I have been trying to improve my catch in recent weeks.
I was struggling to get that high elbow catch. In some video analysis I was told that my shoulder was dropped before the catch and that’s why I couldn’t do it, that I needed my shoulder up near my face at the beginning of the catch.
So I’ve been working on that, but now I have left shoulder pain. I have never had shoulder pain before. Not sure what to do. Obviously I want to keep working to improve my technique, but don’t want it to lead to a bad shoulder injury. At first it was pain in the rhomboids region which didn’t worry me too much, now I also have anterior pain/ache over the bicipital groove area, which I find more concerning. Right shoulder is fine.
do you mean it hurts just above your bicep and on the front of your shoulder? that is classic swimmers shoulder.
In many cases, this is because of an imbalance in the muscles and all someone needs to do is get a therra band or stretch cord and do side on internal / external rotation exercises. build up to 200 on each arm. for example what i do is stand side on to the door handle, so when doing right arm the fulcrum is to my left hip. then swap facing sides to do my left arm, with the fulcrum on the door handle / pole on my right hip.
i started off when 15 was hard, then 30, then 50, then 100 then 200. so do multiple sets to build up to 200
also loosen out your suprispinatus muscles with a tennis ball or squash ball. back up against a wall. this will hurt a lot when you start, but makes a big difference to shoulder mobility. tigerchik advice
See if you can replicate the pain on land. Stand in front of a kitchen bench or table. Arm extended. Push your palm down hard on the table and see if you get pain in the shoulder joint. If so it could be that you are still allowing your arm to push down in the first portion of the catch. So instead of extending in the water and then forming an early veridical forearm, your arm is dropping. As it pushes down on the water it puts a massive load on your shoulder joint.
The EVF is supposed to reduce the load on your shoulder. Hard to explain, but you kind of rotate your shoulder joint inwards, you then form the catch and you should feel very little load on your shoulder joint with your lats taking the load. But if your shoulder is really inflamed it might mean even correct movements are exacerbating it.
I had cortisone for my shoulder injury x 4 which only worked once. I also had lots of strengthening exercises which did not seem to do anything. My non-medical opinion is that it did not matter how many stretches or exercises I did, if my technique was flawed the pain would inevitably return which is what happened.
The only thing that worked for me was addressing issues with my stroke, which a physio won’t be able to do unless they can see your stroke and put 2+2 together. A lot of physios end up treating the problem rather than the cause because they don’t know much about freestyle/swimming or they don’t know that you’re overloading the joint through imperfect technique. Maybe show them your video?
In the interim, carry on swimming, avoiding anything that hurts your shoulder. For me I was still able to swim freestyle with splayed fingers (reduce load) and core pants. I could also do backstroke and fly bizarrely as you’d think fly would kill your shoulder. Kicking with the kickpad will be super beneficial, always neglected by triathletes!
so do you not do any pre-hab and strengthening work anymore? Technique obviously plays into it as well, but if its tendon issues (which all swimmers shoulders is) strengthening and reflushing the tendon over time is what makes it go away, plus some adjustments to technique. Big stressors can be crossing over the center lines with the arms and not having a proper relaxation in the arm as it is ‘recovering’ (slightly straighter arm can help with this). some of this is more to the op than you zed
It could also be the lats insertion as that’s close to the sub scap insertion.
I recently started doing a lot of shoulder strengthening exercises with bands to try and help my swimming, I guess I could have gone too hard too fast with that. Don’t know if pool changes or dry land changes have caused it or both.
Will back off strengthening exercises until pain subsides, then build up slowly.
Yeah I don’t do any stretching or strengthening (rightly or wrongly) and I was doing 10km sets last year with no issues. I just don’t feel any load in the shoulder, like it’s not being used or impacted.
I read a report recently on injuries with junior swimmers in Australia and it reported over 88% of them had experienced some level of shoulder pain/injury with many of them having to have long times off swimming. There was a big emphasis in the report on strengthening and stretching, which got me thinking. Are they are on the right track?
I’m not a health professional, they are, but just from my own experience, I know my injuries were technique related. I see a lot of quick juniors with average technique. They’re quick because they swim big volume and they’re light and have good body position. Perhaps there’s an assumption their technique is good, because they are fast?
And there are too many kids for coaches to spend much time analysing their stroke and they inevitably get injured , but it gets attributed to weak muscles or muscle imbalances.
I’m not sure that’s right. And I say that because out of the 4 physios and 1 sports doctor that looked at my shoulder, not one discussed my technique with me. They tested various movements, flexibility had ultrasounds etc And that would be happening with a lot of juniors too. What movement is actually causing the shoulder to be inflamed?
there is a dude over here who was a weapon when he was a kid, had records that were broken by thorpe , but for different reasons pursued physio and is not someone we know from that era.
but when you get a physio who knows swimming and basically every swimmer over here has seen (plus he has worked with the big dogs too) you are onto a good wicket. first thing he said to me was we are going to need some video of your stroke, come on my last saturday appointment so we can stay longer as needed cause i just love doing this shit and we can just spend as long as we need watching your stroke.
when you get a physio who knows the physio side and also knows the swim side you are onto something
so we are sympatico on this, technique makes a big difference to the issue doesn’t it and most of the squads with kids and sore shoulders just dont have enough time for the coach to be trying to patch up technique all the time
Do you have any videos of this? I think I’m experiencing swimmers shoulder. Hurts the most after swimming, but push ups and incline bench really hurt the area too.
Only need to do the external ones I was told , around 200 so you can just do it all day. Also I was told do it tighter than what is being demonstrated in this video , so you already have tension before you start external rotation and do it till in line with your hip
I like this video of Grant Hackett. Obviously an extreme example, but if you watch you can see him setting up his catch, he’s rotated and his lat is loaded ready to pull hard. There is no load on the shoulder at all and it’s only being used to rotate the shoulder joint inwards.
So in my non medical opinion, shoulders don’t need to be strengthened because they should not be under any significant load. We would be strengthening them to cope with an overload and an incorrect movement. And almost inevitably the pain returns because the technique flaw is never addressed.
Re pushups hurting your shoulder - the push up replicates what is happening to your shoulder when an arm drops during the catch phase i.e puts a load on your shoulder. Whereas it should be closer to a pull up where your lats are taking the load.
