Master flip turns in five phases. Fix common mistakes, progress through drills, and learn when to use open turns for breaststroke and butterfly.
Flip turns are the single largest untapped speed reserve in swimming. A clean flip turn saves 0.5 to 1.5 seconds per lap compared to grabbing the wall and turning around — and it keeps your rhythm, heart rate, and momentum continuous. This guide breaks the flip turn into five phases, fixes the six most common mistakes, and gives you six progressive drills that take you from your first somersault to race-pace turns.
Why flip turns matter — and why most swimmers avoid them Most adult lap swimmers use open turns — touching the wall with one or both hands, turning around, and pushing off. It feels safe. It feels controlled. And it costs you speed, rhythm, and cardiovascular continuity on every single lap. A flip turn is not a party trick reserved for competitive swimmers.
It is a fundamental skill that makes swimming more efficient, more enjoyable, and more athletic. The math is straightforward. A typical 50m pool session of 2,000m involves 39 turns. If each open turn costs you 1 second compared to a flip turn, that is 39 seconds per session — nearly 40 seconds of dead time at the wall. Over a year of swimming three times per week, that is over 100 minutes of wall time that could be forward motion.
And time is only part of the story. An open turn interrupts your breathing rhythm, drops your heart rate, and forces you to re-accelerate from a dead stop. A flip turn keeps your momentum, maintains your stroke rhythm, and uses the wall as a springboard rather than a stop sign. The best part: flip turns are a pure skill — they do not require fitness, speed, or strength.
A swimmer who can comfortably swim 25m can learn a functional flip turn in three to five focused practice sessions. The barrier is psychological, not physical. Once you trust that water will not flood your nose and that the wall will be where you expect it, the mechanics are simple. The five phases of a flip turn: approach to breakout A flip turn is not one motion — it is a sequence of five distinct phases.
Each phase depends on the one before it. When a turn feels wrong, the problem is usually one phase upstream from where you feel it. A weak push-off is almost always a poor approach. A crooked breakout is usually a crooked plant. Learn the phases in order and diagnose your turns by working backward from the symptom. The five phases happen in roughly 2 to 3 seconds from start to breakout.
Elite swimmers complete the entire turn — approach through breakout — in under 2 seconds. For most swimmers, the biggest time gains come from phase 1 (approach) and phase 4 (push-off). Accelerate into the wall and explode off it — the other three phases will follow. Six common flip turn mistakes and how to fix them Most turn problems fall into one of these six categories.
Pick the one that matches your biggest issue — and focus exclusively on that fix until the correction becomes automatic. Trying to fix all six at once produces a confused, halting turn that is worse than the original. Six progressive drills: from your first somersault to race-pace turns Drills are the fastest path to a reliable flip turn. They isolate one skill at a time — somersault body control, approach timing, foot placement, push-off power, breakout distance — so you build the complete turn in layers.
Do one or two drills per session, ideally during warmup when you are fresh and focused. Each drill below builds on the one before it. Drills done slowly and deliberately build new movement patterns. A drill done at full speed reinforces old ones. After each drill set, swim 100m of normal freestyle and apply one specific focus — tight tuck, explosive push-off, no early breath — to your turns.
For more technique isolation work across all four strokes, see our complete swimming drills guide . Open turns: when to use them for breaststroke, butterfly, and IM Flip turns are for freestyle and backstroke only. Breaststroke and butterfly require open turns — a two-hand simultaneous touch on the wall, followed by a quick rotation and push-off. Open turns are not "easier flip turns" — they are a different skill with their own technique requirements.
Breaststroke open turn
