Injury Prevention for Swimmers

Swimming can be a fantastic sport. It involves a high demand of mid section stability, cardiovascular endurance and glenoid humoral flexibility. It provides a means to exercise without the resistance of your body weight, a task that is essential for some rehabilitation clients. The water can often act as support for your joints if you are injured but way really impresses me is the new range of horizontal resistance that water can offer. Horizontal resistance is useful for shoulder and hip stabilisation.

There are negative aspects of training in the water. First of all it doesn't improve bone density. For improved bone density we need substantial external force such as the resistance applied by weight training. For swimmers biomechanical faults can surface if careful consideration isn't taken.

Repetitive front crawls are a pain in the back side. I often have triathletes approach me with short pectoral muscles, tight upper back muscles, weak rhomboids and inactive serratus muscles. This results in a forward tilt of the shoulder which is associated with rotator cuff damage. Due to the low extension/flexion movement of the hips whilst swimming athletes often encounter tight hip flexors. This results in a forward tilt of the pelvis.

The breast stroke is the recreational favorite. It's easy to dip in to your local swimming facility and take a few leisurely lengths before easing off in the steam room. The breast stroke however is a nightmare for causing imbalances around the hips. Glute tightness drastically effect the walking gait in a negative way. I often find that participants who breast stroke on a regular basis find thenselves walking with their toes pointed outwards. The breast stroke is made even worse by people who swim with their face out of the water. This will obviously increase neck tightness so please just stop it!

I would recommend a few strength drills and a few flexibility exercises to realign your body for increased performance and wellness:

Press up - use this standard classic for increased serratus activation and a wider variety of movement.

Face pull - this is one of my favorite back exercises. It improves glenoid humoral mobility and strengthens the lower portion of the trapizius muscle.

Reverse Fly - exadurate this movement with light dumbbells. Focus on squeezing your shoulder blades together at the top of the movement and opening the shoulder blades wide at the bottom of the movement.

Roll out - here we have an incredible exercise that will work the muscles for the property in which they are designed to perform.

Single Leg Romanian dead lift - at one point or another every last one of my clients will practice this exercise. It is a fantastic way of improving hip biomechanics. Biomechanical perfection involves feet pointing forwards, glutes tensed and a perfectly straight line between your heal and the base of your skull.

There is a lot more to learn about a swimmers training programme so feel free to ask.

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