hey there's food fans here's another episode of whiteboard Wednesday and on today's episode
we're talking about the crossover turn the crossover turn is used in the individual
medley races when you're going from backstroke to breaststroke in this video we're gonna talk
about how you do it and some tips to make it the fastest turn of your I M now there's a number of
different turns out there including freestyle turns and backstroke turns this is where you
do a somersault you also have open turns like for breaststroke and butterfly where you have
to do a two-hand touch now in the I M butterfly backstroke breaststroke and freestyle there's
three different kinds of turns that you can do you can do butterfly to backstroke transitions
the backstroke - breaststroke transition and the breaststroke to freestyle transition in this video
we're talking about the backstroke - breaststroke turn now the reason why this turn is so important
it not only marks the midpoint race the midpoint of the race but there's a number of different
ways that you can do this unlike butterfly and breaststroke where you have to touch the wall
with two hands and do an open turn in backstroke - breaststroke you have a number of different
options there's actually three different ways you can do this turn the slowest way is to do
what's called an open turn where you still finish on your back with your leading arm and then you
take a breath as you transition onto your stomach and you push off on your stomach for breaststroke
the next fastest way which is significantly faster is actually doing what's called a bucket turn so
a bucket turn is where you finish on your back and you use your lead arm that touches the wall
to actually pull your legs in and you do a back flip on the wall and then you push off onto your
stomach for breaststroke the open turn and the back bucket turn are actually the ways a lot of
swimmers used to do backstroke before you're allowed to even do a flip turn so for the IM
you're not allowed to do a flip crossing over on your stomach but what you can do is called
a crossover turn and the crossover turn is the fastest it's a little bit faster than the bucket
turn there's a number of other reasons that make it a little bit better but what it allows you to
do is actually to do sort of a sideways flip rotation and use your leading arm to cross
over your body and set your arm position on the wall in a way that allows you to turn much more
efficiently and much faster so let's take a look at the steps of doing a crossover turn so first of
all you have the approach you approach the wall on your back you pass underneath the flags and it's
really important to understand your stroke um so if you're not sure how many strokes it takes from
when you see the flags five metres out from the wall it's actually touching the wall you need to
know that first once you know your stroke count you're gonna touch the wall now the difference
between touching the wall for a crossover turn and doing an open turn is that your top arm will
actually cross over your body and so your arm touches on top of your body as opposed to being
underneath so if you were to touch for an open turn you might have your lead arm underneath your
body and underneath the water and your top arm is actually dry out of the water for the crossover
turn this is the biggest difference and this is where you're actually reaching over your body and
your top arm and shoulder is on top of your body for the touch the next step is to actually flip
and you're doing a sort of lateral rotation where your top arm is going to push the wall behind you
and bring here you're gonna bring your knees to your head so the best way is to actually visualize
this and see as the top arm touches the wall you're gonna push the wall behind you and you're
gonna bring your knees to your head so that way the fourth step is to actually push off the wall
in streamline and you're finishing that rotation onto your stomach now the most important thing I
want to tell you about this drill is this turn to not disqualify in a race is to make sure you touch
still on your back so even though you're rotating and your top arm is above your head you do not
cross over onto your stomach because if you cross over past 90 degrees you will be disqualified
because you turned onto your stomach before you touch the wall so the rule of states you must be
on your back and you can't rotate onto your breast past 90 degrees so that's really really important
now there's a few days of different ways that you can practice the crossover turn the first is to
practice the first step which is approaching the wall on your back and touching with your
top arm over your head so that's the first rule you can do just practice swimming into the wall
and actually touch and don't go anywhere don't do any flip just touch the wall and get used to
what that feels like to rotate and then make sure you don't rotate past 90 degrees the second drill
that you can do is to actually practice using the lane line so if you have a swimming pool
and you set your body up facing laterally you as opposed to the way you normally swim so just have
your top arm grab the lane line and position yourself so that your head and arms are at the
lane line itself you grab the lane line and use the lane line as leverage to practice pulling as
if you were pushing the wall behind yourselves if you remember your arm comes over you touch
the wall and you use the wall to push it behind you do the same motion on a lane line grab the
lane line and practice what it feels like to pull yourself through that motion and practice getting
your knees up to your head and the third drill I would say similar to when you practice a freestyle
flip turn is doing it in the middle of the pool so it really forces you to make the mechanics
correctly so practice swimming backstroke and then practice the top arm crosses over and actually do
the full crossover turn when you're not at the wall and if you can do it in open water you're
definitely going to be able to do it at the wall when you have the leverage of your top
arm actually grabbing the wall not necessarily grabbing the wall but pushing it underneath the
water so finally I want to share a few tips on how you can be successful in the crossover turn
and many of these principles apply to a freestyle turn any kind of turn as well first of all that's
specific to the crossover turn is to leverage the wall for your top arm if you don't really have a
good grip on the wall it's gonna be really hard to actually leverage your body to do the rotation
right and that's why it's important to practice in the open water in the middle of the lane because
if you can do it in the middle of the lane with the leverage of just your hand pushing on the
water you're gonna be able to do it with your core strength regardless but focus on leveraging
that top arm to really drive that and start that rotation secondly make sure you're in a tight ball
this is a lateral rotation it's a lateral flip so make sure you're really tight you bring your
knees into your head really compact this concept applies to every single kind of turn whether it's
free saw backstroke breaststroke or butterfly or any of the transition terms whether it's open or
turn focus on being in a really tight ball you want to be a rotated fast as possible next you
want to approach the wall very fast so if you go into a wall slow you're gonna come off the wall
slow this is a turn especially that you need to carry speed into the wall and don't be lazy a lot
of top swimmers even will float into the wall and they'll come off the wall pretty slow there might
be a superstar athlete in the middle of the pool but your goal is to maintain speed and push off as
fast as you can next make sure you're practicing with different arms it can be routine to always
practice with your right arm or always practice with your left arm and then it comes race day
and you're not used to the motion of rotating on both sides you need to be comfortable with your
top arm crossing over whether it's your right or whether it's your left also it's really helpful
to watch the professionals watch the pros look at the top swimmers in the world almost all of them
are doing a crossover some might do a bucket some I do an open turn regardless they're all
touching on their back and most of them are doing the crossover and you can learn a lot
just by watching the best in the world do this turn and finally practice practice practice if
you want to do the crossover turn in a competition you're gonna have to get it done in a workout and
you're gonna have to do it when you're fatigued the benefit of doing an open turn which is the
slowest is that you get to breathe as much as you want while you're doing the turn it slows you down
but you get oxygen for the pull out onto the bear stroke the benefit of the crossover is it's a lot
faster but you're decreasing the amount of oxygen you get along with the bucket turn so you want to
practice and get your lungs ready for what this is going to happen in the race itself
and you also want to make sure that mechanically you're practicing it as much as possible this is
a very technical skill it has less to do with how in shape you are and more to do with how
you're following the steps and how often you can practice it like anything practice makes perfect
and make sure you're focusing on these skills as often as you can also make sure to check out
our freestyle how to do a flip turn video and that has a five step process that'll walk you
through how to do a freestyle flip turn with some awesome drills that'll make your freestyle and
backstroke turns super super efficient if you like that video give us a thumbs up check out
the comments let us know how we did and we'll see how we can help you improve your swimming
with the crossover turn that was whiteboard Wednesday we'll catch you guys later bye