Hello.  My name is Steve Haufler and for as long as I can remember, I’ve had a passion for the water... and for teaching people how to swim.

In this video I want to share with you my bag of tricks for teaching the seven competitive turns.  These are the teaching progressions that have worked for me and that have proven themselves in thousands of lessons, with swimmers of all ages and abilities.

My goal is to give you new ideas that will help you become a better teacher.  Because if you’re a better teacher, your swimmers will be better swimmers, and that’s ultimately what our profession is all about.

If you want to become a truly great teacher of turns, you must do 5 things.

First and foremost, you must break down each turn into a logical teaching progression.  

Turns are like aqua-gymnastics.  They happen very quickly, and they call for pikes, tucks, spins, and rolls, combined with specific, precise, and high-speed arm and hand movements.  

In order to teach these complex moves, you must know how to break down each turn into a logical teaching progression.   And you must realize that some swimmers will need to perform the movements slowly before adding speed to the skill.

Two.  You must be ready to get in the water -- at least initially.  By physically moving the swimmer’s limbs and head through the correct motions, you’ll be more successful at imparting the correct muscle memory.

Three.  You must take time to teach the three turn fundamentals to ALL swimmers who join your team.  These three basic skills are:

Streamline...

.... push-offs...

...  and underwater kicking.... and you can introduce these skills to swimmers as young as 4 and 5.

Four.  You must limit a swimmer’s training to 25s until they learn the specific turns.

If you start training 50s and beyond, you reinforce incorrect turning movements and introduce bad habits that become hard to correct.  

When a competitive swimmer graduates from 25s to 50s and to 100 IMs, there should be a time in their career when they spend at least 5 weeks learning all seven of the competitive turns.  

During this time, they should devote about 80 percent of their practice time to turns.  This intense and concentrated period of learning will enhance the acquisition of turning skills.

And five.  You have to believe in the power of good turns, and you must convey this belief -- and these skills -- to your swimmers.   Your job is to help swimmers understand that developing excellent turns will help them improve their times, win races, and give them the potential to compete at the highest levels. 

If you take the time to do this, you will give your swimmers a sense of pride, accomplishment, and confidence.  

As a coach and swim instructor, you know that the outcome of a race is often determined by who has the best turns.  

In short-course swimming and at the elite level, turns and underwaters can represent more than 50% of the entire race. 

When a swimmer executes those turns correctly, he or she can actually generate speed and momentum that enhances their swimming speed for the rest of the length.  

On the other hand, when a swimmer misses a turn, they must start the length from a dead stop and have to work much harder to get up to race speed.  

For this reason, you want to make acquisition of turning skills a top priority in your program.

Our goal in this video is to give you simple progressions for teaching each of the seven competitive turns.  

We’ll first cover the basic skills that apply to all turns -- things like ready positions, push-offs, and streamline.

We’ll then present a progression of skills for the open turns, including fly to back, fly to fly, breast to breast, and breast to free.

Next comes a progression for the freestyle flip turn...

.... followed by a progression for the backstroke flip.

And we’ll finish with a progression for each of the back-to-breast turns.  

We’ll talk about how to correct the most common mistakes that swimmers make when they turn.

We’ll show how to use tools, toys, and creative drills to speed the learning process.

And our swimmers will demonstrate the most effective dryland drills for improving turns.

So let’s get started, and thanks for joining me in the quest to become a more effective teacher and coach... and in the ultimate quest to help your students learn better and faster.


Sign In to watch video

Introduction - By Steve Haufler