If you do a google search, you can find thousands of different exercises and stretches to get rid of swimmers shoulder. While there are many different great exercises for swimmers shoulder, you want to pick exercises that address your specific diagnosis and deficits. If you want to see three of my favorite exercises for swimmers shoulder, check out of a previous blog post, Three Exercises You Need to do For Swimmers Shoulder. On top of this, you want to avoid exercises that further aggravate the painful body part or exacerbate your deficits. This blog will take a deep dive into exercises you do not want to do if you have swimmers shoulder. As a bonus, there will be alternatives exercises that will help you get back in the pool, pain free.
Exercise #1 to Avoid: Biceps Curl
One of the exercises you want to avoid with swimmers shoulder is the biceps curl. For many swimmers, especially ones that are under 18, the root cause of their shoulder pain is shoulder instability. If you want to learn more about shoulder instability, there is a previous blog post that takes a deep into this topic, How to Fix One of the Most Common Swimming injuries.
Swimmers with instability will typically develop pain across the front of their shoulder. This is a result of your shoulder moving excessively, causing your humerus to rub against your biceps tendon. After a while, your biceps tendon can become inflamed and painful. In this scenario, you want to avoid stressing the biceps tendon to decrease the pain and inflammation. A bicep’s curl would do the opposite of this. Especially under heavier loads, bicep curls will just add stress to the bicep tendon. This will cause your pain and inflammation to increase further exacerbating your swimmers shoulder
Alternative: Push Up Plus
One of the deficits commonly seen in swimmers with shoulder pain is a decrease in strength of the serrates anterior muscle. Another deficit commonly seen is a decrease in shoulder stability. The push up plus does a great job addressing both deficits. Exercises were you hands are fixed to the ground (closed chain) are amazing for promoting stability, making them useful for swimmers dealing with instability. Adding the “plus” at the end of movement allows for increased activation of the serrates anterior, giving the muscle the stimulus it needs for increasing strength.
Exercise #2 to Avoid: Dumbbell Chest Fly’s
The reason why chest fly’s are one the exercises you want to avoid with swimmers shoulder is that it may promote poor muscular patterns in your shoulder. At the beginning of this exercise, your arms are at shoulder level and in a position that looks like a “T.” Since many swimmers have a lot of shoulder mobility, their arms will extend farther back then they are supposed to. This allows for increased forward movement of their shoulder, leading to irritation of the biceps tendon. This is the exact mechanism of what is causing their shoulder pain to begin with! On top of this, the resistance is trying to pull you arms further back, promoting this poor muscle pattern even more!
Alternative: Bear Hug
While this exercise looks similar to a chest fly, there is one little tweak that makes it better for swimmers. Instead of doing a fly motion, you bend your elbows and move your arms like you are going to give someone a “bear hug.” By changing how you move your arms, you are able to get a better activation of the serratus anterior. The serrates anterior is a key muscles for swimmers as it is active during the entire swimming stroke. Plus by bending your elbows, you are a less likely to bring you arms past your trunk, keeping your shoulder is a more stable position.
Exercise #3 to Avoid: Dumbbell Front Raise
The dumbbell front raise can be a great exercise for swimmers, but it has to be carefully added to your rehab program. Adding this shortly after developing swimming shoulder will not be helpful. For this reason, it is one of the exercises you want to avoid with swimmers shoulder (at least early on). Doing a front raise involves lifting your arm ups with a longer level arm, making it more difficult to stabilize. Instead starting of with an exercise that keeps your arms closer to your body (short lever) as you bring you arms overhead will be a better choice.
Alternative: Military Press
The military press targets the same muscles as the dumbbell front raise, but has one key difference. It keeps your arms closer to your body as you life overhead. This makes it easy for your shoulder to stay stable, while strengthening the deltoid and working on scapular upward rotation. You should only start this exercise once a swimmer has full, pain free overhead motion in addition to proper scapular control. A great primer or regression exercise for the military press is down dog to plank.
Summary:
There are many options when it comes to selecting exercises for swimmers shoulder. However picking the right exercises is absolutely critical when rehabbing a swimmer. There are certain exercises that you may want to avoid, since they may further aggravate the painful area or promote a faulty movement pattern. Instead picking exercise that help correct the deficits will help get you out of pain and back in the pool.
Are you struggling with making an exercise program to combat your swimmers shoulder? If so, let’s schedule a free call.
Thanks for reading!
Alex Ewart