This is your body while you are on your phone. This is your rotator cuff while you are in this position.
I’m not saying that you phone caused your shoulder pain, I’m saying that it is probably making things worse.
Most swimmers have strong front upper body muscles and we rarely work one our back muscles specially around the scapular muscles. This creates an imbalance in your shoulder. More specifically it makes your shoulder round up to the front while you are resting, working on the computer and specially on your cellphone.
Here is a quick test you can do to see if your front muscles like pec major and pec minor are tight. Stand up straight and let your arms relax. now close your fists except for your thumb. Make sure to be relaxed and see where your thumbs are pointing. If they are pointing inwards you most likely have a muscle imbalances. The normal position for your body is for your thumbs to be pointing forward. Also if you are always slouching that is a sign of weak upper back muscles too. If you sleep on your side you are also over extending the scapular muscles and shortening your pec muscles.
So what can you do? Some of the points I will give you are more for prevention than treatment. So if you have a shoulder injury I suggest talking to your doctor and do some research yourself. In my experience, understanding and further researching your injury on your own is an extremely important part of recovery. Just make sure your sources are credible.
The first thing to do is stretch. To release some of those tight muscles, one of the best thing you can do is to stretch. To stretch your pec major lean against a wall and put your elbow on a 90 degree bend. Then rotate to the other side as if you wanted to look behind you. You will feel how you stretch a little more if you turn your head to the other side like this. The muscle we really want to stretch though is the pec minor. This one is probably the one the gets tighter, since it play a big part of every stroke and we usually don’t stretch it. To stretch it is very similar to the pec major but this time raise your arm a bit higher. Try to bring your shoulder blades together and for more intensity try to look to the opposite side. Hold each stretch for 30 to 50 seconds.
Another stretch you can do is to lay down with your foam roller or even a pillow in between your shoulder blade, cross your hands behind your head and try to bring your elbows down. This will stretch a lot of your front upper body muscles.
Now think about how much you contract these muscles and how much time you spend with a bad posture. So yeah you won’t fix this problem by doing this once for 30 seconds. You need to do this at least daily or even twice or three times a day if your muscles are very tight for maybe two to three weeks. If it hurts real bad it means it is very tight. But don’t push it, just make gradual improvements to your mobility and flexibility and get use to the pain. There is no way around it.
The other thing you need to do is to strengthen the muscles that attach to the shoulder blade. These muscles protect your shoulder by keeping your shoulder joint in place. So there are three movements you can do to strength them. The first is this, just make sure your elbow doesn’t move from your side. In fact it should be touching your body at all times. If you don’t have a stretch band you can do it with a weight on a bench. The second exercise is similar but with your arm at 90 degrees. Again make sure your elbow is not moving. The last one is this. Keep your arms straight and separate them using your back muscles.
Remember that most swimmers have had or are going to have a shoulder related injury That is one of our biggest obstacles. So be smart and prevent it before it happens to you.
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