How Do I Avoid Water In My Nose

Video Transcription: One of the major questions I get about Flip Turns, especially if you’re like more on the learning to do a Flip Turn is how do I avoid water in my nose?

Well, I screenshot this picture here earlier because it’s a perfect depiction of when you’re doing a Flip Turn, you’re actually Flip Turning and driving the head down. The head does go to the lowest point and the head goes vertical. And so you see how the hips are over the head. Eventually the feet are going to follow. When you drive the head down, this increases the pressure on the body. And so a lot of people start to panic. And instead of continuing to either do one of the two things listed above, they try to inhale or they inhale through their nose to like find comfort in that added pressure environment.

But the reality is, is you want to either do one of two things. You want to exhale through your nose as you’re working through somersaults and Flip Turns in the pool when you first start. If you’re newer, that’s definitely the avenue to go with. As you get older, you want to start just holding your breath and shutting off the nasal cavity. So that way, even if water goes in it, as you drive your head under and the pressure gets more intense, the water can’t go through your nostrils and then into your mouth. So the best way to describe how number two works is essentially if you were to stick your tongue to the roof of your mouth and then breathe out, you kind of create some suction within your throat. You have to learn how to do that without keeping the tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth.

The first progression in this would be to exhale through your nose first. So water physically can’t go in because there’s a blockage. And then once you get pretty good at that, working on trying to force out air and holding that tension so you shut off the throat. So when you flip, you’re flipping and actually holding your breath. This picture is screenshotted because you can see all these bubbles trailing off my head, which is just my head creating water disturbances as it’s driving down. But there’s no bubbles coming out of my actual mouth because I do hold my breath through turns now.

If you don’t know how to do turns and you’re just starting to do turns, exhale through your nose. This will help you be more comfortable and also avoid water coming into your nose if you’re blowing air out.