Video Example – Pulling Arms Through Flip

Video Transcription: All right, I figured I’d put in a little age grouper just so we can get an idea of what some of the younger ones look like. As I said in the beginning, we want to make sure that we look at all spectrums, ages and ability levels.

A lot of times when you first start teaching younger kids how to do flip turns, you see a lot of these, I call them butterfly turns. The hands are going down where they should be, and then they swing out to the side to help initiate those knees to go over your head. This is not super ideal because now the hands are in the opposite position of where they should be to get them into a streamline. So it’s going to take him longer to get his hands up into a streamline and to get off that wall, then it should if he didn’t use his Butterfly Arms. Butterfly Arms are definitely not great.

His tuck is not bad, and then his actual plant is pretty on his back and pretty straight. For his Backstroke Turn, one of the biggest things would just be making sure that he flips onto his back.

He’s got a straighter line here. He’s setting a streamline because he’s not butterfly arming. So the whole turn itself goes up a bit smoother, but those fly arms are really hard to get rid of. 

The easiest way to do it is just to do a lot of somersaults with your kids. Try to put the hands in different positions, so that way they can’t use their hands to actually initiate that turn.