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.
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.
