Just went to a PT who advocates swimming within the scapular plane. Doing all strengthening exercises within the scapular plane (never doing I, T's, or Ys above shoulder level, which I have, alas, been doing). No need, in his opinion, to do internal rotation with therabands; external rotation just 3/4 from front to 45 degrees past waist). No need for overhead rotation exercises; just stresses the shoulder joints.
What does scapular swimming mean? He demonstrated. No high elbows. No EVF.
Use rotation; use lats; use core. Let your arms swim wide and pretty straight during the recovery, but relaxed, with the momentum of your rotation. Don't bend your arms as you pull through the water. Let your lats/core/rotation/and your entire arm be your anchor. (If the lane is crowded he tightens up his recovery a little so he doesn't whack people.)
He was a national champion backstroker/Division I college swimmer. His way of swimming seems revolutionary. He said this is how Janet Evans swam, how Natalie Coughlin swims, how Torres swims, and how Phelps changed his recovery of fly, from bent elbow recovery to swinging over the water momentum recovery.
He says it could avoid a lot of shoulder problems. For me, it will mean relearning to swim.
Hum di dum. Any of you guys ever heard of this approach? At least in demonstrating, his freestyle pulling arm never had a high elbow or bend; he said he was much faster doing backstroke this way and that if I could learn how to do it correctly, I probably would be faster too. And that it would take the stress off my shoulders.
So the idea is never let the arms get above the scapular plane of the body. I need to e-mail him about breaststroke, because I don't see how you can pull without either a fair amount of internal rotation or using high elbows.
Always learning....
Here's something to try:
standing near a wall picture a vertical plane that is at right angles to, and extending out from, the wall.
align your body with this vertical plane so both your shoulders are in this plane and the arm nearest the wall is extending straight out to the side toward the wall and is also in this plane.
now rotate your torso toward the wall while keeping your upper arm fixed relative to your body, i.e. still sticking straight out to the side, but keep your hand in the plane between you and the wall.
As you rotate your shoulder joint and upper arm stay stationary relative to your body, but your forearm and hand swing inward toward your chest until they meet the chest when you are facing the wall.
I have to say that this is much easier to demonstrate than to describe, but in any case hopefully you can see that when you do this the bend in your elbow is a result of the rotation of your body NOT a result of moving your elbow with your shoulder.
If you think about achieving a bent elbow/vertical forearm, by rotating your body then it is quite possible to have a high elbow/EVF without moving your elbow behind the plane of your torso, it is just a matter of timing your arm pull and your rotation appropriately.
I attended the clinic given by Bill Boomer in Middlebury at the NE LCM Champs last week and he and Mike Ross explained this to me, luckily they were able to demonstrate rather than have to write it out! I'm still working on it but as I mentioned it helped me drop almost a minute and a half off my 1500 time, although I hasten to add that I'm still slow relative to better swimmers.
smontanaro: I would guess the max bend is about ninety degrees, I've only been working on this for a week now so I haven't achieved consistency yet.
If anyone has a chance to attend a Bill Boomer clinic I highly recommend it, everyone I talked to after got a lot out of it, and I certainly got a few things to work on that are making a BIG difference, both in free and fly. I watched part of Mike Ross's in the water session with Bill and it looked like even he was getting something out of it. I guess that's not surprising as Bill has worked with Olympic level swimmers.
OK. I will try to attach a drawing. My artistic skills are limited.
I think the swinging overhead recovery makes pretty good sense to me, rather than the fingertip drag close to body recovery, as long as rotation is good. I have watched some swimmers on my team be very stiff in their high elbow recovery and it seems to slow them down and add tension to their swimming; unneccesary expenditure of energy.
So I'm going to try for a relaxed recovery, and a relaxed pull. However, I think I will still try for more bend in my elbow than the PT was encouraging. I will continue to experiment with his ideas.
I think Lindsey (sp) is on the mark with the idea that you don't want your arms to get behind your shoulders at any point in your stroke because that stresses the shoulder joint immensely. I think that is what he is talking about.
So here's my artist's rendition (I hope you can enlarge this!):
I'm not trying to sound like a smart-alec but did you check this guys credentials? How could straight arm underwater pulling not be stressful to your shoulder joints?
Also swimming with a dropped elbow is highly inefficient. It would be less stressful on the shoulders because you are hardly pulling any water.
I'm not an expert but these are the thoughts that immediately spring into my mind. :blush:
He is highly credentialled (sp). I think because he was an elite swimmer, he has the strength of core, lats, and understanding of anchoring the pressure on the less-bent arm at the right time. I'm not sure I could relearn to swim the way he demonstrated.
When I stood with my right arm extended onto his tall, above-me shoulder, and initially tried a pull, a lot of stress at shoulder. Then he instructed me to really engage my core and lats, and I could see the strain was greatly reduced.
His theory was that rotation is what gets you through the water, not bent EVF arms. Though when I looked at Phelps's videos of free and back underwater, there is no doubt that he uses the bent, high elbow arm.
I'll have to e-mail this guy about this. But in his land demonstration (and possibly he is doing something different in the water, but not aware of it), he looked like Tarzan a little, swinging his arms out wide (no fingertip drag drills for him; I asked), and said that the rotation keeps the entry at the proper place. He then said he swings his arms relaxed and slightly bent through the water and uses his core for power. His main point was that high elbow and EVF and all the things being taught are getting the arm out of (above) the scapular plane, and thus really straining the AC joint.
It was a quick, free demo, so I really need to go watch him swim and get more info. He has given talks at the Harvard SCY championship meet in years past. He is highly regarded. I may be misrepresenting him. But I know he clearly said the high elbow recovery wastes energy, that it is akin to walking pulling up your knees as if marching. That when you walk, you swing your legs through; ditto with recovery of swimming, and also pulling with swimming. A slight bend to the elbow but not the high elbow I've been taught. Probably not dropped elbow, either, though, since he is making sure that his elbow/arm is parallel to the scapular plane: never above, never below.
That's his theory, as I understood it. Will try it out today.
I'm not a PT and don't have a medical background but from personal experience I can say that my shoulder problems only occur when my elbow gets behind the plane of my torso (the plane that contains my shoulders and some point further down my spine). That doesn't mean one has to keep the arm straight though. If you do a high elbow recovery with your body flat in the water the elbow immediately moves behind the torso, but if you are rotated onto your left side as you recover your right arm then a high elbow recovery still stays in front of the torso.
I think this is what this guy was referring to. Especially the part of never letting your shoulders get in front of your arms. Always have your arms in front of your shoulders. A challenge. As for the pull, it beats me. I am going to try a shallower, less-bent elbow for today, see how it affects speed for me.
I think the main challenge for someone like me, totally not elite, is that I don't have the decades of knowledge and excellent swimming in my background, and likely depend a lot on my arms rather than my entire body to get me through the water (though I have been kicking a lot). I think about it; I do drills; but my kinesthetic awareness isn't there yet. I do core stuff too, but to put it all together when swimming, in a conscious way, very challenging.
Just went to a PT who advocates swimming within the scapular plane. Doing all strengthening exercises within the scapular plane (never doing I, T's, or Ys above shoulder level, which I have, alas, been doing). No need, in his opinion, to do internal rotation with therabands; external rotation just 3/4 from front to 45 degrees past waist). No need for overhead rotation exercises; just stresses the shoulder joints.
What does scapular swimming mean? He demonstrated. No high elbows. No EVF.
Use rotation; use lats; use core. Let your arms swim wide and pretty straight during the recovery, but relaxed, with the momentum of your rotation. Don't bend your arms as you pull through the water. Let your lats/core/rotation/and your entire arm be your anchor. (If the lane is crowded he tightens up his recovery a little so he doesn't whack people.)
He was a national champion backstroker/Division I college swimmer. His way of swimming seems revolutionary. He said this is how Janet Evans swam, how Natalie Coughlin swims, how Torres swims, and how Phelps changed his recovery of fly, from bent elbow recovery to swinging over the water momentum recovery.
He says it could avoid a lot of shoulder problems. For me, it will mean relearning to swim.
Hum di dum. Any of you guys ever heard of this approach? At least in demonstrating, his freestyle pulling arm never had a high elbow or bend; he said he was much faster doing backstroke this way and that if I could learn how to do it correctly, I probably would be faster too. And that it would take the stress off my shoulders.
So the idea is never let the arms get above the scapular plane of the body. I need to e-mail him about breaststroke, because I don't see how you can pull without either a fair amount of internal rotation or using high elbows.
Always learning....
Do you mean "swing wide" during the recovery. What distances does your pt advocate this method for? Does your pt recommend the recovery to be close to the water? Where does your pt recommend releasing the water to start the recovery?
I'm not a PT and don't have a medical background but from personal experience I can say that my shoulder problems only occur when my elbow gets behind the plane of my torso (the plane that contains my shoulders and some point further down my spine). That doesn't mean one has to keep the arm straight though. If you do a high elbow recovery with your body flat in the water the elbow immediately moves behind the torso, but if you are rotated onto your left side as you recover your right arm then a high elbow recovery still stays in front of the torso.
I also developed a straight arm pull under the water, but not on purpose. It's true that it's easy on the shoulder and you get a good anchor in the water but the leverage is disadvantageous so it requires a lot of strength, which may limit your speed and/or how long you can maintain a given pace. You can see my (nearly) straight arm pull in the last video I posted. When I changed to a shallower bent arm pull I dropped a minute and 25 seconds off my 1500 time and I don't think it affects my shoulder.
Good luck!
I wouldn't imagine that your PT is adovacting swimming with a dropped elbow. He may have said to pull with a "straigher arm" to get you stop focusing on trying to bend or get an evf. You still will have somewhat of a bend, he maybe trying to get yours to occur more naturally.
Can someone add a drawing of what the recovery would look like that Isobel described? I am having trouble picturing the idea of keeping it in the scapluar plane on the recovery.
Two things Isobel.
1. Do you experiment shoulder issues with the technique you currently have?
2. Yes it is possible and to a large extent, advisable, that a coach constantly keeps in mind shoulder safety in designing a free style technique for someone. Controlling the level of pressure (or torque) that we apply over vs under scapula plate is certainly an important key. That said, I don't believe in a one size fits all recipe though, if it's what your PT suggest. For every swimmer that your PT may quote as using *his* technique, you're probably find at least 2 that use something that goes in the opposite direction (e.g. pure EVF swimmers).
