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Swimming is the lowest impact on your body too. Anything involving running includes frequent jolts to ankles/knees/hips/lower back. Cycling on standard bicycl

Swimming is the lowest impact on your body too. Anything involving running includes frequent jolts to ankles/knees/hips/lower back. Cycling on standard bicycles concentrates pressure on your genitals and the nerve-dense region areas around them, and puts some pressure on the lower back. Swimming can cause unique injuries to shoulders if your form isn't right, but otherwise is very smooth and low-impact.

caminante 7y ago
I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise. Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?
- alimw 7y ago
  I hope there's a good answer to this. At the moment my solution is to not do crawl.
  - michaelg7x 7y ago
    I read a blog of someone preparing for a 24-hour swim around one of the Swiss lakes and he was explaining about how it's important to get the reach and catch right. I understood this to mean getting your body rotation, shoulder and slightly-bent, extended arm into the most mechanically advantageous position. I imagine that this minimises "difficult" stresses on the shoulder joint. I'm trying to implement this without a trainer and it seems not to be irritating my (unrelated) shoulder injury.
    - michaelg7x 7y ago
      It may have been somewhere on this (http://reminiscencesofalongdistanceswimmer.blogspot.com http://reminiscencesofalongdistanceswimmer.blogspot.com) blog
- entee 7y ago
  Generally for freestyle you want to follow these rules to avoid shoulder injury: 1.) Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that. Freestyle is kind of like climbing a ladder horizontally. 2.) Keep a good rotation around your center line in the upper body. This helps to use your back muscles/lats to do the big work. You want to be sore at the end of the workout in your lats, core and maybe chest. Not your shoulders. 3.) Don't over-extend your arm in reach. Many people end up pushing down on the water they initiate their stroke, this is wasted work and also shoulder strain. You want to as quickly as possible have your hand pulling parallel to your body, which usually means a high, wide elbow in the catch. This is a course I've been meaning to try but haven't. It purports to reduce shoulder injuries: https://www.swimsmooth.com https://www.swimsmooth.com This is the current view on how to initiate your pull: https://www.triswimcoach.com/high-elbow-catch/ https://www.triswimcoach.com/high-elbow-catch/
  - tangue 7y ago
    + avoid swim paddles. In my club most injuries were due to swim paddles.
  - duncanawoods 7y ago
    > Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that Hmm, that doesn't sound quite right to me. I claim no knowledge especially in swimming technique so this is just for curious discussion and you can put me right - as a weightlifter, the most natural and least impinged arm motion for me is a diagonal across the body whereas perpendicular swinging motions are crunchy and impinged. If I climb a ladder, I'm propelling myself with my legs and only holding on with my arms by pulling my chest to the ladder so that seems like a bad analogy. Incidentally, if you ever want to feel like your forearms might split out of their skin, try climbing a wind turbine ladder! I think I ended up having to finish it by hugging the ladder in my elbow creases having lost all grip strength due to forearm pump.
    - pimmen 7y ago
      You are sort of making a diagonal movement anyway because of the rotation, that rotation is what's engaging the rest of your muscles to help you pull the water. If you cross the line, it's much harder to use your lats, your core or your chest to pull the water and instead you're using almost solely your shoulder and with increased resistance too. That increased resistance is not helping you propell forward either, you're propelling diagonally with the stroke in that case which is a waste.
sunstone 7y ago
Even very talented swimmers can have shoulder problems from over training. That's what cortisone shots are for.

caminante 7y ago

I was surprised to learn from a friend that he needed shoulder surgery due to swimming exercise. Can you share any resources or personal thoughts for maintaining form that avoids injury?

alimw 7y ago
I hope there's a good answer to this. At the moment my solution is to not do crawl.
- michaelg7x 7y ago
  I read a blog of someone preparing for a 24-hour swim around one of the Swiss lakes and he was explaining about how it's important to get the reach and catch right. I understood this to mean getting your body rotation, shoulder and slightly-bent, extended arm into the most mechanically advantageous position. I imagine that this minimises "difficult" stresses on the shoulder joint. I'm trying to implement this without a trainer and it seems not to be irritating my (unrelated) shoulder injury.
  - michaelg7x 7y ago
    It may have been somewhere on this (http://reminiscencesofalongdistanceswimmer.blogspot.com http://reminiscencesofalongdistanceswimmer.blogspot.com) blog
entee 7y ago
Generally for freestyle you want to follow these rules to avoid shoulder injury: 1.) Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that. Freestyle is kind of like climbing a ladder horizontally. 2.) Keep a good rotation around your center line in the upper body. This helps to use your back muscles/lats to do the big work. You want to be sore at the end of the workout in your lats, core and maybe chest. Not your shoulders. 3.) Don't over-extend your arm in reach. Many people end up pushing down on the water they initiate their stroke, this is wasted work and also shoulder strain. You want to as quickly as possible have your hand pulling parallel to your body, which usually means a high, wide elbow in the catch. This is a course I've been meaning to try but haven't. It purports to reduce shoulder injuries: https://www.swimsmooth.com https://www.swimsmooth.com This is the current view on how to initiate your pull: https://www.triswimcoach.com/high-elbow-catch/ https://www.triswimcoach.com/high-elbow-catch/
- tangue 7y ago
  + avoid swim paddles. In my club most injuries were due to swim paddles.
- duncanawoods 7y ago
  > Don't cross the center line of your body with your arm. If you were climbing a ladder you wouldn't ever do that Hmm, that doesn't sound quite right to me. I claim no knowledge especially in swimming technique so this is just for curious discussion and you can put me right - as a weightlifter, the most natural and least impinged arm motion for me is a diagonal across the body whereas perpendicular swinging motions are crunchy and impinged. If I climb a ladder, I'm propelling myself with my legs and only holding on with my arms by pulling my chest to the ladder so that seems like a bad analogy. Incidentally, if you ever want to feel like your forearms might split out of their skin, try climbing a wind turbine ladder! I think I ended up having to finish it by hugging the ladder in my elbow creases having lost all grip strength due to forearm pump.
  - pimmen 7y ago
    You are sort of making a diagonal movement anyway because of the rotation, that rotation is what's engaging the rest of your muscles to help you pull the water. If you cross the line, it's much harder to use your lats, your core or your chest to pull the water and instead you're using almost solely your shoulder and with increased resistance too. That increased resistance is not helping you propell forward either, you're propelling diagonally with the stroke in that case which is a waste.

sunstone 7y ago

Even very talented swimmers can have shoulder problems from over training. That's what cortisone shots are for.