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....
You aren't missing anything. I was sloppy with my language.
He means that I should be swinging my arms around, as if grabbing a rope out to the side that then swings my arm to proper entry position.
Argh, it really is hard to describe in words. Rather than fingertip drag drills, which have your elbow bent and your arm quite close to your body for recovery, which I have always been told is ideal, so that gravity doesn't take your arm and body off your core alignment ....
this guy advocates letting the rotation of your body cause your arms to swing around with very little effort and very little bend to the elbow and ....
because you are so amazingly strong at your core, your arm just flies around but wide to the side first and then plinks into the proper entry position at shoulder or wherever proper entry position is...
His imitation in his office was like an ape walking with swinging arms, a swinging recovery that is wide, relaxed and possibly slightly bent to a long, skinny "C" shape, with the pull similarly being slightly bent, with long skinny C shape.
Heck if I know. I am just going to try to relax my recovery and pull and see what happens. And hope that Lindsey (sp?) can provide a video of what Bill Boomer (?) taught at Middlebury, because I think these are similar concepts.
You aren't missing anything. I was sloppy with my language.
He means that I should be swinging my arms around, as if grabbing a rope out to the side that then swings my arm to proper entry position.
Argh, it really is hard to describe in words. Rather than fingertip drag drills, which have your elbow bent and your arm quite close to your body for recovery, which I have always been told is ideal, so that gravity doesn't take your arm and body off your core alignment ....
this guy advocates letting the rotation of your body cause your arms to swing around with very little effort and very little bend to the elbow and ....
because you are so amazingly strong at your core, your arm just flies around but wide to the side first and then plinks into the proper entry position at shoulder or wherever proper entry position is...
His imitation in his office was like an ape walking with swinging arms, a swinging recovery that is wide, relaxed and possibly slightly bent to a long, skinny "C" shape, with the pull similarly being slightly bent, with long skinny C shape.
Heck if I know. I am just going to try to relax my recovery and pull and see what happens. And hope that Lindsey (sp?) can provide a video of what Bill Boomer (?) taught at Middlebury, because I think these are similar concepts.
