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....
Cool videos, helpful. Love the progression to full stroke drill. Thanks Isobel, I didn't post these to be complimented on them but thanks anyway.
What I wanted to do is to demonstrate my two options. Either alter this technique to pour more EVF in it, or leave it as is.
In the second sculling video, again based on what I understood from this PT, on the way down it looks like your arms are going beyond your "scapular plane" (extending behind your back and your shoulder joints) and so would be stressing your shoulder joint; What's the scapular plane exactly?
on the second length you look much more in alignment with your shoulders, which is what the PT would advocate to avoid joint pain. That second length is indeed slightly different. What I'm doing is that I use a longer range of motion. On the first 25 I focus on upsweep/final push whereas on the second one I extend the range of motion by grabbing more water by shoulder level I'd say. So I avoid the front quadrant but grab all the rest.
In the progression to full stroke drill, you look like you are awesomely parallel to your shoulder plane: that is, your arm stays right in line with your shoulder and side. OMG I think I understand now.
There you're mentioning that my recovery is made of a lateral raise. For the record, here's what a lateral raise look like
YouTube- Weight Lifting Exercises for Beginners : Lateral Raise Weight Lifting Exercise for Beginners
And yes. My recoveries on both sides are supposed to be limited to a simple lateral raise. Because that's what an arm recovery should be in FreeStyle, and to a large extent, in butterfly too. We're not supposed to be doing arm circles when swimming the Free.
And I usually make sure that I don't break this parallel line by making sure my fingers remain near the surface throughout the recovery. Because if you rotate your body enough while leaving the fingers very close to the surface, then you're likely using a simple lateral raise to recover, which is very safe for your shoulders.
Good drill. I am going to try that. I can't tell with the high elbow recovery if that is crunching your armbone into your shoulder joint a little bit, per the PT. My recovery is fine. I sometimes which it was more relaxed but it is very safe. The only problematic aspects of my Free is the catch. Both shoulder and elbow injuries may pop up if I screw up with the catch.
I am going to get Kipp to see if he can post some demos on YouTube so I'll have an idea of how he swims. When he does, I'll post them here.
That'd be fun. Thanks.
As far as EVF, I am not a good observer of that. Someone else will have to weigh in. Yeah I think there are two different discussion running in parallel. Sorry.
Cool videos, helpful. Love the progression to full stroke drill. Thanks Isobel, I didn't post these to be complimented on them but thanks anyway.
What I wanted to do is to demonstrate my two options. Either alter this technique to pour more EVF in it, or leave it as is.
In the second sculling video, again based on what I understood from this PT, on the way down it looks like your arms are going beyond your "scapular plane" (extending behind your back and your shoulder joints) and so would be stressing your shoulder joint; What's the scapular plane exactly?
on the second length you look much more in alignment with your shoulders, which is what the PT would advocate to avoid joint pain. That second length is indeed slightly different. What I'm doing is that I use a longer range of motion. On the first 25 I focus on upsweep/final push whereas on the second one I extend the range of motion by grabbing more water by shoulder level I'd say. So I avoid the front quadrant but grab all the rest.
In the progression to full stroke drill, you look like you are awesomely parallel to your shoulder plane: that is, your arm stays right in line with your shoulder and side. OMG I think I understand now.
There you're mentioning that my recovery is made of a lateral raise. For the record, here's what a lateral raise look like
YouTube- Weight Lifting Exercises for Beginners : Lateral Raise Weight Lifting Exercise for Beginners
And yes. My recoveries on both sides are supposed to be limited to a simple lateral raise. Because that's what an arm recovery should be in FreeStyle, and to a large extent, in butterfly too. We're not supposed to be doing arm circles when swimming the Free.
And I usually make sure that I don't break this parallel line by making sure my fingers remain near the surface throughout the recovery. Because if you rotate your body enough while leaving the fingers very close to the surface, then you're likely using a simple lateral raise to recover, which is very safe for your shoulders.
Good drill. I am going to try that. I can't tell with the high elbow recovery if that is crunching your armbone into your shoulder joint a little bit, per the PT. My recovery is fine. I sometimes which it was more relaxed but it is very safe. The only problematic aspects of my Free is the catch. Both shoulder and elbow injuries may pop up if I screw up with the catch.
I am going to get Kipp to see if he can post some demos on YouTube so I'll have an idea of how he swims. When he does, I'll post them here.
That'd be fun. Thanks.
As far as EVF, I am not a good observer of that. Someone else will have to weigh in. Yeah I think there are two different discussion running in parallel. Sorry.
