I want to learn to flip turn. Keep watching YouTube videos, but still get water up my nose and misjudge the gap to the wall - too close and too far away. It’s also more tiring than an open turn, looks so easy when I watch everyone else do it!
You do get a bit less air if you tumble-turn, but it’s a ‘skill’ and it makes people think twice about joining you in the lane 
One thing it definitely is though, is faster; you can gain a few metres on a swimmer of equal speed if they grab turn, especially if their streamlining is a bit poor too.
I’ve taught myself to do them a couple of times to the point where I could reliably execute on my own at a steady speed. Doing them in a busy lane with the Tri club is a totally different kettle of fish and the loss of a breath when at pace is a big issue for me too. In the end I abandoned them and went back to open turns but there’s a guy who swims about the same speed as me who gains a body length every turn and I do look at him enviously and think maybe I should persevere.
At a gala this weekend and the winner of the boys 100 went 56, second place was 58.5 and the 3 turns were the winning margin. Similar in the 800, first was 9:08, second was about 9:41 and the 31 turns accounted for a majority of those seconds!
WHAT?!?!
People don’t tumble turn???
Are you mental?
This is decent, not sure what our resident swim coach will have to say about this:
Hammerer will tell you to turn like Phelps, when in reality it should be Mellouli/Hackett
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Cant listen to the video, but pretty much textbook technique as you’d expect from a video. The key really is the speed of the flip and coming off the wall hard and straight like an arrow. land one foot above the other so you can initiate the rotation quicker. Only dolphin kick once you feel you are about to slow down and only when on the front. Too many kids fly kick early and end up snaking and creating drag. Do one kick off the wall in most cases. Too much energy cost unless you are sprinting. simple just practice! every end turn, eventually you’ll find the best way if you are doing 80 turns a session for instance!
Hence my thought that 16hrs was a very big week. And the 15hr week too. So seems reasonable you’re managing some fatigue rather than worrying going backwards just yet.
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nah phelps technique is awful, he’s a fly swimmer
When doing turns in a training lane (I.e.swimming up one side and down the other) where do you plant on the wall? Do you turn at the point you come into the wall then push across to the other side of the lane, or move over first and turn on the side you’ll be pushing off or a bit of both and plant your feet centrally?
Ive never thought about it, probably flip so i hit middle of the lane wall but it does depend on who you are swimming with and where they are, the gaps between swimmers.
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Cheers, that’s the bit I seem to struggle with the most. If I’m in a lane on my own and just turning in one plane I’m OK (although I do push off on my back and then turn not one foot above the other like you suggest) but as soon as I try and add some lateral movement to avoid other swimmers I seem to lose my bearings.
Coming up in the next lane isn’t completely out of the question 
That can’t help you orientation. If you’re swimming in a pace line, then people have to go ‘deep’ when they turn, and the people behind swim over them; unless you’re in a big 50m pool/lane with plenty of space.
Ideally you should move across to the other side which will give space for swimmers behind to turn. With 5 seconds between swimmers this should give people time to move across. If you turn on the same side and push at at angle, people will have to swim over you (or crash), also I think it’s bad technque to push at weird angles.
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I’ve watched a load of videos, and I can flip successfully, some times. It’s just a lack of consistency and no awareness of how I look compared to the videos. It’s a bit like swimming in general, until I see a video of what I look like, I think I’m doing fine.
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There’s a young guy upstairs who’s pretty handy up to 70.3 I believe. We were both in the pool last week, and it was only his open turns and poor streamlining that meant I was slowly closing the gap on him. I wanted to suggest he tucked his head between his arms and overlapped his hands, but didn’t seem like the best opening gambit. I must have 20 years on him, so wouldn’t be helping the competition 
Move over to halfway/as much as you can without impeding swimmer in front. That way you’re not pushing off into oncoming swimmers. Same reason why I’d encourage people who stop at the end of a lane to faff with goggles (code for blag some extra rest) to stand on the incoming side rather than block the outgoing side.
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THE BEST CODE 
My hands are nothing like in the video, though I do tend to skip the breath before and after the turn, so I generally go 6 strokes without breathing on turns.
No swimming for me today (bag is all packed by the door, ready to go) due to a massive dental abscess 
uh oh
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