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....
Hi Elaine,
So sorry to hear about your shoulder! I took a look at both the 2013 video and the most recent clip you posted and although its difficult to ascertain exactly why your shoulder may be causing you pain, I can definitely see some issues that could lead to this.
While in many cases, the arm recovery could be pinpointed as a source of shoulder pain, I believe that in your case the issue is mainly with the left arm pull and finish. I've included some screenshots below from the March 2018 video.
First, you can see that you cross over during the hand and arm entry. After that, your outsweep extends outside of the plane of your body and the rest of the pull happens outside of your body instead of pulling more towards the center of the body. You can see this in the first two screenshots.
Additionally, you can see in the video, (you can see it better on the 2013 video but also I can see it on the most recent video) that your kick tends to "freeze" while you are pulling with the left arm. Without the kick to support you, you're relying mainly on your arm to pull you through the water. Coupled with the way you are pulling, this puts additional pressure on the shoulder.
Finally, as you can see in both the 2013 and present video, you tend to have an exaggerated finish - finishing past your hips and flicking the left arm out of the water, almost across your back, rather than finishing just at the hips. This can also put pressure on the shoulder.
What I would recommend is to really work on deconstructing your stroke and rebuilding it - building up both sides of the body, building balance and core strength and in the meantime, protect your left arm while it is hurting. Work on single arm right arm, work on kicking/ rotation and make sure that you are not aggravating that shoulder anymore.
Good luck and hope your shoulder improves quickly!
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Hi Elaine,
So sorry to hear about your shoulder! I took a look at both the 2013 video and the most recent clip you posted and although its difficult to ascertain exactly why your shoulder may be causing you pain, I can definitely see some issues that could lead to this.
While in many cases, the arm recovery could be pinpointed as a source of shoulder pain, I believe that in your case the issue is mainly with the left arm pull and finish. I've included some screenshots below from the March 2018 video.
First, you can see that you cross over during the hand and arm entry. After that, your outsweep extends outside of the plane of your body and the rest of the pull happens outside of your body instead of pulling more towards the center of the body. You can see this in the first two screenshots.
Additionally, you can see in the video, (you can see it better on the 2013 video but also I can see it on the most recent video) that your kick tends to "freeze" while you are pulling with the left arm. Without the kick to support you, you're relying mainly on your arm to pull you through the water. Coupled with the way you are pulling, this puts additional pressure on the shoulder.
Finally, as you can see in both the 2013 and present video, you tend to have an exaggerated finish - finishing past your hips and flicking the left arm out of the water, almost across your back, rather than finishing just at the hips. This can also put pressure on the shoulder.
What I would recommend is to really work on deconstructing your stroke and rebuilding it - building up both sides of the body, building balance and core strength and in the meantime, protect your left arm while it is hurting. Work on single arm right arm, work on kicking/ rotation and make sure that you are not aggravating that shoulder anymore.
Good luck and hope your shoulder improves quickly!
11503
11504
11505
