Most sports come with injuries to accompany them. Although
swimming is, by most standards, not a sport associated with high
risk of injury, it does have it’s own problems. By far the
biggest source of sidelining swimming injuries is the shoulder.
I was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, sometimes doing double
workouts and 15,000 meters per day. I swam mostly freestyle and
backstroke. I never had a shoulder problem until my college
years. I had been training with pull buoy and paddles throughout
my freshman year of college. I started getting a little pain in
my left shoulder, but being 19 and feeling invincible, I swam
through the pain and was sure that a little rest after the
season would fix me right up. Well I did take the rest and ended
up in a lot more pain when I resumed swimming a few months
later! The doctors said it was rotator cuff tendonitis. I
rehabbed and within a few more months I was back to swimming
every day, but my shoulder has never been the same since.
There are a variety of ways to give yourself a shoulder injury
in swimming. “Overuse” is often what doctors will say. This is a
pretty general term and doesn’t help many athletes when they’re
trying to accomplish their goals and avoid getting hurt! Some of
the other ways include:
•Improper Technique- reaching too far and over-rotating,
crossing over in freestyle when pulling •Sudden increase in
training distance or intensity •The use of pull buoys and hand
paddles •Swimming only freestyle at every workout •Unbalanced
strength development
Preventative Measures
1. One of the most important things in stroke technique when it
comes to freestyle and avoiding shoulder injuries is to bend
your elbows underwater during the pull. This is proper form and
will keep you from putting your shoulder in an awkward position
that leads to a rotator cuff problem.
2. When you’ve had some time away from swimming and are resuming
training, always ease back into it. If, for example, you train
with weights and had a 3-month layoff, you wouldn’t try to max
out on your bench press the first day back. The same applies to
swimming. Instead of jumping back in and resuming the 5,000
meters you were doing before your break, start with something
very light, like 1000 the first day, 1200 the next, etc.
3. Avoid the use of pull buoys and paddles. Although it is
tempting, buoys merely give you a false sense of floatation and
put unnecessary tension on your joints, especially your
shoulders. Although there are paddles designed not to cause
shoulder problems, most of the paddles out there are not needed
in training, and will cause shoulder problems if you give it
enough time.
4. Swimming only freestyle at all of your workouts may seem like
a good idea if you are training for a triathlon, but I would not
recommend it. First of all, you will gain more from cross
training with other strokes. And most importantly, excess in any
one stroke leads to a higher probability of an “overuse” injury.
5. If you breath to only one side, you will develop the muscles
more on one side than the other, and this could cause a
breakdown and a shoulder problem. Incorporate bilateral
breathing into your workouts to avoid this. If it’s extremely
awkward at first, start with just breathing bilaterally in
warm-up and warm-down, and slowly add it into the rest of your
workouts as it becomes more comfortable.
Post-Rehab
If you are just getting over a shoulder injury and are jumping
back in the pool, put on a pair of fins. Zoomers or Hydro Finz
work the best. That way you are accomplishing 3 things: 1)
taking some pressure off your shoulders, 2) getting a great
cardiovascular workout, and 3) building strength in your legs
for swimming. One “good” thing about shoulder injuries is that
they force us to slow down, and give us a chance to work on
drills and stroke technique while we get back to health. And
from what I’ve seen as a coach, many triathletes can use a
little slowing down when it comes to improving their swimming!
|
