Jimbo, can you do a summersolt in the water?
Start off by performing summersaults in one spot. Do a summersault and put your feet straight down. Perform 10 and then rest for 60 seconds, and repeat two more times. Try to tuck yourself into a ball but keep your knees soft and your feet a few inches apart. We don't want to be too tight. PS these are done in the shallow area of the pool.
Next you would want to keep yourself a float in one spot by using a flutter kick and sculling technique with your hands straight out in front of you. Once you have that balance and you’re moving try pulling with your arms very quickly and doing a small and quick **dolphin kick to get yourself over. Remember you want to be tight but not too tight. (when you’re doing a turn off the wall, it’s like performing a vertical jump. If you’re too tight and your ass is on the wall it’s like trying to jump while being in a fully squatted position with your feet together.)
** Dolphin kick – it’s an actual dolphin kick. Once the technique is mastered it’ll come natural to you. It feels like you’re jumping on a trampoline, and your legs will just bounce off that water and turn right over!
Once you're ready: try pushing off the bottom and gliding forward for about half of your body length with both of your arms above your head. Pull through with both arms like in the drill above(Butterfly pull) and then perform the same summersault (flip your self over) with your feet going over and down so you cant stand up. Here is the trick, before you flip your feet over try to get your legs to bounce off the water as if it was a trampoline. You would do this by performing a very small and quick dolphin kick. This will help you turn yourself over quicker. Practice this for a while.
Next progression would be to try this with a few strokes. Again push off the bottom, do no more than 3 strokes and put everything together and flip. Depending on your level of comfort in the water I would recommend keeping your head down and not breathing into your flips. PS you’re no where near the wall yet!
Once this is all mastered my friend.
Get on the wall and grab on to the edge. Start kicking (flutter kick) as fast as you can for about 10 seconds. You want to get into a good rhythm, and then again lets put everything together on this one, dolphin kick, arms down and flip yourself over! On this one you will have to keep your head above water when kicking, take a breath before doing the dolphin kick and dropping your head down.
This is a great drill on getting the “feel” for the distance between you and the wall. You will jam the wall on the first few tries, that’s ok, rookie mistake. Do no push off the wall on this one, just slightly brush the wall with your toes and point your feet straight down. Get the feel for the wall and how far away you want to be from it.
Let me know how this works out, I will then tell you what to work on next.
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