good at doing flip turns. So, we want to keep our speed constant and smooth as we go into the wall and approach it. So, once you've found your distance from the wall, the second step is to set yourself up on the last stroke. Now, this is where a lot of mistakes often get made, and if you've struggled to do turns well or do them comfortably, this might be where you are doing something that's causing your tumble turns to either lose their rhythm or to run out of breath. Now, in this setup stroke as we go into the wall, we want to head into the wall, take our last stroke, and we're coming into the wall with one hand in front, and that last stroke is going to pull towards your hips, and that's going to help bring you into the wall to initiate the flick. Now, the mistake that people make here is, as they're coming into the wall, they don't take that last stroke and keep the hands at the hip. They actually go one hand in front, the other hand comes in front to meet it, and then they try and pull themselves in with both hands, but it's got to be the opposite. Both hands have to be at the hips as you are beginning to flip over. So, our last stroke is this setup stroke where we come in with one hand by the side, and then we pull ourselves into the wall, and this last hand is going to finish at the hip, and that way that's going to help us with our flip and mean that we can get straight into a streamlined position. Now, one thing that you might have trouble with there is seeing exactly where the wall is. If you are struggling to see the wall as you're swimming in because your goggles are really foggy, check out our Nanoclear anti-fog goggles. These goggles have anti-fog that's built into the lens, and they last 10 times longer than most anti-fog on the market, and so these are goggles that we've developed over the last six months so that you don't have to worry about fog anytime that you're swimming. Now, after the setup stroke, we want to initiate the flip into the wall or the tumble into the wall. Now, to do that, we need to tuck our chin to our chest. We need to bring our knees close to our chest and our heels close to our bum because the smaller, the tighter we can get here, the faster we're going to be able to flip over. So, again, another mistake that people quite often make here is that they don't tuck up tight enough, and so it's really hard to get over the water. Another thing that can help you there is as you're going into the wall, as you tuck your chin, you need to almost press your chest down into the water to help initiate that flip. Sometimes, people find it hard to flip directly over, so they almost sort of, rather than going over in a straight line, their body turns to the side, and that's where they get messed up. So, you need to feel like you're almost somewhat bearing your head or your chest down into the water to help initiate it. So, if you're finding it hard to do that in a direct motion, make sure that you're really pressing down with the head, the chest, and tuck that nice and tight. So, that way, when we land on the wall, we want to land with both feet almost together. Now, what we don't want to do is when we do that flip, we don't want to flip onto our stomach and be facing down into the water ready to push off. We want to flip over, land almost on our back, but we're actually going to turn slightly to the side. So, our feet will be about 45 degrees here as we're ready to push off, and you're going to be mostly on your back and a little bit on your side. You're not going to be on your front at this point. Now, this is important because if you flip over and you try and do the turn onto your front through that motion, it's going to take you twice as long. It's going to cause you to lose your rhythm, and you're probably going to get a little bit dizzy in this process. But instead, if you can flip over direct, land feet on the wall, but a little bit of a turn to the side, and then you're ready to push off, the next part becomes a whole lot easier. Now, it's important to make sure that you land the right distance away from the wall. Now, a lot of people, when they're first learning this, most people tend to turn too close to the wall. So, when their feet hit the wall, they're either struggling to get their feet underneath themselves, or they just completely slip off when they push off the wall. So, think about it as almost like you're crouching on a skateboard. You're not going to get really, really low, but you're not going to be too far away. We're just kind of crouching down on the skateboard, and our legs are a little bit more bent than 90 degrees. So, we're not too far away, we're not too close, but a little bit, I guess, less angled than 90 degrees with your legs, as you can see here in this shot. Now, we also don't want to land too far away where your legs are almost straight, and it does take several times of practice to get this length or distance away from the wall right. But once you get it, if you can embed that feeling, and if you can remember exactly where you're turning in relation to that tee on the bottom of the pool, that way it starts to become a habit, and it's automatic. So, you don't have to keep thinking about that as you are going through the next 6 to 12 months of your swimming. Now, once your feet have hit the wall, you've turned them a little bit, we also need to make sure that our hands go into streamline. And because we're going from hands that were at the hips, and the body slipped over, the hands are almost in that position ready to streamline. So, the last step there is we want to get one hand on top of the other, wrap that top thumb around your hand like that, and then we want to lock that in. So, try and lock the elbows in here, covering the back of your ears, and that way when we push off, we're straight from our fingers all the way through to almost our hips, and then we can push off. And the more streamlined we are, the faster we're going to go at that point. Now, a mistake a lot of people make here is that when they push off, they look forward. They break that streamline by trying to look ahead at where they're going. But that is going to slow you down by probably more than 50% if you push off in that way. So, we need to make sure we've locked in everything straight from fingers through to our the wall, and that is how you can keep your speed off the wall. Now, if you are finding that you're getting quite tired through this motion, it might be because you're not locking in that streamline. You might be pushing off like this, and even though it doesn't look like much of a change, that creates so much more drag. And so, when you push off, it feels like you're hitting a brick wall, and you're going to slow yourself down so much. Now, if you're tight through the shoulders, and you can't quite get into a really good streamline, get into as good a streamline as possible, and that way you're going to save yourself possibly half a second or even maybe a second on every single lap that you're doing these turns. Now, as you are pushing off the wall, we are then going to push off, and as you're coming off, we're going to start to turn onto our front. So, by the time you go to take your first stroke, we want to be eyes down into the water. So, we're facing down, ready to take that first stroke. So, most of the turn is happening as we are coming off the wall. And that, again, takes a bit of practice to figure out, how do I need to move and hold my body as I'm coming off the wall? But if you can do that well, then it is going to save you several seconds, it's going to save you a lot of energy, and it means that you're going to keep your speed coming off the turn. Because the fastest point in any race, in any lap that you're doing, is either off the dive or off the wall. And we want to try and maintain that speed as long as we can into those first couple of strokes. But if you're pushing off, creating a heap of drag, then you're starting from a very slow position, and then it's harder work getting that speed going. So, if you're getting frustrated that the person next to you is smashing you off every single turn, doing the turn in this way can actually help you sometimes save one, two, three seconds per hundred if your turns are really slowing you down right now. Now, if you are a junior swimmer or a teenager, you're probably getting taught to do at least two or three underwater dolphin kicks off every single turn. And I think for junior swimmers, that is something that is worth practicing. If you're an adult, like the people that I teach and I coach, you probably don't have the flexibility and the speed in your kick to get much speed off your underwater dolphin kicks. So, I don't mind if you are a triathlete, I don't mind if you come straight off without doing any dolphin kicks underwater. But what I would suggest is push off, you might do a couple of freestyle kicks as you're going into your first stroke. But we're not trying to put a lot of effort into those kicks, and we're not trying to really do a lot of kicks and staying underwater for as long as we can. You're probably better off just pushing off and almost breaking out straight away. Because let's say you don't have a great streamline, let's say you're a bit tighter than that, let's say you don't have a great kick, you're probably going to save the most time and the most speed by coming out fairly quickly. But obviously, that advice is going to change depending on what you're training for. I was listening to a podcast with Bob Bowman, who was Michael Phelps' coach, and they really, really worked on those underwaters. Because if you've got a great dolphin kick, it can be the fastest way that you can travel through the water. Faster than your above-water swimming, in fly, in freestyle. So it just depends who you are. But I think for a triathlete, just come off the wall, break out fairly quickly, so you can just get back into swimming, which is probably going to be the fastest way to travel through the water for you. Now, as we break out, we don't want to take our stroke while we're really deep in the water. Because then you're going to find that you get stuck and you lose your speed. So try and gauge your depth as you're about to come near the surface, as you're about to pop out. That is when you can take your first stroke, so that in that first stroke, you are just coming out of the water and you're breaking the surface there. Now, some common mistakes to avoid when you are doing a flip turn. The first one is rushing into it and trying to speed up as you go into the wall and just losing your rhythm and your timing. So we want to try and keep the speed that we go in and the speed that we go out. We want to keep that quite smooth. The second mistake is over-rotating or twisting onto your side as you're flipping. We want to go directly into the wall, flip over, land almost on our back with a little bit of a turn, instead of trying to get your body onto its front by the time your feet hit the wall. The third mistake is when you push off the wall, not pushing off straight or even going slightly down into the water. A lot of people will push off and either go straight upwards or they'll go down too deep. So it's about finding the right angle so that when you take that first stroke, you're just breaking the surface of the water. And the fourth mistake is starting your first stroke too deep into the water so that you lose all of your speed. We need to make sure that first stroke happens just as you're about to break the surface of the water. So what mindset can you take into your flip turns? Well, firstly, it's not about trying to rush things in the speed. It's about keeping things smooth and keeping the rhythm of your stroke as you go into the wall. The next part is it is about technique and maintaining streamline. So we don't need to muscle our way through the turn or really try and force ourselves through these movements. If we do them smoothly and we get very compact when we turn and we push off in a great streamline, that is where the speed itself is going to come from. Not from trying to muscle or force any of these movements. The smoothness and good technique will carry you a lot further than trying to force a lot of these things. And the last one is it does take practice. So don't worry if you're getting water up your nose, if you are slipping off the wall, if you're misjudging the distance when you come into the wall. All this stuff takes practice and if you don't go through those parts where you feel like you might be failing or you're like oh this I just I'm never going to get it. If you're not going through that then you're probably not doing the things you need to do to become very good and very efficient at flip turns. It's just part of the process in learning. Whether it's a six-year-old kid trying to learn flip turns or an adult trying to learn flip turns, we all go through the same things and we all experience the same challenges. So if you can find yourself on the other side of that, then perhaps in two weeks or three weeks time you might find yourself starting to get very good at flip turns and it makes swimming in a pool, particularly a shorter pool like a 25 yard or a 25 meter pool, it makes it so much more enjoyable when you can do these flip turns well and do them comfortably when you don't have to think much about it. And it is possible. It's a learned skill. There's no reason why you can't make this a part of your stroke that is just something you don't have to think about. I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of freestyle flip turns. If you'd like to grab a pair of our Nanoclear goggles, click the link below in the description. And if you would like the full breakdown of freestyle technique, you can click and watch this video right here.