Drill – Underwater Turn

Video Transcription: So, as far as drills are concerned for flip turns, these are some of my favorites that I use to work on the ball. One of my favorite drills is an underwater turn. The reason I really like this is it works on keeping the body in that tight ball position, which a lot of swimmers really struggle to get into. What you’re looking for, is for someone to come into the wall, drop their chin down to their chest really well, and drive the chest into the knees. As he comes in here, we really want him to take his body which is going from horizontal, as he’s coming into the wall, to getting his body through that flip really quickly by driving the chest into the knees and then getting the feet over the head. If you don’t have a tight enough ball on this drill, what’s going to happen is you’re going to surface as your feet flip over your head. The body won’t actually truly stay under the water. This is a great drill just to add in some variety for your swimmers within their training sets, or you could do a 50 that has underwater turn and then go into another mini set that has regular turns. Just giving them the feedback on if they surface helps them understand whether the ball is either too loose or too tight. Surfacing means it’s too loose. If it’s too tight, you will stay down. The reality is, is you want a swimmer to dive under the water at the flags, stay under the water, flip turn, push off, and all that happens under the water with a tight flip.