The highly repetitive and specialised nature of swimming exposes athletes to a raft of chronic overuse-based shoulder injuries. Here, we discuss the best exercise to counter these issues.
Range of Motion employs two seemingly opposite, though highly complementary approaches to improving sporting performance. The first is Specific Physical Preparedness (SPP), and the second is General Physical Preparedness (GPP). SPP revolves around specific sport modeling. This determines the requirements for elite performance in this specific sport. GPP’s role in maximising sports performance is in ‘filling the holes’ created by sports specific training. A major benefit to GPP is the injury preventing effect it has by balancing the relative weaknesses of a specialist athlete with their highly trained and developed muscles and systems.
Due to the nature of the freestyle swimming stroke, with repetitive use of strong internal rotators and weak external rotators, an imbalance results. Swimmers generally increase their internal rotational strength and the head of the humerus becomes more internally rotated, increasing the process of shoulder impingement impingement. Athletes who don’t pay specific attention to minimising this imbalance and also have chronic scapula instability predispose themselves to rotator cuff issues. Due to the increased volume of training, the internal rotators (which are heavily in use in swimming due to the resistance of the water) have suffered chronic overuse, changing functional shoulder mechanics, causing humeral head internal rotation and supraspinatus impingement, the most superior of all rotator cuff tendons.
The rehabilitation process should therefore focus on rehabilitation and strengthening of the external rotators to balance their force couple with the internal rotators and externally rotate the humeral head back to its original position. Reducing the internal rotation of the humerus reduces encroachment in the sub-acromial space and therefore will assist in reducing the impingement of supraspinatus.
To counter the imbalanced ratio, the muscle snatch (with a barbell) should be employed. Aside from benefits to hip extension (improving power off the blocks and wall), the muscle snatch requires a high degree of external rotation at the shoulder. This exercise solves the problem by developing external rotator strength, externally rotating the head of the humerus, reducing the risk of impingement and overuse, and, ultimately, improving shoulder mechanics.
