How much do flip turns help you?

This article focuses on flip turns. Not because they are important to a triathlon swim - they are not. But triathletes make up for lack of importance with interest and curiosity in the sports they want to learn. I remain surprised at how many of my clients want to become better at flip turns. When I ask why they want to know, they all say they want to swim with others in masters swim meets and practices.

The focus of this article is not on the technique of flip turns, but an analysis of what happens when you don’t do them. How much time can you expect to lose on your master’s swimming friends if you do open turns (grab the wall and turn without the flip)? How does this add up over distance? In short course yards, it adds up pretty quick, because there are more turns for the same distance. In long course meters, the opposite is true.

To investigate, your humble narrator (coach Dobko) suited up and did a series of timed flip turns. I sprinted into the wall at maximum speed, and either did a flip turn (a summersault at the wall) or an open turn (where I reached out, grabbed the wall with my hand, pulled my legs into the wall and pushed off). I was timed from the moment my head was 5 yards away from the wall. The clock stopped after: I did the turn, pushed off the wall, and my head passed the same 5 yard mark. I did 6 repeats with flip turns, and 6 repeats with open turns. Results and analysis are shown in the chart below.

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From the data, doing a flip turn was faster than an open turn by a statistically significant amount (to 95% confidence). The mean differential was 0.41 seconds per turn. This may not sound like a lot of time, but it converts to a lot of distance and adds up. You may get to the wall at the same time as your competitor. But if you do an open turn and he/she does a flip turn, you will be swimming at his/her shoulders, even if you are a genius at open turns.

The amount of time loss over the 1,650 yard race is over 26 seconds. This difference amounts to 2% of the total race time, just because you don’t do flip turns. If you do the 1,500 in a long course pool, the time loss is less, just 12 seconds or about 1% of total time on average. The difference is tolerable but still significant. And, there’s nothing more frustrating than gaining ground on someone, only to lose it off a silly wall push-off.

I hope this helps you see what happens when you don’t do flip turns in a pool. For some people, going slower by 2% (or 1% in long course pool) doesn’t really matter. And the reality is it won’t matter in an open-water swim where there are no flip turns. But for the competitive athletes out there, it is nice to know what it takes to compete against hard-core swimmers who are experienced at flip turns.

Learning to do the flip turns is an exciting thing to do. It gives you a break from working on freestyle technique all the time. It allows you to train and compete with a group of swimmers where you may not be able to keep up otherwise. And it gives you a better experience of what it takes to swim well. And most importantly, it is fun!