In the vocabulary of real-everyday-normal-people lingo, a ‘facepalm’ refers to those moments in life where the only plausible reaction you have is to bring the palm of your hand to your forehead in exasperation. It’s that ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just did that!’ moment of embarrassment, or the ‘Can you believe he just said that’ instance of agitation, and as swimmers we have our fair share of them.
One that is particularly annoying is slipping off of the wall on a flip turn. It’s that moment when you’re preparing for the rotation, an action so familiar it could be done in your sleep (and often is… 6 AM practices, anyone?), but suddenly your feet slip on the end of the turn. You lose all of the power and force needed to properly push off of the wall, and are left wondering ‘How the heck did that just happen?!’. Flip turns are second nature to any experienced swimmer, a skill that is practiced so often we don’t even have to really think about the mechanics of it. So when we do have a slip up (literally!), it can be a bit of a bruise to our egos, and a cause for exasperation.
Another nuisance that is at least a bit easier to justify is miscounting mileage. In practice it is especially easy to let your mind wander…
