I have been swimming lots o yards and my shoulders are hurting. Last year I went to therapy, and got some good execizes that helped. Now the pain is in another area (Trapezius, teres major, rear deltoids). I know I am a bit OCD but I hate stopping training. Should I cut back on yards and increase weightlifting? What about deep tissue massage? Anyone have any thoughts?:confused: This is starting to get depressing.
I have been swimming lots o yards and my shoulders are hurting. Last year I went to therapy, and got some good execizes that helped. Now the pain is in another area (Trapezius, teres major, rear deltoids). I know I am a bit OCD but I hate stopping training. Should I cut back on yards and increase weightlifting? What about deep tissue massage? Anyone have any thoughts?:confused: This is starting to get depressing.
If you want to swim why would you back off swimming and increase the weights? I'd cut out the weights, not increase them. Stop the weights completely for a while. The massage would be helpful as well. Did you restart the exercises you got from therapy? You might start those up again too.
Thanks to you all. I am glad I am not alone. I sometimes get frustrated with some health care professionals, all they say to do is stop exercizing and take these drugs. I will use your advice.
I sometimes get frustrated with some health care professionals, all they say to do is stop exercizing and take these drugs.
No kidding! It's "have a cortisone shot." Now, they do help, but only initially and it's a temporary fix. Or "take muscle relaxers." No long term effect. Some orthos are very good, but there are few who treat real swimmers who train real yardage. They think we're from Mars. You have to be very assertive about finding out what steps you need to take to fix the pain. Unfortunately, they can be very time consuming and boring, i.e., RC exercises. Snooze. But I still think it's difficult to train hard without some bodywork and RC work. Your muscles freak out and pull on the tendons ... your RC is weak, so you compensate with other muscles and they get overloaded, etc. Just be persistent. I have to go to ART 2x a month just to keep swimming.
I have been swimming lots o yards and my shoulders are hurting. Last year I went to therapy, and got some good execizes that helped. Now the pain is in another area (Trapezius, teres major, rear deltoids). I know I am a bit OCD but I hate stopping training. Should I cut back on yards and increase weightlifting? What about deep tissue massage? Anyone have any thoughts?:confused: This is starting to get depressing.
I am in a constant state of shoulder management and used to have more severe pain issues, including the areas you mention. I never stopped swimming. I'm not sold on the "resting" notion for non-acute pain. But you may have to modify your training somewhat for awhile by reducing yardage or adding more kicking, drills or different strokes.
Have you seen a doc? If pain persists have it checked out. In the interim, I would immediately start doing rotator cuff/scapular stabilizing/PT exercises. Deep tissue massage or ART therapy also would likely help.
What kind of weights are you doing? I would not increase the amount of the weights. You might have to cut back for awhile if you're in pain, but I think some light to moderate weight lifting and core work helps my muscles take the load off my shoulders.
If you're doing substantial yardage, you have to keep the shoulders strong and healthy. Try not to get depressed, although I understand it's easy to when you're in pain and want to train. Do the exercises faithfully. Good luck.
Have you thought about trying a different type of pillow? I had bad shoulder problems for a long time, then I switched pillows and it went away. My wife bought new pillows and it came back along with really bad neck pains. I thought it was just getting older and swimming. Then I switched back to my old pillow and it went away. I don't have any shoulder or neck pains now. It took me a long time to figure out that it wasn't the swimming that was causing the pain. I use a very hard pillow, I get the pains when I sleep on a soft one. I don't like using the hotel pillows anymore because I wake up with pain the next day if I do. You could at least try it and see what happens.
Thanks to you all. I am glad I am not alone. I sometimes get frustrated with some health care professionals, all they say to do is stop exercizing and take these drugs. I will use your advice.
You're probably a good techincal swimmer but just in case...make sure you're not crossing over on your front crawl...I was, and it was causing me a lot of pain which has gone away since I worked on not crossing over (I may still cross a bit but I think it's better).
Good luck and remember ice is your friend.
Thanks to you all. I am glad I am not alone. I sometimes get frustrated with some health care professionals, all they say to do is stop exercizing and take these drugs. I will use your advice.
If a doctor tells me to stop exercising, I usually don't go back to them. I love my ART guy, because his comment at the first appointment was something along the lines of "let's make sure we are in agreement here - the goal is to get you back up to the volume of exercise you were doing" BINGO! So when he told me to ease back and do a different form of exercise a few days while we worked out the kinks, I was okay with it. I knew I was going to be in business very quickly.
FINS!!
FINS!
Couldn't agree more. Takes the stress off the shoulders. Fins can ramp up cardio, enhance flexibility and help with streamlining. I haven't had a lot of adverse effects from excessive training with fins. So I think the advantages of saving your shoulder and getting the extra benefits outweigh the disadvantages of fins.
I agree with runnergirl. My ART doc is also focused on keeping me training as opposed to mandating rest.
An extremely common topic on our forum here. The thing that has helped me most during times of shoulder travail is to get zoomers and kick most of practice. It's actually a much harder workout in many ways. And it lets you keep in the pool and stay up with your teammates--this regular camaraderie is, I believe, essential to many committed swimmers' mental health.
As your shoulder pain decreases, you can let your arms go through the motions without actually pulling with much force. This, for me, is a way to keep the range of motion good without aggravating the underlying tissues.
Eventually, you start pulling a little harder and finally put the zoomers away till the next episode.
Other things that have helped me:
ice after practice
never use kick boards
don't do strokes that are particularly pain provoking--in my case butterfly and backstroke
realize that the vast majority of shoulder problems are self limited (i.e., will go away on their own provided you don't keep the aggravation level high).
tell yourself as well that there have been many, many injured swimmers who switched to a kicking emphasis for whole chunks of the season--and ended up doing really good times, and sometimes PRs, during the end of the year meet
good luck and don't despair!
if you are anything like me, with hypochondriacal tendencies, focusing on minor discomforts, odd clicks, etc. only make pain perception worse.
