Swimming is a fine daily habit which keeps your joints supple and muscles loose, but is swimming good for you if you suffer from shoulder pain?
It’s great for your heart and lungs and above all, it maintains your independence and adds social interaction to your routine.
It’s important – like it is in any sport you might do on a regular basis – to vary your training, otherwise shoulder aches and pains are inevitable. It’s not possible to get into a swimming pool for an hour every day and use the same arm motion to propel you through the water without getting some kind of shoulder problem eventually.
The swimming is fine, just change the stroke you do from one day to the next.
My big tip when it comes to swimming with shoulder pain is to always vary the type of exercise you do.
As you’ve just noticed from the mention of how to avoid swimming injuries, it’s possible to change an activity within an activity, so to speak, and it will help you keep active and healthy and avoid shoulder pain while swimming.
Perhaps you could spend a little more time and effort putting together a plan that will work multiple muscle groups, improve balance, increase core muscle control (around your back), still improve cardio-vascular fitness (heart and lungs) and, just as importantly, give vital shoulder joints a break from that repetitive motion.
Get this right and your chances of suffering from shoulder pain while swimming will reduce hugely.
Combining running with swimming will make a big difference to your health and outlook.
Why Swimming Is Great For Your Overall Fitness
People often associate exercising with running, cycling, even walking. Yet swimming is possibly the best way of all, because it’s relatively easy on the joints and not likely to cause much overheating of your body, as the cold water is going to cool you down. It’s easy to avoid feeling shoulder pain when swimming.
And here are some more benefits of swimming:
- It’s something you can do on your own.
- You don’t have to worry about the dark nights or pairing up with someone to stay safe (as you might do with running or cycling).
- It’s relatively inexpensive for the health benefits you get.
- One of the biggest benefits of swimming, particularly for the 50+ age group, is that the buoyancy of the water makes it friendly to ankle, knee and back joints because there’s almost none of the stress or impact which might happen if you were walking or running.
- Swimming is a low-impact exercise that works all the muscles in the body. That’s why many injured athletes turn to the pool to maintain fitness and rehabilitate an injury at the same time. It’s also a healthy physically activity for people in their youth to older age.
Five Ways To Avoid Shoulder Pain While Swimming
Shoulder injuries are the most common injury in swimming, and a true swimming stroke technique is so important when it comes to injury prevention.
- Get your breathing right. The ability to breathe comfortably on both sides is important when it comes to the freestyle stroke. By changing sides, you are equalizing muscle development and achieving symmetry. It also allows for smoother and more even strokes, the balance from using both shoulders will help avoid shoulder pain. It may feel awkward on the opposite side you would normally breathe at first, but it will soon become natural and lead to a more efficient stroke.
- Posture. Your posture out of the pool can affect your posture in the pool. If you have tightness in the chest muscles or rounded shoulder posture, this can put you more at risk of suffering from shoulder pain. The shoulders should be back and the chest forward during a freestyle stroke. Shoulder pain occurs when the tendons become pinched, irritated, and inflamed.
- Kick. The kick should originate from the hips. In other words, kick your legs, not your feet. There should be a slight bend in your knee and your toes will naturally point.
- Catch and Pull. The ‘catch’ is when the hand enters the water. You are catching the water, with your wrist slightly bent. If the thumb enters the water first, it can cause the shoulder to internally rotate and can lead to shoulder pain.
The ‘pull’ is the when the arm pulls through the water to move the body forward. The hand and arm should enter the water as an extension of the shoulder. If the arm crosses too wide, it can easily lead to shoulder pain. - Warm up correctly. Just like before any physical activity, a proper warm-up and stretching exercises are important to reduce the likelihood of suffering shoulder pain while swimming. Strengthening the shoulder will bring a more efficient stroke. Alternating different strokes prevents repetitive motion that can lead to overuse injuries and bring on shoulder pain.
How to Avoid Should Pain While Swimming Altogether
If you are suffering with regular shoulder pain, or it is preventing you from swimming freely, then you are probably worrying about what might happen if things continue to get worse…
You may be hoping that things fix themselves, but you are very aware of the risk of surgery in your future, but you aren’t sure what to do to fix the problem to allow you to swim freely without shoulder pain.
If this sounds like you, and you don’t want to feel anxious about the prospect of going into hospital – let alone the currently extremely extended waiting lists, then now is the time to get the support you really need.
At Paul Gough Physio Rooms, we have helped thousands of patients, and helped hundreds of people just like you who are experiencing daily shoulder pain and unable to move freely.
If you want to get some personalised advice, we offer you the opportunity to speak to a member of our physio team on a 1-1 basis in one of our four clinics…
In this FREE Taster Consultation, we will discuss your foot pain, and identify the underlying cause, as well as outlining what you natural, drug-free solutions are available to you.
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You might know Paul as an expert Columnist who writes weekly health articles for TWO of the North East's biggest daily Newspapers, The Northern Echo And The Hartlepool Mail, he is a regular Speaker at Industry Seminars around the globe and a Radio Personality, often heard on the BBC. Paul has been an expert guest on dozens of Radio shows and regularly interviewed in newspapers, magazines and trade journals all over the world, including the Guardian.
Paul’s background included working extensively in the Premier League with a Top Professional Football Team, and since quitting his job in Professional Football in 2007, his Physio Practice has become the fastest growing in the UK and biggest in the North East. So successful, that companies like BUPA, ASDA, The Vela Group And Coast & Country, repeatedly retain his Physio company's services to keep healthy their own staff and workforce. Paul Gough Physio Rooms is now a large multi-physio, multi clinic speciality practice in Darlington, Durham, Guisborough and Hartlepool.
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