Turns
- Touch with one hand fully extended. Let your legs come under your body so that your feet touch the wall with your knees bent. Explode off the in a streamline position looking at the side or bottom of the pool. Here's a demo video.
- Option 1: Front open turn. Rotate from your back to your stomach with your final stroke into the wall. Do a freestyle open turn but be on your back when you push off the wall. (It's a DQ to push off on your stomach.)
- Option 2: Back open turn. Touch from your side or back then follow Option 1.
- Option 3: Old swivel turn. This is an advanced version of Option 2. Not as fast as a flipturn but faster. Touch while on your back with your fingers pointing down towards the bottom of the pool or to the side. Pull your knees to your chest. Use your hand to spin your feet towards the wall. Demo video. Dryland demo video.
Advanced Open Turns with Two-Hands for Fly/Breast: In breaststroke/butterfly, swimmers only use open turns because these two strokes require touching the wall with both hands. After touching with both hands, remember to split your arms apart for a faster turn. One phrase used to remind swimmers to split: elbow your brother call your mother. Because these are the only open turns ever used by swimmers at very high levels, there are far more advanced optimization videos for these open turns. Here's one example video. Here's another demo from USMS.
Backstroke Front Flip Turns are basically freestyle front turns except you have to be very cautious to only rotate over on your stomach once you're at the wall.
Backstroke to Breaststroke turns for Individual Medley events have slightly different rules than other backstroke turns. Most swimmers would use Option #2 in backstroke open turns. Advanced swimmers use a special crossover turn.
Flip Turns are typically one of the more difficult skills for swimmers who didn't learn them as kids. This video very quickly walks through the basic building blocks. Once you can basically do a flip turn, the kickboard trick is helpful to get it to an intermediate stage. Here's a presentation on a few options to move to more advanced flipturns.
