Approach to teaching competitive swimming?

I'm no physiologist and am therefore incapable of proving the following statement, however I think it may have some credibility and ask any of you who are qualified to respond please do so: I think the face-down front-quandrant style of swimming freestyle is leading to more shoulder injuries than there ever have been. Now here's my observances: 1. With face-down, the arm winds up being directly overhead, a more stressful position on the shoulder than if it were lowered slightly. Try this at home. Stand up, and raise you arm over your head. Feel the strain on the shoulder. Gradually lower you arm so that you will finish with it pointing straight in front of you. Notice the strain decrease the entire way. 2. Front-quadrant keeps your one arm directly overhead for a long period of time as the other arm approaches, whereas "windmill" swimming the arm is only directly overhead for a split second. To jump back into the TI fray, I will say this: Good drillsets, nice instructional video, smooth and efficient strokes. But how do you race? Turnovers increase and you lose the front quadrant effect. The womens 50M and 100M free world record holder has minimal hip rotation, no front quadrant style, and positions her head slightly higher than is being advocated. She is the best in the world. I have no problem teaching TI, as long as coaches read the disclaimer that says "TI will not be held responsible for an increase in your 50, 100, and 200 freestyle times. You should only apply these techniques to racing the 1500." Well, obviously there is no disclaimer, but what I am getting at is learn the drills, swim that way in practice, but take the next step to learn how to race. The fundamentals that are being tought that are worth holding onto will stick with you. That's why you drill TI. So that when you race, maybe some of the fundamentals like body position will stick with you. But I don't believe you can get in the water and "race" TI. Save that for technique sets in practice. When you race, your hard work during the technique sets will carry over. I just want someone, ANYONE, in the TI community to acknowledge that fact. You practice TI, you don't "race" TI. Thanks for your time and patience. -RM

Just responding to rain man, when a trained coach looks at finals from this years NCAA champs, or the 2000 Olympics, about half of the men and women are using what you call front quadrant swimming. I disagree with you completely on the analogy of stress to the shoulders, you will see the swimmers like Klim and the Torpedo with their hands and arms UNDER the water in a streamlined "long boat " shape, they are not pulling with their hands at the surface which would cause stress at the shoulders. They really keep HIGH elbows but are using their hips-abdomen-pecs and lats to generate power. Part of the problem masters swimmers have is they do not have access to underwater movies of the great swimmers. What you see from above is no bearing to what style they are actually doing. When you describe the "S" pattern, you describe the most misunderstood theory ever produced. Poor coaches took this pattern literally as an S, it was always a multiply change in planes using the bodies rotation, it just looked like an S to untrained observers. “Why? Why is it that when fins are put on good swimmers have even less hip rotation than they do with no fins? Isn't the kick stronger with fins, causing more rotation? “ This is because great swimmers derive so much power from their kicks they do not have to pre-rotate their hips as much as ordinary swimmers who do not gain as much. The real problem with 99% of all swimmers and most masters swimmers is lack of core body strength. This leads to poor alignment and poor mechanics of the stroke. That is not a problem with world class swimmers. Coach Wayne McCauley ASCA Level 5

Interesting post with some good questions, Rain Man. But you'll never get a TI advocate to agree that you 'train TI, not race TI' because they don't believe it. Good swimming style is good swimming style slow or fast. Shoulder problems should be a serious issue in swimming, and USA Swimming (and USMS) should be spending more money and time on the issue than they are already. I don't think you can blame TI, however, for what anecdotally seems an increase in incidence. For one thing, I think you mis-describe the stroke. The arm is rarely if ever directly stretched in front over the ears. The hand enters the water when the arm is bent, and the arm stretches and the hand is positioned till the arm is roughly 45 degrees down. (Even if you recover with a straight arm the arm spends little time directly in front.) At no time is the hand still or gliding. The front quadrant swimming is mostly a consequence that the positioning for the pull takes almost as long as the pull and the recovery. To avoid that time difference you either have to rush the setup of the pull, or pause after the pull - both reduce the effectiveness of the stroke. Rather, I think increased yardage, and especially increased intensity, are the cause of increased shoulder problems in young swimmers. For Masters swimmers, I think it is decades of swimming on aging joints. What this community needs is an authoritative report on what aspects of the strokes (if there *are* any particular aspects) lead to shoulder problems. How to detect these stroke problems (if they are not intrinsic to a good stroke,) and how to fix these problems. Also, how to identify individuals susceptable to shoulder problems before these problems occur. Finally, there should be institutionalized mechanisms to train coaches on this subject. Since it appears that Masters swimmers are more susceptable to shoulder problems (is that true?), perhaps USMS should have a more strict accreditation policy for coaches. One of the arguments against performance-enhancing drugs is the negative long-term consequences. Well, what about the long-term consequences of intense training? In one necessarily worse than another? If we care so much about one, shouldn't we care about the other? (and what if a drug enhanced performance by reducing shoulder damage?) As an aside, there seems to almost always be an active discussion on this subject (that is, swimmers shoulder) in rec.sport. swimming If you can get through the c*** there is some good information. Don't trust everything (or most things) you read there, however.

Regarding shoulder injuries, since getting into masters swimming a few years ago I have had the oppurtunity to train without over 30 different clubs aroung the US. The unfortunate reality is that the vast majority of teams have very little "coaching", but rather an emphasis is placed on high yardage (usually dictated by a high number of triathletes), with virtually no drill work, speed work or kicking. In addition, a very high percentage of the swimmers pull far to much of the workout, usually with the large TYR style paddles and a horrible thumb down entry that DOES cause shoulder problems!

I'm not certain if injuries are worst today than 25 years ago. I just know that swimmers, particuarly some of the elite have had to have shoulder surgey. Lenny K and Dara Torres and Amy Van Dyken and Misty Hyman, to name a few out there.Swimming like running a lot is going to take some toil on the body. Master swimmers like me that are overweight and whose body is aging, are at risk for other reasons. I remember after just the first 3 months of back to swimming in my 40's, that when I tried 10 to 12 one and two lap sprints at a pool less than 25 yards long, that I felt severe pain to the stomach and groin area as well as the shoulders. So master swimmers have to do things gardually more than even pre-teen children or young adults do.

Kevin - thanks for the links. I looked through the first article, and will read it in more detail later. I think most if not all of the recommendations are good. But I noticed a sentence in the summary - "seldomly, do swimmers with good technique exhibit shoulder pain." The problem is that that does not seem true, as indicated by Cynthia's list of swimmers who have had problems. I am not convinced that technique improvements alone will solve the problem, or that in all cases we really know the stroke improvements to make. As for your backstroke concern, do the following experiment. Stand and face forward with your arm overhead and palm facing forward. Then rotate your shoulder toward that arm as you (should) do in backstroke. Note that your pinky is now facing behind you, as it should during the catch portion of your stroke. Then repeat the experiment with your pinky behind you before you rotate the shoulders. You will find that your palm is facing back, which is not a good position. My conclusion is that the advice to lead the entry with the pinky down is misleading - there is no medial rotation if the shoulder is properly positioned. Also, good backstroke entry is not over the head, but about 45 degrees off - again, because of the shoulder rotation, the hand will be pretty much forward. Wayne - I don't buy the kick argument. If a poor swimmer gets more power from hip rotation, so will a good swimmer. If a good swimmer can get more power by hip rotation (or the same power for less effort) he/she will do it. Here is my hypothesis - the hips rotate because the shoulders rotate. A strong kick stabilizes the hips and limits how much they will rotate for the same shoulder rotation. A swimmer with a poor kick needs to (let) the hips rotate because otherwise the shoulders will not rotate enough.

Hey, y'all. There is only so much talk about sore shoulders that I can be exposed to without my suggesting that most of it would not exist if'n y'all'd warmdown with a coupla hundred yards or meters with closed fists. The cost is nothing and ya gotta warmdown anyway. As a matter of fact, I find it to be a great way to warm up as well as warmdown. I do all four strokes at least a fifty with closed fists first thing each workout. It is something you can do completely on your own, no permission to obtain. Of course it will feel awkward the first time you try it, but it won't look awkward to your pool mates. Expect a ten percent increase in both time and stroke count, but the resultant easing of the shoulder exertion while getting the benefit of "range of motion" and no sore shoulders is worth the silly feeling that you are afraid of experiencing.

I work out on my own, so I don't have coaches trying to work me out with yardage over 3,500 yards in an hour which is very difficult for me now, unless I swam nothing but freestyle with no or little rest. Some of the workouts I have seen are very difficult for master swimmers with no previous background or 45 plus master swimmers who even when they were younger swam a 100 yard freestyle over a mintue and now probably in a race between 1:15 to 1:20 seconds like myself. Master workouts should be aimed at different groups and those that are aimed at young triatheltes miss the boat. And big paddles for most swimmers isn't always good. I recently use the small red ones and they worked out fine. But I remember the paddles of my youth which were big that they rub past you risk and this cause some pain.

Rain Man, I try NOT to be authoritative, and never say my way is the only way. I will be the first to say there are many ways of doing the strokes. I specialize in teaching breaststroke, there are over 50 ways or styles that all work. It is the only stroke that five feet tall swimmers can compete and beat six foot six inch swimmers. The problem remains that hearsay descriptions of front quadrant swimming are not what are actually happening. Going back to your initial post, Anthony Ervin is a very bad example of many things coaches are trying to improve in the swimming world. He has a poor start, poor streamline and poor breakout. But he is shown once he starts actual freestyle that he is the fastest swimmer in the world. At the fifteen-meter mark he is often 0.3 to 0.5 seconds slower than others are. Just think how fast the 50 and 100-meter records would be if he could be the fastest to the 15-meter mark. In breaststroke Ed Moses is often 0.5 to 0.7 seconds faster to the 15 meter mark, and he gains 0.5 to 1.0 seconds from 5 meters into and 5 meters out of each turn. That is why when his stroke is working for him he blows everyone else out of the pool. This year he had a 2:03 200 meters short course breaststroke, over 4 seconds faster than anyone else does. ASCA Level 5 means I have taken the time to take all the American Swim Coaches Association courses, have served the swimming community for years, coached for years producing top level swimmers, and have produced articles for publication both in local newsletters, and all major swim publications. It also means I will always be learning, they do not allow you to sit on your laurels, you continuously have to produce. Again I am always going to clinics, both local and to the ASCA World Clinic. All coaches learn from both swimmers and other coaches. I also try to learn from other sports such as cycling and running. As to the swimmers shoulder issues, many studies have shown that master’s swimmers actually have lower incidence of problems compared to age group swimmers. This is despite our age, our coaches like to think it is because we are more aware of it and teach better technique, rather than just yardage. Let me tell you that masters has some of the best coaches in all of swimming. Yes there are lots of swimmer coached programs, but we certainly have access to many Masters articles and clinics to improve technique and reduce swimmers shoulder problems. Addressing the front quadrant dilemma that you can’t see in the tapes, just look for swimmers from Stanford and UCLA, they both have their swimmers doing front quadrant swimming in free and butterfly. Coach Wayne McCauley ASCA Certified Level 5:D

I agree with breastroker that breastroke allows for different sizes. But so does middle distance and distance freestyle. Diana Munz is only 5'4" even shorter than the shortest woman breastroker on the national team. She of course is a middle distance freestyler and distance freestyler. Also, the young Janet Evans who was between 5'4" and 5'5" when she set some of her world records. Misty Hyman in butterfly only 5'6" which is also short for a woman swimmer. Finally, the sprint freestyler and sprint butterflyer now retired, Angel Martino. Angel who is only 5'5" usually swam against those lady giants who are near 6'0".