Phase 2 – The Flip

Video Transcription: So as far as the flip is concerned, it is a literal somersault. I love these pictures here because it definitely does show the progression of the flip. As you start driving the head down, you’re going to kind of like V-shape the body. From there, you’re going to tuck the knees into the chest, which is going to allow the body to become vertical with the head at the lowest point. And so you’re actually flipping the feet over your head. And then finally, you’re going to plant on the wall on your back. Like you’re almost going to push off to swim Backstroke. Even if you’re doing Freestyle or literally push off on your back for Backstroke.

The real verbiage is, as your chin drops down on the final stroke from phase one on the approach, you’re going to follow with your chest pushing down towards the bottom and bringing those knees in. So the chest press is first and then the knee bend is second. After you complete that, you’re going to crunch the whole body together by bending at the knees. That’s going to bring the knees to the chest, but you still have to close the knees themselves. And so the angle down from the knees, which means that you have to drop the heels to your bum, which gets you into a really small ball. As you flip turn, the feet should come out over the surface of the water and you will flip over your head. So the head goes down and the feet go up before you plant your feet on the wall.

Everyone should be in like a quarter squat on the wall. So it’s a pretty deep squat, which means that you’re actually flipping pretty close to the wall. Obviously, the taller you are, the further you would flip away from the wall. The shorter you are, the closer you would be. But as we talked about in phase one, the approach is where you work the distance of the flip from the wall. So you want to finish your two strokes and make sure that the distance from where you’re flipping to where your feet are touching the wall has enough space that you can hit your feet on the wall correctly. You’re not too jammed, but you’re also not like reaching for the wall or too far away that you can’t even hit the wall after you finish the flip.