- Your shoulders do a lot of the work in swimming.
You have a huge range of movement at the shoulder
and it's quite a significant force, repetitively,
for every stroke of front crawl.
Therefore it's no surprise
that problems in the shoulder area,
are the most common injuries for swimmers.
Well, we're gonna be covering
the cause of swimmers shoulders,
and more importantly looking at how to solve it
and ultimately how to prevent it.
Swimmers shoulder is one of those broader used terms,
a little bit like runners knee,
it's basically pain in the shoulder area
that results from swimming.
Now admittedly, we don't do anywhere near
as many miles in the pool as swimmers do,
but as triathletes we still need
to look after our shoulders.
Now, I'm gonna take a look at the anatomy,
but I'm gonna try and not get too sciency for you,
'cause there are actually several joints at the shoulder
which allows it to have movements
in all of the directional planes,
and as a result you do need to have all of the muscles,
and the tendons around there,
coordinating and working together,
to make sure you don't get any problems.
(slow upbeat music)
When people talk about the shoulder joint,
they're often referring to the glenohumeral joint,
this joint here, now it's a ball and socket joint,
a little bit like the hip,
but it is much shallower,
which basically allows for a lot more range of movement,
but with that range of movement,
comes a need for more control.
So you've got a lot of muscles
and tendons around this joint.
Problem being, these tendons
run through this small gap here,
and now, if they do start to get inflamed they can pinch
and then once they start pinching it becomes more inflamed,
and it can become a vicious circle.
But there are several reasons for shoulder pain,
not purely at this joint,
but at all the other joints as well.
So we can be focusing more on what causes the pain
in the first place,
and then looking at how to prevent that pain.
Let's start with the most obvious cause,
poor swimming technique.
So when it comes to the recovery phase,
if you'll bring your elbow too close to your ear
as it comes through your gonna be naturally pinching
your shoulder in the tendon areas here,
so try to make sure you've got a relaxed,
slightly wider recovery as you come over.
Then it comes to the entry,
make sure that once your hand is in,
you're not trying to pull straight down, fully extended,
'cause your shoulder is not really designed to do that,
and it is not strong in that position.
The same goes for, if you make your hand to far out wide,
or your thumb is pointing down,
all of this will put your shoulder
under unnecessary strain.
So really concentrate on technique.
And then the muscles around this part of your shoulder
are relatively small, so they're not gonna be that strong,
so you want to make sure
you are engaging those larger muscles
to help propel you forwards,
such as, the latissimus dorsi, aka, the lats.
You've probably heard of it,
it is the muscle power heads,
so you need to be engaging that one and using that,
but more on that one later on.
Before we move onto the strengthening part,
we need to talk about posture and activation,
the less sexy parts of strength and conditioning,
but equally if not more important.
So if you imagine you spend a lot of the time
hunched over, sat at your desk, or out on your TT bike,
your gonna be in that thoracic curve for your spine,
and that's automatically gonna cause
this part of your joint, your glenohumeral joint,
to be just internally rotated,
and already putting it under more pressure
and it can cause pinching at the front of the capsule.
And then if you go from this position
to expect to be able to swim,
well you're already putting yourself at a disadvantage.
And if you are in a curved position,
you're gonna have to extend even more from the shoulder
to get a full reach when it comes to the front crawl stroke.
(slow upbeat music)
Let's start by mobilizing the thoracic spine.
You'll see the foam will work for these two exercises.
The first one, if you lie on your back
and you put the foam roller underneath your thoracic spine,
so the middle part of your back,
and you're just gonna roll yourself up and down it,
trying to increase that extension through your back.
You might feel a few clicks,
but there's nothing wrong with that.
And then once you feel that's nice and loosened off,
turn over onto all fours,
put the foam roll a length ways underneath you
and then having your weight in your knees
and one of your hands, take your other hand
and just rest it on top of the foam roller
as you rotate underneath, through to the other side,
and this will really help with rotation
of the thoracic spine.
Make sure you do it in both directions.
And then any other exercises that just help to mobilize
that middle part of your spine will be doing it good.
Another joint of the shoulder area we need to address
is the scapula thoracic. Now you have to ignore the fact
that Jerry has lost his arm here,
and his scapula doesn't actually move,
but the joint we're talking about,
is where your scapula, your shoulder blade here,
moves over your ribs.
Now this should glide nicely.
If the movement isn't happening very well here,
it's gonna put more pressure on the rotator cuff muscles
and those at the front of your shoulder joint
so we need to activate these muscles around here.
For that, you need to lie face down on the ground,
with your shoulders in the goal,
or your arms in a goal post position.
And then, just lifting your arms slightly off the ground,
as well as your head, just keeping your head in mutual.
Squeeze your shoulder blades together,
hold them as close as you can,
imagine you're trying to hole something
between these two shoulder blades,
hold that for five seconds,
and then release your arms down,
and repeat that five times.
You can then progress to using a band in front of you.
So attach it to something that's shoulder height,
in standing, and then holding on,
and your going to basically let your arms get pulled in
by the elastic bands,
then your gonna pull your shoulders blades back,
so you're gonna be pulling against that band
but keeping your arms straight,
so you're really activating those muscles
around your shoulder blades.
And then another progression is face pulls,
so stand on the band,
and you're gonna be lifting your arms up
in front of you but the whole time
think of pulling your shoulder blades back and down.
Chest openers are another one
that will just help with the retraction movement
of your shoulder blades as well.
I've mentioned the rotator cuff group of muscles already.
Now basically, they area group of muscles
that allow this joint here
to internally and then externally rotate,
and it's important that they're all firing properly
so you've got smooth movement at the shoulder.
You might have previously seen swimmers on pool deck
doing hours of external and internal rotation
using a TheraBand,
and these exercises aren't a cure
but they do help to strengthen these muscles.
Although it's now thought that it's actually better
to do something more like an isometric hold.
So, if you do go and stand next to a wall
and you just push your arm out against it,
trying to activate those muscles,
and the same goes for internal rotation,
when your really holding and then pulling towards the wall,
so just trying to really activate them,
but without putting them through too much strain.
Swimmers are known for having mobile shoulders
as that helps with the reach in the stroke,
but having too much mobility without strength
is dangerous as I've touched on,
so make sure you've done all of your activation work first,
then you can get a cord again
and just get some more mobility going through your arms.
You can do some side stretches,
even some over the head extensions, will all help,
or even just some arms swings
it'll help get the blood flowing and everything loose.
But once you have already warmed up and relaxed,
you can actually focus a little bit more on some stretches
or maybe after your swimming session as well,
but we have actually got a video,
'cause a more specific shoulder exercise,
you can find that one in the description below.
Once your scapula and thoracic region are moving smoothly
and all of those smaller muscles are activated and firing,
it's time to focus on those larger muscles, the lats.
And this is where the cords come in handy again,
you can set 'em up on pool side, or wherever you are,
and actually replicate the swimming stroke
thinking of engaging those muscles.
If your band isn't very stretchy,
you can actually break the stroke down to the front part
and then the final part.
And now if you do actually have access to a gym,
and you want to work specifically on the lats,
you go and use the latissimus dorsi,
or the lat pulldown machine,
which, unsurprisingly, focuses very much on the lats.
If you don't have that, you can also use pull-ups.
Now, whilst we're talking about gym,
incorporating strength and conditioning your gym session,
a couple of times a week,
can actually dramatically help your swimming strength
if you make sure you target the correct muscles.
Correcting your swimming technique
and activating the right muscles is vital,
but it's also important to make sure
you build your swimming mileage up gradually,
just like you would for running and cycling.
And if you do incorporate all of these exercises
we've already talked about,
you'll give yourself that best possible chance
of staying injury free.
Now as I've mentioned, the shoulder joint,
or the set of joints around the shoulder,
are very complex.
You need to listen to your body,
so once you get a little bit of inflammation
in some of these tendons,
it can be very hard to do any shoulder movement
without aggravating it.
Well hopefully I didn't bombard you
with too much science there
and you've enjoyed this video.
Give us a thumb up like
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And if you do want to see some more exercises
for the shoulder, I've made one on that for triathletes
just down here, or if you want some tips
from an actual qualified physio,
there's a video on that just down here.