Anyone With Swimming Knowledge And Shoulder Stress?

[AlexX]

So I have a chance to go compete in swimming again however I just brought my shoulders out of being close to a year injured. They are better now and I can train everything that I did before my injuries started (in some cases better). However the last thing I would want to happen is overwork my shoulders back into chronic state. My problems were with impingement on both side and a partial labral tear in the right shoulder. 

Anyone here have any experience with swimming competitively and shoulders that are prone to injury?

Obviously the easiest thing to do is to try it out and see what happens (probably what I will end up doing) but I just want to weight my options out before hand. My shoulder are fine just swimming obviously otherwise I wouldn't even be considering this but there is a big difference with just swimming on your own and putting in team workouts. 

[Ping Blekkboks]

As I mentioned in an other post, I too have a background in competitive swimming. My shoulders were totally fine averaging about 30 miles per week in the pool.

 

Others were not so lucky. Chronic shoulder injuries are pretty common in swimming, they are probably the only injury that appear in swimming.

 

As we all know, chronic injuries are the result of insufficently conditioned muscles in the affected area, therefore shoulder strengthening outside the pool is crucial, GST is probably the best thing for this.

[Joshua Naterman]

The handstand shoulder work is probably the single thing that will protect you the most. This teaches, and really requires, proper scapulohumeral rhythm. Basically, you're teaching yourself how NOT to impinge. We both know that impingement is what happens to swimmers, and we need to make sure you avoid that!

 

Basically, with swimmers you tend to see extremely strong shoulders but not always extremely mobile shoulders. Other times, particularly in back strokers, you'll see a LOT of mobility but not so much strength. Sometimes you'll see both in the same athlete, and sometimes they still get injured... but why?

 

With the mobility, you have to see whether the scapula are moving properly. This is the hidden cause behind the shoulder injuries. If the scapula move correctly, which will take quite a bit of training for a lot of people, you won't get the chance to impinge anything.

 

I'd get an idea of what the team workouts look like and give yourself 6-8 months to build up slowly. That will let you know whether your body can handle the stress. 

 

Aside from the obvious external rotation work, I would keep stomach-to-wall handstand bodyline work with emphasis on opening the shoulders as the rest of your primary prehab. 

 

This would include Kit's lat stretch on stall bars, That's really key, it is helping me immensely. I have modified the entry and details of the end position to suit my needs, but this is very very good.

 

Outside of that, I'd probably get ART done on my subscap, lats, and serratus anterior 1-2x per month if I was going to do what you're talking about... Just as preventative maintenance.

 

My handstand work includes a weighted dowel (I use steel pipe) held at ideal handstand width (wrists centered on the acromion process). From there I lift it into handstand position. I'm not strong or mobile enough to get it where it needs to go yet, though I get somewhat close these days, but it is teaching me to use my upper traps to rotate the scapulae and my supraspinatus + medial delts to lift the arms. 

 

What used to happen was that my anterior delts and pec minor would fire, along with the clavicular pec major fibers (a little bit), and this was screwing me all up. Now I'm past that, and my shoulders are rapidly getting better and becoming capable of doing things that I used to have trouble with.

 

I think it's the combination of the lat stretch with the weighted dowel work that is making the magic happen. 

 

You'll want posterior capsule stretching in there too, in the form of a PROPER sleeper stretch. Most people do this wrong, which is why a number of people don't think it's a worthwhile stretch. This allows posterior capsule stretching without impingement, which the common prone posterior capsule stretch tends to cause issues with when people have injured shoulders.

 

All of this should give you the mobility and flexibility you need, along with the proper muscle activation patterns, to avoid injuries with the swimming!

 

I suggest the 6-8 month timeline because it is both a safe way to test the waters, if you'll pardon he pun, and also represents a pretty reasonable timeline for developing the endurance with the specific activation patterns you need to perform at a competitive level without re-injury.

 

That's my opinion on the matter!

[AlexX]

Thanks for the replies guys, I appreciate the help. Especially thanks for the very specific advice Joshua, I'll be sure to include all of that if I do decide that this is something that my shoulders can handle.

As for the handstand work I've actually been working on getting my freestanding handstand to completely open shoulders. I just can't balance as long as I was with my slightly closed off shoulders. That is until I injured my wrist haha. But I do attribute handstand work to helping me heal up my shoulders. 

[Rik de Kort]

This would include Kit's lat stretch on stall bars, That's really key, it is helping me immensely. I have modified the entry and details of the end position to suit my needs, but this is very very good.

If you don't have access to stall bars, you can use a door. You can't dangle the non-supporting leg, but it's still a pretty effective stretch.

[AlexX]

Just thought I'd give an update on how this whole swimming thing is going. All your suggestions have worked very wonderfully. The first week my right shoulder was quite sore and I was getting afraid that this might not work out but what helped was upping my warm-ups (shoulder mobility and prehab exercises) to every single day. This helped tremendously. As Joshua has mentioned handstand work has helped quite a bit as well, at least I feel like it has defenitly helped with preventing my right shoulder reinjuring. But upping my mobility work and doing high rep facepulls, band pull aparts and Ys has helped the most. I am slowly increasing my time spent in the pool every week and after the initial week I have, so far, seen no issues.

As for the actual swimming I am pretty out of shape for it but this was expected. Thanks for all your help guys.

[Karl Kallio]

Have you noticed any special transference between L-sit and the end of the free-style stroke (just before your hand exits the water?)  I started swimming with a Masters group this year and it seems like the L-sits have given me and extra 8cm of push on each stroke.

 

PS: Here's a fun video from FINA on shouder preventative conditioning.

[AlexX]

Have you noticed any special transference between L-sit and the end of the free-style stroke (just before your hand exits the water?)  I started swimming with a Masters group this year and it seems like the L-sits have given me and extra 8cm of push on each stroke.

 

PS: Here's a fun video from FINA on shouder preventative conditioning.

I am not much of a front crawl swimmer so I can't say that I have noticed anything significant from L-sits to that stroke plus I can't ever remember a time that I wasn't able to do an L-sit. I did notice some positive aspects with shoulder positioning (streamline) and handstand work where I work on opening my shoulders up.

Interesting video, I did get a couple of new ideas from it thanks for posting it.