Tell me about your swimmer's shoulder

I fought some problems with my right shoulder for several months earlier this year.  Fortunately my orthopedic surgeon is an accomplished open water swimmer so he was a big help.

Eventually figured out it was due to a combination of some form issues with my swimming, aggravated by the height of my computer keyboard & mouse at work.

The computer thing was easy to fix with a change in height of my desk chair.

The form issue was related to working on a high elbow and early catch in my pull. Adjusted things a bit and it's gotten better.  I basically went back to a stroke that is more TI than Sheila Taormina.  Been fine ever since.

I've always done a lot of weight lifting over the years, so strength is not an issue, but it has reduced my range of motion in my shoulders, so that's also a contributing factor.   

HTH.  Good luck,

Mark

It looks like this thread is how to fix/recover/repair it...  I'll leave that to other people but want to mention, probably MORE importantly, you need to figure out why you got it.

You can do all the fixes you want.  Shots, surgery, doc visits, but if you continue to do whatever it is you are doing to cause it?  None of it helps much.

Look at your form.  When I had it, I realized I was crossing the midline of my body in the pull.  Once I figured out my technique issues, the swimmer's shoulder went away.

Ditto on much of the above.  But, I have 2 shoulders and only the second follows most of the above storyline.  So...

In brief:  If your shoulder is just sore, fix your form and you should be gtg.  If it's injured in a way that PT will only aggravate, not fix (tears, bad degenerative changes, etc.), surgery can help.  All depends on the particular joint in question.

My experience (as in, "not so much in brief" or the tl/dr version):

Right shoulder:  hurt it a little when I was in college playing rugby.  Ortho said, "Don't come back until you can't live with the pain (and you WILL come back, but it might not be for many years).  Go do PT."  So, I did.  Made it ~20 years until one summer I pushed it over the edge (coach pitch baseball, started swimming cuz I broke an ankle, light weights added in, kids took up tennis so I was hitting around with them - altogether too much).  Needed surgery.  Got it, recovered for a couple months and now I can do anything except pitch a fastball (not exactly holding me back, not being able to do that!).  I read the post-op report - my shoulder was a mess in about every way it could be without having any one catastrophic injury (seriously - almost everything was a little bit broken, and some things almost catastrophically - had the surgery just in time, basically).

Left shoulder:  fine all my life until I took my first (and as yet only) swim lesson last fall.  Coach showed me how to "swim pretty"  - all elbows up high on the recovery and ahead of my hand as it comes forward.  I looked great after the lesson, worked on it for a week - and promptly aggravated the cr@p out of my shoulder.  Needed a cortisone shot and 6 weeks out of the pool (and I now know from the workup that I have a small spur and minor to moderate impingement, so I have to be careful about how I move my arm during recovery).  Worked on discovering a swim form that worked for me and gradually adding yardage (started with like 400yds easy - THAT was the toughest part!).  Now, it's fine most days (occasionally will get tweaked, but with a focus on form it will come back and stay good).

Right shoulder is sooooooo much better now, cuz I needed to have it fixed, not fix my form (at least by the time I went in, that train had sailed from the barn - or whatever).  Left shoulder is sooooooo much better now, cuz I needed to fix the way I swam, not the shoulder.

Good luck!

Matt

Thanks for the input.

I have been biliateral breathing and always have, although when I swim relaxed across the pool bilateral breathing isn't nessicary so its generally to one side. My breathing is left side dominant (even though I'm a righty) and its my left shoulder that has problems.

The PT has said with swimmers, most shoulder problems are due to stroke imbalances. I get that.

I'm at a loss as to how I'm supposed to get into the pool and swim when it aggrivates my shoulder? I haven't been in the pool for 2 months now. The pain started in late June. By July it hurt enough I cut down the swimming to once a week. In August I swam maybe a total of 3 times... I stopped a few weeks before my Oly just so I could finish the event.

I know I need a private coach for 1-2 months to straighting out my stroke problems. Then work on building strength. Once my left is strong I can start ramping up volume and speed etc. I'm thinking this is going to take 6months of work. 

I'm looking into a masters group thats about an hour away (its the closest). But even so, how can I join the masters group when I can't even swim properly?

I haven't found any private swim coaches. There are plenty of fitness/running type of trainers, but not swimming. I need to devote some time and hunt around - its just that I have no motivation right now. I'll get to it though. By November I want to get back in the pool even If its just kicking drills.

Yep, did all that, too.  And it worked - for more than 20 years, happily.

Then it didn't.

And I had my surgery at the Cleveland Clinic (was a doc there at the time) - shoulder has worked since, happily!  

My doc's advice back 25+ years ago still stands as great general advice wrt surgery, "Don't come back to me until you can't drink a cup of coffee without wincing in pain."  ('course, you'll want to substitute coffee drinking with the activity in question, but the point is to avoid surgery until you just can't anymore).

NOT to say that the OP needs cut.  Just that it does happen sometimes and can be the right answer in certain cases - but as a last option.

Matt

You've received some great advise from others, but some of it is worth repeating.

You have 2 challenges before you. One is to manage and relieve your current symptoms. Ice, rest and cortisone shots can help you with these. The second is to uncover the underlying cause.

I am going to assume that you did not suffer a traumatic injury (accident, suffering an acute injury weightlifting etc). If you have developed a weakness in any part of your rotator cuff, strength training focused PT is essential. However, more likely is a stroke defect. You can do a lot of things wrong swimming and not get injured so long as you don't swim hard or long. It's when you start doing those things that problems arise. Without seeing your stroke, let me suggest a couple of common mistakes.

First is make sure your hand is entering middle finger first. This has always been a problem for me too. I  use bio feedback by focusing on having my pinky touch first. I developed a shoulder problem in part because of this mistake. Curiously, it emerged as a problem when I was surfing a lot where thumb first entry comes too easily. The second thing I would suggest that you look at is your catch. If you breathe to your right and it is your left shoulder that is giving you problems, then you are pushing down in the catch phase, and not pulling straight back. I've made this mistake too. This problem can still arise if you breath bilaterally because only the true elite swimmers can swim completely balanced, although you'll see some that excel with an imbalanced stroke.