The Swimmer And His Shoulder Injury

The swimmer and his shoulder injury

Introduction

Swimming is the exercise that people are usually recommended to suffer from back pain, in addition to being a good health sport in general. However, as with any sports modality, it has its risks. In this case, due to the gestures that are made, the most dangerous joint is the shoulder. You can suffer several shoulder injuries in swimming, and let’s see the most common.

When an injury is called a sport, it is a clear sign of its frequency when practicing said sport. Of all the shoulder injuries in the swimming, the swimmer’s shoulder is the injury that most affects these athletes. Technically, this pathology is a subacromial pinching, or the pinching of one or more tendons of the rotator sleeve. 

Developing

These tendons go through an area with very little space, and when we make the movement of raising our hand over the head with internal rotation, the space becomes even lower. And this gesture is the one that acts when the arm enters the water when swimming in a crol style. Thus, this lesion can appear due to the following causes: perform this gesture repetitively, if we swim very frequently. Elite athletes, for example, can act the harmful gesture thousands of times a day. The more we do, the more pressure we put the tendons.

Muscle weakness, since having strong muscles make the tendon support more tension. Muscle instability. If we have a problem of instability, some muscles are not able to exercise their function, because they are overcome by others that are more worked.

Bad sports gesture. If we swim free or try to swim crol without having training, we may do it wrong. And this incorrect gesture is likely to make us more prone to suffer swimmer’s shoulder.

Treatment

The first thing we must do to treat swimmer’s shoulder is to stop inflammation. We must rest for a brief period, as well as apply local cold and, if necessary, take anti -inflammatory medication. Once inflammation is controlled, we must work the muscles associated with this pathology. Work flexibility, stretching more frequently.

Work muscle strength, acting specific exercises for arm, shoulder and back muscles. Train the sports gesture. Make sure we are doing the movement correctly. Once we can do these three types of exercises outside the water without discomfort, we can return to the water. The recovery must be gradual, so we cannot train again as before hitting;We must go little by little, graduating the sessions based on pain/discomfort that we notice.

Bursitis

We now go to the group of shoulder injuries in swimming that are more general. First, we have bursitis, which is the inflammation of the bursas, or bags full of liquid found in rubbing areas. We have bursas in the joints that make up the shoulder, and due to the constant rubb.

As for treatment, we will first deal with inflammation as we have seen before. Next, we must make movements of the entire shoulder with the greatest possible range of movement to make sure to have good mobility. And once the inconvenience ceases, we must graduate the level of intensity of the training, that is, to return little by little so as not to redirect the injury.

conclusion

As in any other part of the body, the tendons involved to act the arm movements at the shoulder level can also be injured. And as in other cases, healing a tendonitis will also begin by attacking inflammation. In this case, we must accompany the anti -inflammatory methods with eccentric stretching as well as cease the training of the sport that has caused the injury until the symptoms refer.

To prevent shoulder injuries in swimming, the most important thing is to train the sports gesture to make sure the correct sports gesture. A bad gesture will predispose us to suffer many injuries. On the other hand, we must respect periods of work and rest, in this way how to alternate days in which we do other sports so as not to always saturate the same muscles.