4. Why are Flip Turns Faster?

Video Transcription: So As I said before if you do a Flip Turn versus an Open Turn, you tend to be faster. Why is that? When you think about it, a Swimmer’s speed doesn’t go to zero until you hit a stable surface. When you’re doing a Flip Turn you have the Approach where you still haven’t touched a stable surface and you have the Flip itself. It’s the end of the Flip that you plant your feet on the wall. At the end of that Flip when you actually make contact with the wall is the moment that your speed decides to plummet down and hit zero. 

If you compare that to an Open Turn, an Open Turn speed happens to hit zero as soon as you touch both hands onto the wall. You touch the wall, in an Open Turn and then you start moving your body around to get yourself off the wall, which is basically starting from a dead stop. To initiating a bunch of different steps. Whereas in a Flip Turn you complete two steps, and then you hit a dead stop. You carry the speed better through two phases of a Flip Turn. Versus you hit zero at the beginning of an Open Turn and you basically must create speed from nothing. Flip Turns are advantageous for the fact that you can carry your speed through phases one and two before you hit effectively zero.