Yeah I've got 30 seasons of union and league under my belt and have had 2 ops on my shoulder. But I've swam since I was a kid with no swimming related issues. My swimmers shoulder/rotator cuff tendinitis came after I did a 10km OWS. And I ended up with it in both shoulders for about 2 years. Very frustrating. All I can do is pass on my experiences and thoughts, so don't take this as medical advice!

It started with my left shoulder, I rested it for 2 months and that didn't help, went to a few physios, all very good, but they identified certain muscles as being too tight and gave me the appropriate stretches. I stretched the shit out of both shoulders, used the resistance bands, massage, anti-inflammatories, lots of ice packs, nothing worked.

I then went to see a Sports Doc, got a cortisone and the pain was gone. A few months later I got it in my other shoulder, another cortisone, this wasn't as effective, but it went away for a while, then came back with a vengeance. So I got another injection and this one did nothing.

Back to the drawing board. I started reading up about the injury. I tried to figure out what made it worse when I swam and gradually figured out that it was an issue with my stroke. It seems obvious now, but at the time I was accepting the physio/dr's advice that tight muscles were the culprit. Granted I am pretty tight, but I could have stretched all I liked, if my technique was not quite right, then my shoulder was always going to be over-loaded. And the issue was I didn't have a high elbow, I wasn't internally rotating my shoulder joint and my rotator cuff was getting hammered. As soon as I started rotating it and swimming with a higher elbow I could feel less load on the joint. There was still pain as it was so inflamed, but gradually the pain lessened as I swam with correct technique. Check out the video below.


I think with me, the issue I had with the medical staff is that they weren't looking at the primary cause, poor technique. As long as that rotator cuff was being over-loaded I was going to have problems. I needed someone to join the dots. What I would suggest is carry on swimming, work on your high elbow and modify your swim sets. I was able to swim with a crap shoulder by doing some or all of the following:

- sticking to 25s,50s, then 100s later on
- no paddles
- snorkel as breathing made it worse
- using buoyancy shorts and PB, the extra flotation reduce the load on the shoulder
- mixing up my breathing pattern
- swimming with fingers spread, again reducing the load on the shoulder
- swimming different strokes, pain was much less with back and fly
- kicking

I was doing some odd sets, but found I didn't lose much swim fitness over 4 months, despite the longest I swam was 100m at a time. Also note, if you're not a great kicker, kick lots with a kick pad and your swimming will improve lots. I got my 100m kick down to 1.45.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1OY_yQBiXM