Swimming Turns: The Complete Guide

Different Types of Swim Turns

All swim races except those of one length of the pool (25s in a short course pool, 50s in a long course pool) require you to do a turn.

Everything about your turn matters. Perfecting turn strategies will help you do faster turns, making your races faster.

There are two types of turns: flip turns and open turns. Over time, turn techniques have changed as swimmers and coaches improve on the fastest turn strategies within the constraints of the stroke rules.

In backstroke and freestyle, you don’t have to touch the wall with your hands between lengths, so most swimmers flip their legs over their head, touch the wall with their feet, and push off to start the next length. This is a flip turn.

In breaststroke and butterfly, you must first touch the wall with both hands simultaneously at the end of each length. After doing so, you should quickly bring your feet up to the wall and then push off to start the next length. This is an open turn.

There’s a subset of open turns referred to as IM turns, more aptly called IM transitions. In individual medley races, you switch between all four strokes: butterfly to backstroke, backstroke to breaststroke, and breaststroke to freestyle. For each of these transitions, you must follow the finish rules for the stroke you’re completing.

Elements of Swim Turns

A great swim turn consists of multiple elements that must be done together. We’re going to focus on six key elements here.

These elements must all be done as efficiently as possible, so that you can do your turn as quickly as possible.

The first half of the turn occurs before you get to the wall: the approach, the turn, and the contact. Approach the wall with as much speed as possible and get as close as necessary. Next, do the turn itself so that your feet can move from behind your body to in front of your body. The tighter and faster your turn, the more quickly your feet can be repositioned. Finally, your feet contact the wall. Where and how your feet make contact will have a major impact on the quality of the rest of your turn.

The second half of the turn starts once your feet have contacted the wall: the push-off, the streamlined position, and the transition to swimming. Focus on creating as much as speed as possible in the other direction. If you make good contact with the wall, doing a strong push-off is easier. The more speed and distance you can create in your push-off, the better. Your ability to maintain your speed off the wall is determined by the quality of your streamline. The more streamlined you are, the less speed you’ll lose. The final step is a smooth transition to the surface so that you can start swimming the next length. The smoother this transition, the more speed you’ll maintain.

How Swim Turns Affect Your Body

One of the biggest challenges with turns is that most of the turn is done without air. You’ll be without air during flip turns from the time you begin your flip until you surface during the next length. You’ll be without air during open turns from the time you begin to put your feet on the wall until you surface during the next length. Considering you’re already going to be wanting to breathe, this can make turns quite challenging.

As with swimming in general, great turns involve most of the muscles in your body. You use the muscles of your torso to do the turn itself and your leg muscles to push off the wall and transition to the surface. During the turn, all your abdominal muscles and hip flexors strongly contract to bring your body into a tight ball. To come out of the ball, your back extensors straighten your body in anticipation of your push off the wall. Once you’re ready to push off, your quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteals, and calves all work to create a powerful push-off.

The repeated tucks into a ball and expansion out of a ball can cause back pain. Preexisting back problems can sometimes be aggravated by flip turns, open turns, or both. Although it’s unlikely that turns will cause hip flexor problems, if you already have hip flexor issues, these too can be aggravated by the aggressive tucking during turns. If you experience either of these issues, adapt your turn to prioritize your health over speed.

Common Reasons for Disqualification During Turns

The simplest reason for getting disqualified during a turn is not touching the wall. In every turn, for every stroke, you must touch the wall prior to beginning the next length.

• In freestyle, missing the wall is the only way you’ll be disqualified during a turn. You may turn any way you want, but you must touch the wall with some part of your body before you begin the next length.
• In backstroke, you can touch the wall on your back, turn any way you like, and push off on your back. Or you can roll onto your front and execute a flip turn as in freestyle. There are two key differences compared to freestyle flip turns, which can get you disqualified if you do them incorrectly.
  • In a backstroke flip turn, once you turn over, you must ensure that you immediately transition into your turn, rather than pulling and kicking to the wall on your front.
  • When pushing off the wall, you must push off on your back.
• With breaststroke and butterfly, you must touch the wall with both hands at the same time. If you touch with only one hand or touch at separate times, you’ll be disqualified. Second, you must push off the wall on your front.

When doing transition turns between strokes in an individual medley, you must finish each length with a hand touch and push off in the correct position for the next stroke. You must finish butterfly and breaststroke lengths with a two-hand touch and backstroke lengths with a one-hand touch. You must push off the wall on your back for backstroke and on your front for freestyle and breaststroke.

How to Perfect Your Turns

As with improving any skill, perfecting your swim turns requires dedicated focus. Simply doing a lot of turns during a workout isn’t enough. You must perform those turns with intent.

The most important step is to understand what you’re trying to accomplish with each component of your turns. Understand what’s required at each step so that you know what you need to do.

Once you have a conceptual understanding of what needs to happen during great turns, learn how to do those key skills. This is where drills come into play. They help you improve the different components of a great turn. When you know what doing each component well feels like, putting it all together and making it happen during workouts is much easier.

During workouts, you have many opportunities to work on your turns. And that’s good because there are multiple components of a good turn. Improving all those components at the same time will be difficult. Instead, aim to improve one component at a time. This allows you to get some concentrated work on one skill and makes staying focused easier because you’ll have a clear goal. Just try to do one thing really well, then do another thing really well, etc.

Throughout a workout or week, you can shift your focus to other turn components. This ensures that you work on all the skills required to do a great turn while still allowing enough focus on each component to make the needed changes. Getting better at turns requires practice. You need to know what you must do and how you must do it, and then make it happen.

How You Should Work on Your Turns During Workouts

You can use three strategies in workouts to improve your turns.

1. Drills: The advantage of drills is that they allow you to clearly feel the key turning skills. They help you get a much better understanding of what needs to happen, and you can quickly get a lot of practice repetitions. Drill sets can be great for this purpose. The drawback is that the drills are isolated from swimming, so you’re not doing turns as you would during a set or race.
2. Concentration: Concentrating on your turns during training sets allows you to get a lot of specific practice. You’re working on turns in the same situations in which you’ll be doing them in races. The problem with this approach is that it can be difficult to learn new skills just by doing turns. And it’s also very easy to get distracted during a hard set and lose focus on your turns.
3. Combination: Combining these two strategies is particularly powerful for creating change. This combined strategy retains the advantages of the first two strategies and eliminates the weaknesses. Simply alternate between several repetitions of a turn drill and then several swimming repetitions. The goal is to practice the turn skill during the drill, and then make it happen while you swim. The drill helps you feel the skill, and then you can apply that skill during challenging swimming conditions, just as you would in a race. Because you’re doing more drill work, staying focused on great turns while you’re swimming is easier.

Finding the Turn That’s Right for You

Swimmers come in all shapes and sizes and have different ranges of motion and levels of strength. As a result, you’re going to see variations in turns.

These differences don’t necessarily indicate differences in skill level. Two swimmers could be doing variations of a turn and both be doing the best turn for them.

One of the most obvious differences is how long to stay under water after a turn. The general rule is that you want to get up to the surface right before you slow down to your surface-swimming speed. If you have a strong push-off, great streamline position, and great breath control, staying underwater longer makes sense. If you’re not so great in these areas, surface sooner and transition to swimming.

Another point of difference is flexibility. During your flip turns or open turns, if your feet contact the wall with your toes pointing up, you’ll have to twist more as you push off the wall to get to your front. If you twist more during your turn, your feet will contact the wall pointing to the side, so you’ll have to twist less as you push off the wall to get onto your front. Both strategies can work well if you tuck tight during your turn.

Because of differences in height and mobility, some swimmers can get into tighter balls as they do a turn. Rather than achieving a particular objective standard, get into what’s a tight ball for you. Similarly, based upon your height and leg length, you may find that you must get closer or farther away from the wall when initiating your turn, to contact the wall in a way that allows for a strong push-off.