Tennis elbow from swimming

Triathlon Forum
1

Swimming’s my weakest leg by a long way and plans to remedy that with a crash course between now and IMUK and currently suffering as I seem to have given myself something that feels like tennis elbow from swimming a bit much (i.e. not that much but more than I’m used to). It feels like a very localised inflamation of the tendon that I guess must run through the notch on the rear/body side of your elbow.

Any one had this and know if there’s likely to be some flaw in my stroke that’s causing it? Any treatment ideas beyond ice and rest?

All help as ever much appreciated

2

Ice and rest seem like the best way to deal with that.

When you come back to training you should ask yourself these two questions, so you don’t get injured again:

Are you doing enough of stretching AFTER you workout?

How’s your warm up ? Are you doing at least 1000 meters of warmup ?

3

I have had the same issue in the past. Don’t know your history, but watch the weightlifting especially anything that can aggravate this area. Curls, pull-ups.

Most likely what is causing this is your pull. Your elbow is at 90 degrees and your hand is following the center line of your torso. You could be using too much force with your forearm and hand versus your lat. What worked for me was changing my pull slightly by moving it more to the side, not bending the elbow quite as much and trying to employ more lats.

As mentioned by the other poster, a good warm-up helps prior to doing anything fast. If it hurts back off on faster swimming.

4

Thanks - definitely doing enough warming up (80% of wnat I’m doing and the the first km at least of every session is pretty easy), but hardly doing any proper swim stretching. Do you know of any links to some decent stretch suggestions - my background’s running and the idea of stretching or getting injured above the waist is pretty new to me!

5

That’s really helpful - have been trying to move to an underwater style like you describe after seeing lots of underwater photos of swimmers with their forearms at close to90degs. At this stage of the day I think I’ll back off and see if that helps

6

here you go:

http://www.exercisedb.com/exercisedatabase/stretches.asp

just select the muscle you want to stretch and voilá! some have pictures! :wink:

7

try to make sure that at the beginning of your stroke your shoulder is above your elbow is above your hand before pulling. many times people put too much pressure on their elbow too early in the stroke. while rest and ice will help decrease the pain it won’t solve problems in stroke fundamentals. basically your arm should be slightly angled downward at the beginning of your stroke before much you apply pressure. i hope this helps.

bill