Competitive Turns

You got to watch this first: Ryan Lochte's Open Turn. The open turn is also known as the butterfly and breaststroke turn since it is used in these races. Here is Olympic Breaststroker Rebecca Soni's Open Turn.

When swimming the Individual Medley,

The first turn you do (when switching from Butterfly to Backstroke) is the open turn. Remember that you also use the open turn in any pure butterfly and breaststroke races (e.g. 100 yard Butterfly, 200 Breaststroke).

The second turn you can make (when switching from backstroke to breaststroke) ranges from easy to INSANE!!! You have your choice between the regular touch on your back and push off... The "Backflip"... and the Crossover turn. Hopefully your head didn't explode after seeing that crossover turn, but I'll still give you a few minutes to try to understand what just happened on that turn... I leave teaching the Crossover turn for advanced swimmers only. If you feel completely comfortable with just the Backflip turn (which is what the whole team is expected to know), then that's cool. The Crossover turn is just another swimming technique for those who wish to experiment with swim strategies. Here is Ryan Lochte's Crossover turn in slow motion. Here is Lochte's and Phelps' Crossover Turn in action (1:14). And, in case your really curious about this turn, I'll leave you with this fairly detailed Cross over video analysis.

And the last turn you will do, which is going from the breaststroke to the freestyle, is the open turn again. Here is a cool video that sums all the turns in one video.