Ooooooops Marcus. Great pics though. The technique??.....well I dont agree. And I bet this thread runs on and on with everyones opinion.
Try this instead....no, try it as well and make up your own mind. The secret in this technique is rotation, rotation, rotation.
1. You glide into the wall, flat body (not on one side), both arms extended, left hand on top of the right.
2. Take a peek at the wall to spot the distance, and reach with your left arm across your shoulder line to touch the wall as far across your right shoulder as you can reach. (do not touch the wall straight ahead). Its helpful to imagine a small hand hold jutting out of the wall two feet to your right which you would use to pull your body around. There is of course only a flat wall but you use the weight and speed of of your body hitting the wall to give your hand a grip on the wall and you may get some leverage to help pull you into the turn.
3. As you reach across your shoulder line you also turn your head to look over your right shoulder. This look and reach will initiate a right hand turn. (This momentum is better than the stop start idea of hitting the wall straight on, and then having you use muscles to get your legs under you and onto the wall).
4. As your turn is initiated you use your left hand to assist the rotation by using it as a breastroke arm pull parallell to the wall as if you are trying to change direction to across the width of the pool. At the same time, your right arm is initiating a front crawl stroke pull down to your hip, but instead of following through to the normal arm pull recovery past your hip and out of the water, you twist your wrist at the hip and bring the arm pull back in the opposite direction, up to the full stretch dynamic reach in front of your head. Your right hand will have pushed water in the opposite direction of the left arm. Because your arms will be apart and going in opposite directions, you will rotate on a sixpence. Your legs will find themselves on the wall.
5. You then streamline your right hand as it passes under your face (so stop pushing water) on to full extension reach in front of your head ready for the push off. You bring your left arm back to full extension and locking on top of your right hand as
6. You kick off the wall in one non stop gliding motion.
This method would take approx 30 minutes of copy cat training. ie I would demonstrate and after half an hour you would be perfect. It does take timing and balance and a feel for the water to get the rotation working though.
Its also useful to imagine doing the turn, but with no wall. How would you turn then. Try doing a dynamic turn within the width of one lane, half way down the pool. See how much effort it takes if you come to a stop. Now try not to lose momentum but use the momentum to assist a tight turn to the right.
Happy days. I am still stuck on getting good bi fin turns though. The fins really do stick to the wall (the monofin never did).
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