Hi, this is kind of odd because I've been swimming a long time. I am a right handed person. A few years back I noticed that my left arm was sore and during certain yoga postures that it is less flexible than my right arm. I cross train for exercise and swim only once a week, but it is a fairly intense workout, I swim almost a mile in a pool at a good pace. I do half freestyle and half back strokes. I breathe to my right and my right arm feels fine and provides lots of power. But lately I have been experimenting with my left arm, trying to roll a little while I swim, trying to get the solid stroke feel I get with my right arm. With the right arm my head and body are going back into the water after breathing and the right arm feels strong and powerful with the stroke. With the left arm I am using it while my head is turned to breathe on my right and it's feels strained and less powerful. I tried waiting a little with the left arm, putting the left arm more in front of my head than straight in front of my left shoulder and it's helping, I'm getting less pain in my left arm the rest of the week. Any suggestions for making my left arm stroke feel as natural and powerful as my right arm stroke for the freestyle?
My situation was similar to yours with frequent left shoulder pain. My new masters coach noticed that I tended to swing my left arm forward rather than using a nice high recovery like did with my right arm. She had me work on one-arm drills (using a kick board for the opposite arm), along with some finger-drag and zipper drills to promote more of a high arm, elbow-leading recovery. I didn't have a snorkel at the time, so she just had me swim 25's and 50's breathing every 5th or 7th stroke rather than every 3rd stroke. That immediately helped to straighten out the front end of my stroke. It took a couple of weeks to get the new pattern ingrained in my muscle memory, but since I did my shoulder pain has gone away.
Hope this helps.
Mark
My situation was similar to yours with frequent left shoulder pain. My new masters coach noticed that I tended to swing my left arm forward rather than using a nice high recovery like did with my right arm. She had me work on one-arm drills (using a kick board for the opposite arm), along with some finger-drag and zipper drills to promote more of a high arm, elbow-leading recovery. I didn't have a snorkel at the time, so she just had me swim 25's and 50's breathing every 5th or 7th stroke rather than every 3rd stroke. That immediately helped to straighten out the front end of my stroke. It took a couple of weeks to get the new pattern ingrained in my muscle memory, but since I did my shoulder pain has gone away.
Hope this helps.
Mark
