shoulder injuries

Jamie, In the words of those great practicioners of medical science, the Marx Brothers: Chico: "Doctor, doctor! It hoits when I do this." Groucho: "Don't do that." A shoulder problem for a YEAR? Related to the amount of butterfly work your daughter does?! What is her alleged coach's take on this? Is he planning on putting her in the hospital, or simply waiting for her to become tired of it and quit on her own? PLEASE, get her to a doctor who has some experience treating swimmers with shoulder injuries, and get her condition addressed. In the meantime, why is swimming any fly at all necessary right now? Don't let anyone JIVE you about she needs to do it because everyone else on the team is, and that's the workout. Leaving aside for the moment the issues of her health and her interest in swimming without necessarily being a flyer, she does not have to pound fly yardage to the point of injury, even if she is still interested in being a flyer! A number of coaches are now advocating doing less total yards of fly, but ensuring that every stroke is high quality butterfly, instead of a lot of tired "butterstruggle." May I recommend three articles to you. First, Emmett Hines has written an excellent pair of articles, posted on his team's web site (http://www.h2oustonswims.org/) on his philosophy of practicing fly: "Slip Slid'n' Away" and "Vive Le Papillon." Go to the web site, click the "Articles" tab, and they are listed alphabetically by title. Second, Fitness Swimmer magazine did an article some time ago on Thomas Boettcher's methods for training that enable him to swim a 5K fly! I don't recommend your daughter adopt his goal of super long distance fly, but his training methods that emphasize swimming fly with your core rather than your arms are worthy of study. You can link to it at (www.thomasboettcher.org/.../default.htm). What is possible? I seem to remember that Pablo Morales won the 100 fly at the '92 Olympics. What was remarkable at the time was: (1) he was a bit older than your typical Olympic swimming Champion at the time, and (2) because he had a real life, he and his coach intentionally mapped out a conditioning plan that required less time, and consequently fewer total yards, than what was then considered necessary for a world class swimmer. That was the beginning of many coaches questioning whether mega-yards were the answer for everything. Now, I'm sure Pablo was doing WAY more yards fly that you, I and your daughter put together, and she does not have the same goals as he did. But, the point is that he was doing way less than his competition, and he won. Matt

I really didn't clarify all of the measures we have been through. This has been an off and on kind of thing for almost a year now. She is 13 years old and............... been to a family physician and diagnosed with scoliosis. Since then an Sports Medicin / Orthopedic surgeon has disclaimed the scoliosis and stated that it was a romboid strain in the shoulder muscle. Last years coaching staff was very good. She elimintated all upper body movement and was kicking only for 2 1/2 months. She then slowly matured to a full 1 1/2 - 2 hours of practice. However, at the end of the winter season - she was still not using pull bouys or paddles, limiting the number of fly laps etc. This year we have a new AGGRESSIVE coach. She went for four (4) weeks of practice without any problems with her shoulder and it seemed to be strengthening up pretty well. Lots of yardage of fly is not the case - they only did appoximately 800 yards of fly / fly drill / kick. This is not alot so therefore from everything I have read the problem could be her technique. I personally think she should not swim fly at all until she has had several months of training without the butterfly and all seems well. Then they can work on the fly technique and go from there slowly. But I've been told by the coach - not our doctor - that would not help???? This seems like a long time and she is frustrated because she wants to train and be healthy again!!! She has another appointment with the Sports medicine - orthopedic but in the meantime I was looking for experiences and advice on this matter because as a mother - I'm starting to get confused as to who is RIGHT! I appreciate hearing from everyone. Thank you very much!

I am not sure where Westerville Ohio is, but consider taking her to some place like the Cleveland Clinic's Sports Med docs. They have had a good rep for years. -LBJ

I think another swimmer that led to us coaches questoning 15,000 to 22,000 workouts was Michael Gross of Germany. He did about 6,500 to 7,000 meters a day and swam more at race pace than American swimmers. And he of course was a 200 meter butterflyer and unlike Mary T Meagher did little butterfly.

Does your daughter do any other excerise? Like push ups sit up chins weights etc. If she does. She will have to look at the type of excerise she does. Also I think she should strenthing excerises. I at one time did the fly , for long distant. I am now 68 yrs. old. And allI have left is freestyle. But my back gruond as far as excerising might be different. these are some of the sports I did when I was younger.Boxing Gymnastics,open water swimming Diving , Baseball, well you get the idea. Iam ingood phyiscail shape. But as far as strokes other than free style, I have none.But you can imagine all the different excerise I had to do to train for all the various sports I did.But the bottom line is if you trainto swim ,thenreally cut down onother excerises that will hamper your goals in swiming .Lots of luck DOM.

I'm by no means an expert on anything, but I do have a suggestion here. After reading Leonard Jansen's recommendation of it on this board, I recently bought a book called The 7 Minute Rotator Cuff Solution that explains the structure of the shoulder and how injuries occur. It outlines a program to avoid shoulder problems and rehabilitate one that has been injured. It's out of print now, but you can still buy it used through Amazon.com: www.amazon.com/.../002-7993769-8475261 Hopefully that link will work. If not, cut and paste, or just go to Amazon and search for it. It's a little expensive at $35, but I've only just read it and already think it's worth the expense. A while back I tried to increase my butterfly distance and ended up unable to lift my left arm for two days. I came back fairly quickly, but I realized later that the problem stemmed from my stroke: I was internally rotating my shoulders, so that my hands entered the water thumbs down. That's the worst possible type of motion for the shoulders and an easy way to irritate the structures in there. The book explains in pretty good detail why. Unfortunately the book actually recommends against butterfly, but perhaps your kid can learn enough about what's going on in there to modify her stroke to avoid the problems.

I am not a medical professional or a coach. However, I have experience with various sports injuries. I am concerned that the injury has not resolved after a full year, during which time she apparently has had treatment. Joint injuries like this run the risk of becoming chronic, possibly debilitating. I would hate for her to have shoulder problems following her the rest of her life. It's just not worth it. My humble recommendation would be halt all activity that aggravates the condition, and make full recovery her absolute priority. That may mean no more butterfly, and it may mean swimming easy for a while.

When I was a teenager I had shoulder problems too sometimes from fly because I was swimming around 8,000 to 11,000 meters per day and doing sometimes 2000 meters plus of butterfly. I took off some days. Maybe, talking to the coach where she can do some workouts of kicking only. Doing more freestyle and breastroke in workouts when the others are doing fly. Also, backstroke causes shoulder problems as well, so she should cut down on the yardage in backstroke too.

I think your coach needs a little reality check. He is worried/bothered about losing her butterfly for the summer yet if he continues his current practice he could lose her completely. I think that you and your daughter need to weigh the pros and cons of your solutions and put your foot down. I think that it is pretty senseless to continue on without a plan of action, if she is trying to make a qualifying time that has a small window of oppurtunity then it may make some sense to continue until the time is achieved, that time frame has passed or the pain becomes a serious issue (this is my two cents worth - in regards to the time window I'm talking about a month or so, but I would also be exploring otherways to achieve the goal - core strength etc.). Even professional athletes will take time off in the season if an injury may result in being unable to play later, better to take a week or two off (or a month or two) then to not be able to play/swim for several years. Good luck.

USA Swimming has a network of sports medicine professionals who have experience working with swimmers. There is a searchable database on their website that can be used to find a sports medicine physician in your area. The direct url for the sports medicine page is www.usa-swimming.org/.../template.pl. You can also get there from www.usa-swimming.org by clicking on coaches and then sports medicine. A good article on shoulder injuries in swimmers can be found at www.fina.org/SportsMedicine4.pdf. The author of the article is Scott Rodeo, MD an orthopedic surgeon and current chair of the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Committee. Jane Moore, MD