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....
What does scapular swimming mean? He demonstrated. No high elbows. No EVF.
I disagree with this statement.
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. To achieve a high elbow recovery it is again dependent on body rotation.
Ignoring what your forearm is doing, your shoulder to elbow is just flapping like a wing up and down, the only thing determining if you are in the water is your body rotation. There is no rotation internally in the shoulder.
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.
Is this technique advocated to help make swimming easier on shoulders or is it to swim faster? Or both?
I have found that a deeper catch is easier on sore shoulders but won't claim it makes me any faster.
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.
This whole thread is confusing me!
I do know that relaxing anything is always good for joints and the entire body!
CHILLING and slowing down gets results.
If you are talking about breastroke IDK!
OK. I will try to attach a drawing. My artistic skills are limited.
I think the swinging overhead recovery makes pretty good sense to me, rather than the fingertip drag close to body recovery, as long as rotation is good. I have watched some swimmers on my team be very stiff in their high elbow recovery and it seems to slow them down and add tension to their swimming; unneccesary expenditure of energy.
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I read the articles you attached. In one of them, I thought it said to "avoid the overhead recovery" You mention trying the overhead recovery. What am I missing here?
Do you think you could get your PT to give a more detailed description for us, one that wouldn't be in doctor speak either?
Does anyone have video that would provide some visual image to the articles?
I have to say that this is much easier to demonstrate than to describe, I read it a few times, but I still can't picture what you described. If you have any opportunity to record a demo and post it on your youtube account it would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Cool videos, helpful. Love the progression to full stroke drill.
Based on what Kipp (PT) was telling me, the high elbow in your recovery for free in the first video may be putting too much stress on your AC joint. He was advocating a less bent elbow and a more swung-out-to-the-side arm recovery, using core strength for stability.
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; on the second length you look much more in alignment with your shoulders, which is what the PT would advocate to avoid joint pain. I *think* he would advocate more squeezing of shoulder blades together with arms still staying very close to shoulder joint, rather than squeezing arms and shoulders behind your upper back (scapular plane).
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. 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.
As far as EVF, I am not a good observer of that. Someone else will have to weigh in. Thanks for sharing these videos.
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.
I tried a 1500 full EVF yesterday. It was the first time I was deliberately using this technique. Results: very bad. I guess it's a matter of practice.
I was significantly slower than usual, and more importantly, I almost reached a 18stroke per 25m count at some point. I was giving 17 plus a longish glide.... I don't remember the last time that happened.
My usual free style technique usually allows me for 15strokes per 25m, with the option of going 16 strokes. I usually don't get over this. I am not a dropped elbow swimmer though. My technique usually involves little bit of EVF but not full blown one, as shown on the clip below (on which I am easily holding a pace that is at least 10s/100m faster than yesterdays attempt).
YouTube- Free style early warm up pace
Problem for this lack of DPS was that I didn't have any torque by the mid phase of my pulling range.
After this attempt, I performed 400m @ 50m sculling (hands positioned near the exit phase) 50m final push (as shown on the other clip below). Then I did 400m of 0-arm-to-full progression (as shown on another clip below). DPS got back to normal and I tried another 200m relaxed, the pace was back to normal.
final push drill: YouTube- Free style Butterfly Pulling Pushes
0-arm-to-full progression: YouTube- Free Style Drill : 0-Arm-to-Full-Stroke Progression
Not sure what to think of all this yet. My actual technique allows me for more DPS that I could handle. My stroke relies on explosive second half of the pulling path. It's therefore closer to Popov's kind of technique. What would I gain from switching to Thorpe-like EVF? Anyone else is capable of swimming full blown EVF? Does that work well for you?
