I will never race in a pool. If I race at all, it will be in open water.
I can do flip turns, but I don't think they are very good. When I do them, my head is directly under the backstroke flags when I take my first breath. With open turns, my head is about a length beyond the flags.
When I do flip turns, I notice a lot more cardio stress. I don't really recover until about half a length.
Is there a training benefit to doing flip turns in practice that will help me in open water? Does that second or two of holding my breath help me at all in terms of conditioning?
Hmm oddly enough, I go out of my way to not use the wall as much as possible, even when flipping, when doing a LD swim for OW practice. My thoughts are it's better to get used to not having the maximum push off so that my muslces work a longer distance.
I can't imagine there is any benefit to your OW swimming at all by doing this. All you are doing is stopping and starting every lap so you aren't doing as much continuous swimming as if you were doing flip turns, or open turns, for that matter. If you had a good flip turn you could probably increase your yardage a ton, which would benefit training for your OW events more.
Hmm oddly enough, I go out of my way to not use the wall as much as possible, even when flipping, when doing a LD swim for OW practice. My thoughts are it's better to get used to not having the maximum push off so that my muslces work a longer distance.
I can't imagine there is any benefit to your OW swimming at all by doing this. All you are doing is stopping and starting every lap so you aren't doing as much continuous swimming as if you were doing flip turns, or open turns, for that matter. If you had a good flip turn you could probably increase your yardage a ton, which would benefit training for your OW events more.
