How do I improve my technique to avoid Swimmer’s Shoulder?

Swimming coach Cassie Patten answers a reader question about how to improve their swim technique to avoid further shoulder pain

“I am a social swimmer and I wanted to know what your opinion was on technique work. I don’t want to be fast as I’m quite happy swimming around the lake at my own speed but I do often get drawn into the odd YouTube video to see if what I’m doing is correct or not.

I had Swimmer’s Shoulder as a child and had to quit swimming because of it. I often get the odd twinge I am not sure if that is due to old age or technique. Any advice would be greatly received.” Sue

Thank you so much for this question, I get asked it a lot. My opinion on improving technique is that it can never be a bad thing. Regardless of if you want to be a competitive master swimmer or someone
who swims around a lake for fun, having a more efficient technique can only ever be a good thing.

There are several reasons why people work on their technique, and I’ll break them down for you now.

Injury prevention

Any repetitive action that we do, can lead to injury, especially if the action is not working with our body’s preferred plane of movement. An example of this is if you are entering with your hand inside of your shoulder line. For those who are not sure what this means, picture yourself swimming – does your hand enter in line with your head or your shoulder?

We should all be trying to enter with our thumb inline with the centre of your shoulder joint. It is important to enter here and not more toward the head as biomechanically, this is your shoulders strongest position. One way to think about it is if the top of your head was 12 o’clock you want your hands to be entering at 11 and 1 o’clock.

I wore out my bicep head tendon by entering slightly thumb first. When I watch videos back of me swimming, I shudder that my coaches never picked it up. Due to the small inefficiency I had to retire early from a sport I loved. So, although it will not make you significantly faster by swimming with a flat hand entry it will stop you from becoming injured.

Efficiency

When we swim, we want to put all of our efforts into moving forward, alleviating any wasted movements or energy expenditure that isn’t going into pressing water back. You need to concentrate on technique to improve efficiency.

A relatively easy way to improve efficiency is to reduce drag. A common contributing factor to this is ensuring your legs are not kicking too deep. Think about engaging your glute muscles (your
bum) and think about kicking up. A lot of people only concentrate on the down part of the kick which means their legs start to lower, thus increasing drag. Have a watch of the video below to help you understand the biomechanics’ of this more.

Focus

Let’s face it, swimming can often be quite repetitive, (I’m not saying boring just a little samey at times) by having a technique focus it gives your brain something to focus on and if you are swimming for distance can make the metres whiz past.

I hope that helps and if you want any more tips and tricks, please do head to my YouTube channel as I often upload technique pointers on there.

Read Cassie’s advice for preventing neck pain in breaststroke.