Just curious - has anyone here actually strained their shoulder from over-using paddles? I hear about this injury all the time, as well as the invariable advice whenever you mention paddles “careful about your shoulders!” yet I can’t recall anyone actually ever posting an experience where they did it.
I ask because my experience with paddles so far (granted I don’t use the big ones) is that I can’t pull harder than my muscles can tolerate, unlike free weights, where you can absolutely overload a muscle by trying to maintain a weight that you can’t handle. I’ve gotten repetitive rt shoulder pain from a high arm recovery, but haven’t had any problems with paddles as well as high resistance settings on a Vasa or even rubber tubing that was so hard I was failing after 10 reps.
I’ve seen people mess up their Deltoid Muscles. I’ve also see rotator cuff injuries, although that could have been from swimming in general and not specifically the paddles.
Personnally I don’t use paddles, but I swim with a strap a lot, which forces you to change your catch and that has caused me to get deltoid pain on the initial catch from time to time.
I’ve seen people mess up their Deltoid Muscles. I’ve also see rotator cuff injuries, although that could have been from swimming in general and not specifically the paddles.
Personnally I don’t use paddles, but I swim with a strap a lot, which forces you to change your catch and that has caused me to get deltoid pain on the initial catch from time to time.
I’ve seen a fair number of shoulder strains as well, but none of these were due to someone suddenly doing a lot more paddle swimming. I would have expected to have met at least one person with that experience given how frequently one hears this warning.
I have seen quite a few. Either going up a size or an increase in paddle work.
Just curious - has anyone here actually strained their shoulder from over-using paddles? I hear about this injury all the time, as well as the invariable advice whenever you mention paddles “careful about your shoulders!” yet I can’t recall anyone actually ever posting an experience where they did it.
I ask because my experience with paddles so far (granted I don’t use the big ones) is that I can’t pull harder than my muscles can tolerate, unlike free weights, where you can absolutely overload a muscle by trying to maintain a weight that you can’t handle. I’ve gotten repetitive rt shoulder pain from a high arm recovery, but haven’t had any problems with paddles as well as high resistance settings on a Vasa or even rubber tubing that was so hard I was failing after 10 reps.
Ding ding ding. Almost took me out of college swimming. That was back in the early 70s and “they” had me doing butterfly with the biggest ones available. No paddles for me mom. After I got off the paddles and cut my yardage in about half, my distance freestyle stopped getting faster, but my 100 and 200 fly got lots faster.
I actually think more women than men got shoulder issues from weights/paddles. They don’t talk of those kind of problems much with swimmers, but they are there. Between the long hard practice sessions X many many years = pretty good chance of some shoulder problems. Like runners, each swimmer probably has their maximum workout threshold that they would be best advised to stay within. What exactly that is will be the tricky thing to figure out. Thru the years I have talked with a lot of pretty good college swimmers that has some kind of shoulder problems. If the paddles were the cause is anyones guess, but we all used plenty of paddles back in the day.
Seen a lot of injuries with paddles and for age group triathletes they tend to buys ones that are too big, their “coaches” have them use the paddles too often and it tends to screw up their technique. Typically better not to use them for beginning/age group triathletes.
Also, you may not be able to be able to pull harder than your muscles can tolerate, but that’s not how swim injuries occur. It’s not the muscle, it’s the joint. They happen, typically, when your technique is off and you do the same movement over and over again. It’s cumulative and then when you add the paddles that increase the potential load on the joint you increase the likelihood of injury.
I would be interested in what mechanism ‘in the joint’ causes the pain from paddles, if it’s not the muscles or tendons. There aren’t any muscles or tendons IN the joint, so I’m curious where that pain is coming from.
Sorry, should have been more specific. The majority of the injuries will involve the tendon around the shoulder joint or you can have bicep tendonitis or elbow tendonitis if you drop the elbow below the wrist on the extension and start the catch from that position. Specifically for the joint, you can tear the shoulder labrum which is not a pleasant feeling. If you swim enough, which leads to classic overuse injury you can wear out the cartiledge, which I’ve been told is an unpleasant experience as well. But what I was trying to highlight from the OP was that a shoulder injury from swimming won’t be I pulled too hard on one occasion and blew my shoulder out. It is repeated use typically from poor technique. When you add in paddles that allow a larger load to be put on the joint then that’s where you can increase the likelihood for injury over time.
I actually dislocated my shoulder while pulling with paddles in college. I had sprained my ankle so bad that it swelled up to about grapefruit size and my coach, in his infinite wisdom, said there was no way in hell I was going to miss any practices because of it. I was doing a set of hard 200s I think and after pushing off the wall in the middle of my 2nd or 3rd one I pulled as hard as I could and the paddle twisted just a hair which caused my arm to twist a lot. The combination of the twist and a maximum force pull popped my arm out of socket briefly (it went right back in when I abruptly stopped and screamed like a girl). I was definitely pulling as hard as I could at the time trying to make a hard cycle and keep up with my lane, and it was compounded by the fact that my first 2-3 strokes off the wall are always explosive strokes trying to take advantage of the speed I gained from the push and set myself up for a good 25 (it is easier to maintain speed than obtain speed).
I never had a similar issue again but I could always feel a weakness there (might be imagined, I don’t know). I didn’t use paddles again for probably 8 or 9 years and just started using these last year http://m.swimoutlet.com/...0393&subscribe=Y
They aren’t too big and I haven’t had any issues with them, but I never pull more than 500-600 yards per practice.
Edit: Just in case anyone is worried about decreased paddle usage, after I stopped using paddles or fins (freshman year) I made SIGNIFICANT improvements every single year, I improved far more than anyone else on the team during that time. I’m not saying this was solely due to the lack of paddle and fin use when everyone else used them as much as possible, but I am saying I don’t believe they really do a whole lot for you and they certainly aren’t necessary for improvement. I only started using them again in hopes that they would add some resistance training to my workouts, I can’t say I’ve noticed any improvement though.
I could never use paddles just too much strain on my shoulders. Always led to tendon inflammation. Then just a couple of years ago I found Finis Agility Paddles. I have no problem with them. However, I use them more for stroke technique - pulling back instead of pressing down. Just as added insurance I wear fins (but don’t kick) to keep good body alignment.
I used to always have a problem with paddles because I dropped my elbow and using the paddles sort of forced me not to. It took a long time and I finally realized that I drop my elbow because my shoulder hurt when I didn’t. It took a lot longer for someone to figure out why. Two massage/PT appointments releasing something in my armpit and chest and I can now swim right w/o pain and used paddles on a regular basis.