3 Modifications You Need to Make to Your Freestyle if You Have Swimmer's Shoulder

Over the past few months, a handful of Masters swimmers have come to see me for nagging shoulder pain. Three of these swimmers (not their real names), David, Mike, and Janet, had a similar type of shoulder pain in the front of their shoulder around their biceps tendon. Each would feel their pain after 30 minutes of swimming, and it would quickly worsen from there.

To determine what might be causing this, I asked each of them record a video of themselves swimming and bring the video in our next session. Although each of them had the same pain location, they each felt their pain at different points in their stroke. It turns out each had a different technique error contributing to their pain. David felt his at the bottom of his pull, Mike felt his during the recovery part of his stroke, and Janet felt hers during the initial catch phase of her stroke.

Based on where each of these swimmers felt their pain in their stroke, a different modification to their stroke was needed to decrease their pain while swimming. The goal of this article is talk about three modifications you can make to your freestyle if you’re having shoulder pain when swimming. These modifications can help decrease pain, prevent future injury, and keep you in the pool.

Use Fist Drill

One of the best drills for swimmers with shoulder pain is fist drill, in which you swim with your hands balled into fists, relying on your forearms for forward movement, especially when your pain is during the pull phase of your stroke, just like David had. The drill works because it helps take stress off your shoulder during the pull phase of freestyle.

It does so by decreasing the lever arm of your stroke by forcing you to pull more from your forearm. Imagine you are holding a heavy bag of groceries. The farther you hold the groceries from your body, the harder it is to support the weight. Holding your groceries away from your body increases the lever of the arm.

If you hold the groceries close to your body, which decreases your lever arm, supporting the weight becomes much easier.

Just like holding groceries closer to your body, swimming with a closed fist allows you to take stress off your shoulder, which decreases your pain when swimming. This is what allowed David to get back to full swims with less pain in a relatively short amount of time.

Increase Your Body Roll

If you have pain during the recovery part of freestyle, like Mike did, then this modification might be for you. If you have a lack of rotation, your shoulder has to extend much farther back during the recovery phase. This increases the amount of stress on the front of your shoulder.

If you increase your body roll, your arm doesn’t have to extend as far back during the recovery phase, decreasing the stress on your shoulder. If you have pain during the recovery phase, try increasing your body roll and see what happens.

Mike found he would know he wasn’t increasing his body roll enough when he would feel his pain return. This helped reinforce increasing his body roll so that his pain wouldn’t increase while he swam.

Avoid Crossing Your Midline

One of the most common mistakes swimmers make is crossing their midline during the pull phase of swimming. This is what Janet was doing. Crossing your midline during the pull phase increases the amount of stress on your shoulder because it requires more effort to swim at the same speed compared to not crossing your midline when pulling.

Although you may be able to manage the increase in stress on your shoulder for a short time, your muscles will begin to fatigue, further increasing the strain on your shoulder, which can lead to injury. This helped explain why Janet wouldn’t have pain at the beginning of her swim but would after 30 minutes.

Once Janet stopped crossing her midline when pulling, her pain wouldn’t reach the same intensity. She was once again able to complete full workouts with her Masters group.

While crossing your midline is a common mistake, something talked about less is pulling too wide during freestyle. I find this to be quite common, especially with Masters swimmers. When you pull too wide, your shoulder has to work much harder to get the same amount of power during your pull, increasing stress on your shoulder.

Watch how swimmers hop out of the pool. Many swimmers push themselves out of the pool with their hands shoulder-width apart. If you place your hands really wide, you will notice it is much harder to lift yourself out of the pool. This is exactly what happens when you pull too wide during freestyle. It is harder to move the same amount of water, meaning your shoulders have to work much harder.

The Results

Although Janet, Mike, and David had pain in the same location and felt it at the same point during their workouts, the technique errors they were making were different. Modifying their technique allowed them to not only stay in the pool for the entire duration of their workouts but helped decrease their pain and allowed them to recover faster.

The next time you have shoulder pain during a workout, try making one of these modifications and see what happens.