Tuesday's Workout (And flip turn tips)

Sorry guys (well I don't know if anyone actually looks at these posts, but if you do, here I'm sorry). I didn't get around to posting my workout from yesterday). Tuesday's work-out is here a long with some of my experiences when learning flip turns.

Work-out:

200yds Warm-up
4 x 50yds with 20s rest

Do this twice:
3x 100yds of kick with fins
100 yds of swimming with fins @ 2:30 interval

4x 50yds with fins on a 50 second interval


Flip turns:

So yesterday long after class I started practising my flip turns. First, I practiced flipping right next to the wall and pushing off with no momentum. The hard part about flipping with no momentum is you need to bring your legs in at the right time in order to flip properly.

Flipping with no momentum goes something like:
1) Make sure you have air in your lungs.
2) pull your head into your chest, you should start curling your torso in after your head gets to your chest. Be sure to start breathing out when your nose starts getting upside down with respect to the surface of the water, otherwise you'll get water up your nose (you'll get better at not getting it up there the more your practice).
3) start pulling your legs into your torso after you've rotated enough that it will help the flip go to completion

Flipping with momentum is easier because if you have enough momentum, your body will just follow your head. I did notice however that if I didn't bring my legs in while flipping with momentum, I tended to move the opposite direction away from the wall sooner than I'd like to (making pushing off the wall harder).

What I did while practising with momentum was I would start swimming or push off the floor while half-standing and then right when I got close to the wall, force my head to start the turn (I almost felt like I was forcing it to do the turn to avoid collision with the wall). If you're scared of the wall, then you'll never get close enough to be able to push off when you're done.

Other than making sure that I do my flip completely straight (sometimes I end up kind of sideways), I have some issues with orienting myself in the water properly. My friend who coaches swimming gave me the following advice:

try after the flip to just come out of the water straight on your back and then flip over to continue freestyle, get use to that first then once your use to that just flip over on your belly right before you emerge from the water. it doesn't have to be perfect since you probly won't use it in a race but it will help your endurance for the race since flip turns help your body get use to holding your breath more :)