Flip Turns II

I originally posted on learning flip turns back in July.  In the past 3.5 months, I have gone back and forth on the turns.  I think they look cool and I feel smoother on the one nice turn I get during a workout.  However, I really miss my cheater breath which was the originally incentive to do flip turns. 

Keeping the above in mind, I plan to do flip turns during every warm-up (for me this is usually 100 yards).  Further I will try to do flip turns at least 2-3 times during recovery sets.

Typically I swim between 1500 and 2000 short course yards in a one hour workout.  I will warm-up with freestyle and some mixed strokes and then jump into the set developed by my Masters Coach.  The set will include freestyle, IM sets and some kicking.  Usually it is on the order of 2000 yards and usually I don’t finish the set.  The accomplished swimmers warm up longer, complete the set and then usually add some more on the end.  Sometimes we do fast sets 50’s, 100’s and 200’s, but we also do longer sets up to 400’s.  When the send offs are tight based on my ability or the rest periods 15 seconds or less, I will usually opt for open turns.  Also after the second flip turn, I am hurting for air.

For IM sets, I will not practice competitive turns.  I have a hard enough time with backstroke.  The breaststroke turn is open anyway.  Finally I am usually exhausted after 25 yards of butterfly.