- Hello. I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together, we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- All right, Brad, where are we going today?
- Bob, this video is gonna be
the best video you're gonna see
to protect your shoulders from swimming
with the best instruction and visual with
our good friend,
- Napoleon
- Bonaparte.
- Right.
Now, I did a little research on swimming
for you avid swimmers,
and here we got P.T. Today had a nice article in it.
There was some research done
and the most efficient stroke of the four big ones,
you could probably guess it, is the freestyle.
The least efficient, you can probably guess that,
is the breast stroke.
The most common injuries happen in the shoulder,
in the freestyle.
- Okay
- And guess where the most common injury is
in the breast stroke.
This is interesting.
- Ah, I don't know.
- In the knee.
- Is it really?
- That inside of the knee, the medial knee
because they do the frog stroke, and it
- Oh, sure.
- Right.
- Make sense to me now.
- Yep. My daughter had knee pain, the breast stroke
was her best stroke and she had knee pain
consistently with that.
So anyways, the point is,
is the breast stroke takes very little
stress on the shoulder.
- Shoulder, sure.
- Okay.
So if you're a freestyle swimmer, like you many people are
and you wanna reduce injuries to the shoulders.
What are you gonna do?
There's one big thing.
But before we get to the big
point I'm getting to,
- Yes.
- Okay. You're gonna start swimming with the breast stroke.
- Oh really?
- Yep. Do a hundred, a hundred yards of breast stroke
because it doesn't stress the shoulders very much.
And it's getting things warmed up.
You're not doing enough to get your knees injured.
- Sure.
- Okay. Then you're gonna go to your
- So this is just a warm up
- Warm up
- Before you do the freestyle
- It's an option for a warm up.
- Okay.
- And then you're gonna start your freestyle stroke,
but let's look at the mechanics of the freestyle
stroke and why shoulders are injured so commonly with it.
Okay. Here we go.
Let's look at the impingement syndrome
and we got repetitive motion, Bob.
- [Bob] Right?
- You know, you're doing thousands of strokes.
If you're out swimming for an hour.
And every time you bring your arm up and over,
let's get that pin in here, Bob, there's a
- [Bob] So there's a tendon there.
- Yep. And your shoulder comes up and it can
impinge or pinch that tendon. Grinding Away.
- [Bob] I bet you could actually break that pin.
- Right.
If the shoulder's healthy.
Okay. It'll come up through
and there'll be enough gap in there
- [Bob] Gap there that it won't
start wearing away at the tendon.
- [Brad] Right.
- [Bob] So.
- [Brad] But with time and fatigue and poor mechanics.
- [Bob] Yeah.
- [Brad] You may and will likely develop shoulder pain
if you're a swimmer.
- [Bob] Right?
- [Brad] Okay. So,
what are we gonna do about that? Now.
Another thing that's gonna increase
the likelihood of this, Bob,
is the mechanics of swimming.
It's like golf.
The mechanic of golf
- [Bob] Right.
- [Brad] is really complicated.
Swimming is just as complicated as,
watch if you come up and you do the stroke
and you cross the midline, let's get midline here.
- [Bob] The midline would be the center of the head forward.
- [Brad] Yep. Imaginary line right down here.
If your arm comes up, and this is very common,
If you watch people swimming, especially new people
they're gonna cross the midline.
It's just natural for the body.
And that really increases the risk for impingement.
- [Bob] Impingement.
- [Brad] Right there.
Okay. So, Bob is gonna help me out here a little bit today.
Go ahead, Bob. You're the swimmer.
- [Bob] All right.
- [Brad] Bob doesn't have a swim cap or his goggles, but
that's okay. We'll imagine that he is.
All right.
So when you're swimming,
and the thing about swimming is,
is when you're swimming across
and you may be reaching all the way across like this
and the other arm is reaching all the way across
poor mechanics.
It's not gonna be as efficient.
You're gonna be slower this way.
And your shoulders are much more risk for injury.
So, think about reaching straight out in front of you.
You may not even know you're crossing the midline
until someone says, hey, you're crossing the midline.
Get it out to the side and then pull it through.
Now here's the, this is the really neat thing I learned
at an inservice from swimming.
How can you tell if you're crossing the midline?
With your goggles on you're gonna be looking down
towards the bottom, the pool
when your hand enters, it's gonna make bubbles.
And as it goes through the water,
those bubbles, follow your hand.
If the bubbles are right below your head or your eyes,
you know, you're going too far across.
Okay. If you come through and you see the bubbles
off to the side behind your right hand or on the right side,
you're in.
Same with the other side.
It's the neatest little trick.
It will help improve your stroke,
save your shoulders and get you faster.
So that's the big thing right there is watch the bubbles.
Make sure they're not underneath your eyes,
but off to the side for each arm.
Man, this is fun. Anyways.
- By the way, this is especially important
for somebody as they get older.
- Right?
- [Bob] And today we have someone that got
you know, very old.
- If you get over, like 40 years old
then you're getting old.
But if you're over 50, then you realize you're older,
but it really doesn't matter anymore.
- [Bob] Happy birthday, Brad.
- Yeah, but I'm only
- We got the big cookie.
- I'm only 53.
- 53 big ones.
- So, yep. And I just went swimming yesterday morning.
I was watching the bumbles underneath my hand
and it was, yeah, it looked kind of like this, the bubbles.
- What would be fun is
to take this and just throw it in your face.
- I want to eat that thing, Bob.
- All right. We'll do that instead.
- All right.
Swim, healthy and happy and have a lot of out there.
- Pain free.
- Pain free, exactly.
- Yeah. Thanks for watching.