The open turn is the only turn in swimming where the rules make you stop. In breaststroke and butterfly both hands have to touch, so you arrive, brake, fold up and leave again in about a second. The swimmers who are good at it simply spend that second better.
I swam the 200 individual medley for Brazil at two Olympic Games, the one race that asks for a butterfly open turn and a breaststroke open turn on the same swim. The open turn is not slow by nature. It has a mandatory pause, and most of the time lost there has nothing to do with it.
What is an open turn in swimming?
It is a turn where you touch the wall with both hands, tuck your legs under you, and push off on your side or your front, without rolling over your head.
In freestyle and backstroke it is a choice, and usually the slower one, which is why I wrote about how to do a flip turn. In breaststroke and butterfly the rule decides for you.
What does the rule require at the wall?
Both hands, separated from each other, arriving at the same time. That is the whole requirement, and it is written identically for both strokes.
World Aquatics publishes a quick reference infraction sheet for officials, in force as from 13 March 2026. The line that disqualifies a breaststroke swimmer under rule 7.7 reads: "Did not touch at the turn or finish with both hands; separated; simultaneously". The butterfly line, rule 8.5, is word for word the same.
Three words, three ways to get sent home: one hand touching while the other pulls, hands stacked, one hand a tenth late. The last is what I see most in adult swimmers, and it almost always comes from reaching for the wall from too far away.
How much of a race is spent in the turn?
More than most swimmers believe, and in a short course pool it is the single biggest piece.
A study on key factors related to short course 100 m breaststroke performance, run in a 25 m pool, reported that "Turns were the largest time contributor to the finishing time (44.30 ± 0.58%)", ahead of clean swimming, the start and the finish. Read their definitions before the number: they timed from the 5 m mark to the wall-touch, and from the wall-touch to the 10 m mark, so that 44 percent is fifteen metres around each wall, not the touch.
Which half matters? "The 10 m turn-out time also showed a very large correlation with finishing time (r = 0.829, p < 0.001)", while the 5 m turn-in "did not have an association with the total finishing time". The way out of the wall predicted the race. The way in did not.
Butterfly in a long course pool is a smaller share. A kinematic study of the butterfly turn in elite swimmers, timing 7.50 m either side of the wall, put total turn time "at 22% for the 200 m butterfly and 14.9% for the 100 m event."
Should you get your feet off the wall as fast as possible?
No, and this is the part of open turn coaching that usually gets taught backwards.
That butterfly study tested it directly: "The longer the duration of the feet to wall contact time, the faster the push-off speed. In order to obtain an optimal push off speed a sufficient amount of contact is required." Their reasoning is the stretch shortening cycle of the leg extensors: "a quick push-off time may not allow sufficient time to develop sufficient power".
Then the honest complication, from the same paper. Their reference swimmer, a European champion, went the other way: "The feet contact time was significantly reduced from 0.56 s to 0.46 s; although the speed during the push-off remains high". He bought that not by shoving harder but by arriving faster, with "a faster swimming speed when approaching the wall (1.89 m.s-1 versus 1.81 m.s-1)".
So the target is not the quickest feet. It is feet that stay long enough to push properly, paid for with speed you carried in. The published work does not pin down an ideal contact time, and that study calls its own average of 1.18 s "the lowest time reported in literature", so there is no number here to chase.
What should your hands and head do coming into the wall?
Keep swimming at the wall, then make the touch short and keep the head low.
The study's conclusion puts the approach first: a fast turn requires "to adopt a speed of approach with pace of a race, to preserve this speed until the hands touched the wall". That rules out the two habits I correct most: the stretchy half stroke from too far out, which breaks the simultaneous touch, and the glide in a metre short of the wall.
After the touch, one hand leaves immediately and travels back past your ear, the other pushes you off the wall, the knees come under the hips, and the head stays down. Breathe on the way in or after the breakout, not while you hang on the wall.
Where does the open turn usually go wrong after the push-off?
In the underwater, where the biggest share of your turn time lives.
The breaststroke study reported that "the second highest velocity of the race occurred during the first underwater streamline (2.96 m/s)". You leave the wall faster than you can ever swim, and the rest is how slowly you give it back, which I argue in full in streamline and the push-off from the wall. Stroke by stroke that underwater is a different job: in breaststroke the pullout, in butterfly the underwater dolphin kick.
How does SwimRead read this part of your swimming?
It does not read turns yet, and the home page says so rather than letting you find out after filming.
SwimRead's home page states that "Backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, underwater footage, starts, and turns are not supported analysis modes in this beta", and that "The current beta analyzes freestyle filmed from the side of the pool." The clip it asks for is spelled out: "Aim for 10 seconds of continuous freestyle. Film in landscape from the side, with the whole body visible, a stable camera, standard lens, and normal playback speed." So you film mid pool freestyle, not a wall, and what comes back is "On-device pose detection estimates up to 33 body landmarks in sampled video frames", with no technique grade. For your open turn, film it from the side yourself and watch it back frame by frame.
What should you drill at the wall this week?
- Approach without the extra stroke. Swim the last five metres at race effort and touch from a full stroke. If you have to stretch, your stroke count into the wall is wrong.
- Two hands, separated, at once. Six touches with someone on the side calling any that is not simultaneous.
- Count the touch. A partner starts a watch at the hand touch and stops it as your feet leave. Look for consistency, not a target number.
- Fast in, fast out. Five metres in and ten metres out at race pace, the window that study found predicted the race.
- One breath rule. Breathe before the touch or after the breakout, never with your hands on the wall.
My free swim pace calculator turns a time into pace, and the wider timing of these strokes sits in how to swim breaststroke and how to swim butterfly.
SwimRead is free while in beta, and invitations go out as beta spots open. If you want a reading of your freestyle while you go fix your walls, join the beta and leave your email.