PDF There are several swimmers out there that have had, or are having shoulder issues/injuries. However, the debate right now in a lot of forums and social networking sites is if these shoulder injuries are preventable in swimmers. For me, personally and professionally, I absolutley think that a majority of the shoulder injuries can be prevented and/or controlled.
Here’s the catch, though…swimmer rotate their shoulders (if they are free, fly, or back) a significant number of times throughout the course of one practice. Now, let’s hypothetically say that a single swimmer rotates their arm 1500 times in a practice (relatively low, by the way). In a given week where they attend 5 practices they are rotating their shoulders 7000 times in a single week. The swim season is around 10 1/2 months long so roughly estimated you are rotating one arm close to 294,000 times in a year (on the low end of the spectrum).
With that information, how can anyone prevent a should injury if they are a swimmer?
Here are a few ways that you can control and prevent these injuries from occurring.
- Fluid warm-up stretches. Harsh/aggressive stretching can actaully damage the shoulder more by pulling, pushing, etc. I would suggest that you warm up by natural and controlled movements that will loosen up the muscles by increasing bloodflow to them.
- Dry-land workouts. I am not talking about weight lifting here, but more so resistance/low impact training. The Hamden North Haven YMCA Swim Team uses resistance bands for these exercises. I would suggest to use resistance training in the most accurate swimming motions that you can do on dry-land. That means to get down into streamline for pulling exercises (breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle), and stand straight up for backstroke pulls (with the resistance band hanging from the ceiling if possible).
- Rest rest rest. After you do your workouts, make sure that you have plenty of rest and relaxation. You want to give your body enough of a chance to recovery from the workout that you just gave it.
Again, these are only some suggestions on how to prevent and/or limit shoulder injuries in swimmers. I hope this helps some people out there, and please let me know if you have any other suggestions by leaving a comment!
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