Sore shoulders normal?

I think a couple of things to consider: 1. stop the doubles. Inflammation, injury, soreness, etc. at minimum needs recovery time. 24 hours of recovery is much better than 8 hours between morning and afternoon. If you are motivated to maintain similar total distance per week - obviously lengthen your primary workout. Adding 500-1000 yds to that workout may not be so hard since you are already warmed up. The 2nd workout, especially if it is 1500 yds. may not be as beneficial for your conditioning anyways because you probably spend 25-35% warming up and warming down. I think 1000 more yds in the morning may be more impactful than 1500 in the afternoon. 2. If you are lifting weights stop or minimize exercises that typically cause more shoulder stress (bench press, military press). 3. I think an indicator of rotator cuff problems is pain on the recovery portion of the stroke. Recovery, especially on fly, is much more of a lifting motion than a pulling motion. 4. Consider replacing part of your swimming time with another cardiovascular exercise that doesn't use the shoulders. Just for reference - I'm 48, and have slightly troublesome shoulders. I do have occasional pain on fly and breaststroke (recovery phase). It was much worse two years ago and slowly improved as my shoulders got stronger. I swim 4 times per week for a total distance of about 13,000 meters (workouts range from 3000-3500 meters).

I think a couple of things to consider: 1. stop the doubles. Inflammation, injury, soreness, etc. at minimum needs recovery time. 24 hours of recovery is much better than 8 hours between morning and afternoon. If you are motivated to maintain similar total distance per week - obviously lengthen your primary workout. Adding 500-1000 yds to that workout may not be so hard since you are already warmed up. The 2nd workout, especially if it is 1500 yds. may not be as beneficial for your conditioning anyways because you probably spend 25-35% warming up and warming down. I think 1000 more yds in the morning may be more impactful than 1500 in the afternoon. 2. If you are lifting weights stop or minimize exercises that typically cause more shoulder stress (bench press, military press). 3. I think an indicator of rotator cuff problems is pain on the recovery portion of the stroke. Recovery, especially on fly, is much more of a lifting motion than a pulling motion. 4. Consider replacing part of your swimming time with another cardiovascular exercise that doesn't use the shoulders. Just for reference - I'm 48, and have slightly troublesome shoulders. I do have occasional pain on fly and breaststroke (recovery phase). It was much worse two years ago and slowly improved as my shoulders got stronger. I swim 4 times per week for a total distance of about 13,000 meters (workouts range from 3000-3500 meters).