Are shoulder injuries due solely to improper stroke mechanics

One of the traps that a discussion like this can fall into all too easily is being sloppy about defining "perfect stroke". Perfect stoke for the purpose of avoiding shoulder pain and perfect stroke for the purpose of maximum speed might very well be different, even for one person. In the thread that I suspect prompted this thread Leslie said: I think you are engaging in somewhat wishful, highly theoretical thinking in asserting that a beautiful stroke alone can save you from shoulder pain and vault you to the highest levels of swimming. (emphasis added by me) I think that some people continue to have shoulder problems and repeated shoulder surguries that could be swimming pain free if they were willing to adjust their strokes. They might or might not be able to perform at the same level with the adjusted stroke, either temporarily or possibly in the long term. "Are shoulder injuries due solely to improper stroke mechanics" is not the right question in my mind. Clearly some shoulder injuries are due to weight lifting or falling off bikes and have nothing to do with swimming technique. I suspect that for just about anyone you could find some swimming technique that would not cause them shoulder problems, although in some cases they might not be able to perform at a very high level using that technique. I think the interesting question is whether there is a technique that avoids shoulder problems and that it is possible to achieve maximum performance while using, or is there a "healthy" verus "high performance" trade-off? And how big is that trade-off? My own, evolving, model is that my shoulders can take a certain level of "stress" and then recover before my next swim and therefore not deteriorate over time. I can stress my shoulders more if I take more recovery time before stressing them again. The biggest cause of shoulder stress for me is movements with my elbow behind the plane of my body, and I have found ways to swim free, fly, and *** without any such movements so I don't have shoulder problems if I stick to these three strokes, do some dryland shoulder exercises, and build some rest days into my schedule. I suspect that if I swam 5000m workouts seven days a week I would have shoulder problems, both because of the increased accumulated stresses and because such a high workload would likely lead to breakdown in technique.

One of the traps that a discussion like this can fall into all too easily is being sloppy about defining "perfect stroke". Perfect stoke for the purpose of avoiding shoulder pain and perfect stroke for the purpose of maximum speed might very well be different, even for one person. In the thread that I suspect prompted this thread Leslie said: I think you are engaging in somewhat wishful, highly theoretical thinking in asserting that a beautiful stroke alone can save you from shoulder pain and vault you to the highest levels of swimming. (emphasis added by me) I think that some people continue to have shoulder problems and repeated shoulder surguries that could be swimming pain free if they were willing to adjust their strokes. They might or might not be able to perform at the same level with the adjusted stroke, either temporarily or possibly in the long term. "Are shoulder injuries due solely to improper stroke mechanics" is not the right question in my mind. Clearly some shoulder injuries are due to weight lifting or falling off bikes and have nothing to do with swimming technique. I suspect that for just about anyone you could find some swimming technique that would not cause them shoulder problems, although in some cases they might not be able to perform at a very high level using that technique. I think the interesting question is whether there is a technique that avoids shoulder problems and that it is possible to achieve maximum performance while using, or is there a "healthy" verus "high performance" trade-off? And how big is that trade-off? My own, evolving, model is that my shoulders can take a certain level of "stress" and then recover before my next swim and therefore not deteriorate over time. I can stress my shoulders more if I take more recovery time before stressing them again. The biggest cause of shoulder stress for me is movements with my elbow behind the plane of my body, and I have found ways to swim free, fly, and *** without any such movements so I don't have shoulder problems if I stick to these three strokes, do some dryland shoulder exercises, and build some rest days into my schedule. I suspect that if I swam 5000m workouts seven days a week I would have shoulder problems, both because of the increased accumulated stresses and because such a high workload would likely lead to breakdown in technique.