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....
Imagine having hinge joint for your shoulder, so your arm only goes up and down in the same plane as your chest. To get EVF, you rotate your body and enter wide. From this point, your forearm travels straight back, but to keep your shoulder in the same plane, you rotate your body. as demonstrated on this clip here
YouTube- How to swim with a High Elbow Catch/EVF - Total Immersion Israel
That said though, I'm yet to see good executions of it done by master swimmers. Nice EVF swimmers that can safely execute this technique both the breathing side and not breathing side arms are kind of rare, which sometimes get me to think about this technique that it's easier said than done.
For me, the critical point in order for this to work is timing. For a safe EVF position to be obtained, got to wait until the body reaches an almost flat position on the water, which for me means delaying the catch a tiny bit timing wise. If you wait for too long, then too much strain gets put on the catch. If you take the catch too early, then you need to rotate the shoulder internally since the body isn't flat enough (yet). Anyway, work in progress for me.
Imagine having hinge joint for your shoulder, so your arm only goes up and down in the same plane as your chest. To get EVF, you rotate your body and enter wide. From this point, your forearm travels straight back, but to keep your shoulder in the same plane, you rotate your body. as demonstrated on this clip here
YouTube- How to swim with a High Elbow Catch/EVF - Total Immersion Israel
That said though, I'm yet to see good executions of it done by master swimmers. Nice EVF swimmers that can safely execute this technique both the breathing side and not breathing side arms are kind of rare, which sometimes get me to think about this technique that it's easier said than done.
For me, the critical point in order for this to work is timing. For a safe EVF position to be obtained, got to wait until the body reaches an almost flat position on the water, which for me means delaying the catch a tiny bit timing wise. If you wait for too long, then too much strain gets put on the catch. If you take the catch too early, then you need to rotate the shoulder internally since the body isn't flat enough (yet). Anyway, work in progress for me.
