Open Turns and IM Transitions

Last night we practiced IM Transitions. They were pretty good for the group, as this group has been taught many times on how to do a proper open turn. I made one change, and I had them try this out. To touch the wall and never grab on to it.

I remember doing this as a swimmer, I believe in the senior group, and remember that is was actually difficult at first. Last night for my swimmers, some had trouble, and some had no trouble at all. The results were very close to what I wanted from the direction; less pulling their bodies towards the wall. This created a better transfer of their hipsfrom one side to the next. The swimmers who had most dificult had a slow transfer of the hips, and thus, began to sink with no wall to hold onto to help them stay on the surface. Some made the adjustments as we repeated.

Another thing that began to improve as we did repeats, was the position of the hands for the finish. The grabbing of the wall has created a habit of touching the top of the gutter, but with the no grab touch turn, some made the adjustment to touch the wall just below the surface to reduce the amount of swimming out of the water. This also will create a ahbit to finish correctly for touch pads, as touch pads on the portion that goes over the lip of the gutter doesn't trigger a touch, so the swimmers need to be able to touch the wall and not the top of the touch pad.

I think that I'll move forward doing this a little more to see if I can break some bad habits with this method, and see what ends up hapening with our open turns and IM Transitions.