Jim is a masters swimmer who reached out to me for a consult about a recent bout of shoulder pain he has been having. Jim was in the middle of preparing for masters nationals. He was worried about his shoulder impacting his performance. During the consult we talked about his pain, how it started, when does his shoulder the most during his stroke, and what he has tried to do for his pain. The first thing Jim mentioned when I asked what has he tried to decrease his pain was stretching. This is something I hear a lot. Especially from swimmers! Fast forward a couple of weeks, Jim asks why is there no stretching in his injury coaching program. After all, “isn’t stretching good for swimmers?!”
Stretching has long been a staple of injury prevention and rehab routines for swimmers. However, recent research has called into question the necessity of stretching for swimmers. In this blog post, we will explore stretching for swimmers and explain why it might not be as helpful as you thought.
Does Stretching Prevent Injuries in Swimmers?
People have thought for years that stretching would help injuries. The rational for why makes sense. Since tight muscles might not work as well. Or being stiff may impact performance. However, studies have shown that stretching before exercise does not reduce the risk of injury and may even increase it. In fact, a meta-analysis of over 60 studies found that stretching before exercise does not prevent muscle soreness or injury.
But What Can Prevent Injuries?
While there is nothing that will completely eliminate the risk of developing a swimming injury, there are a couple of things swimmers can to lower the chances of injury. First is getting at least 8 hours of sleep. Athletes who get less than 7 hours of sleep a night have been shown to have a significantly higher injury rate.
Second, have a proper fueling strategy in place will lower your risk of injury. Swimmers have incredibly high energy demands. If you are not eating enough, your body will break down much faster, increasing your injury risk.
Third, avoid large spikes in training volumes. Large spikes in training are periods of time where your training is much higher than normal without the proper build up. This can happen in the beginning of the season when you are coming off a break. It can also happen during training trips or holiday breaks, where both training volume and intensity are much higher than norm.
Does Stretching Improve a Swimmers Performance?
Stretching has not been shown to improve performance, particularly in swimmers. Numerous studies have shown that stretches held for less than 90 seconds, have had a negligible impact on performance. However, holding stretches for longer periods (>2 minutes), has been shown to have a negative impact on performance. So no, static stretching will not improve your swimming performance.
Dynamic stretching can be defined as a controlled movement through the active range of motion through a joint. Dynamic stretch on the other hand, has been shown to enhance performance. This is not ground breaking, as in many of studies that look at this, dynamic stretching is used as a warm up. Almost every swimmer knows that if they did no warm up at all before a race their performance would suffer. So yes, dynamic stretching can improve your performance, but so can a pre race warm up.
Do You Actually Need More Flexibility?
If you started swimming when you were young or have been swimming for a long time, there is a chance you do not even need more range of motion. This is especially true for your shoulders. If you do not need to gain more motion, why should a swimmer stretch?
Younger swimmers tend to have hypermobile shoulders, which is not a bad thing. And to a certain extent, being hyper-mobile helps increase your efficiency in the water. Someone who is hyper-mobile certainly does not need to stretch, as stretching may stretch the joint itself instead of a muscle. This can lead to shoulder instability. And potentially cause more harm than good.
However, there a couple of areas that a swimmer may need to stretch. Those areas are the posterior shoulder, lats, and thoracic spine. If you want to look at three mobility assessments to see if you need to do some mobility work in those areas, click here. If you cannot complete one of these assessments, then you may need to stretch.
Swimming Is a Dynamic Warm Up
Another argument is that your swimming warm up is another form of dynamic stretching. The repetitive motions of swimming takes your joints through large ranges of motion, and is similar to many dynamic stretches. Easy swimming can warm up your muscle and body temperature, also like dynamic stretching, which is the reason why dynamic stretching can improve performance.
The Final Touch
After talking about all of this with Jim, he understood why he did not have any stretching is his injury program. While there may be specific times that a swimmer needs to stretch, the majority of swimmers may not need to stretch before a workout or race. Instead, having a solid warm up that consists of both dynamic stretch, lower intensity drills and exercises, and swimming will instead loosen you up.
References:
- Herbert RD, de Noronha M, Kamper SJ. Stretching to prevent or reduce muscle soreness after exercise. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2011;(7):CD004577.
- Behm DG, Chaouachi A. A review of the acute effects of static and dynamic stretching on performance. Eur J Appl Physiol 2011;111:2633-51.
- Kay AD, Blazevich AJ. Effect of acute static stretching on force, balance, reaction time, and movement time. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2012;44:154-64.
- Fowles JR, Sale DG, MacDougall JD. Reduced strength after passive stretch of the human plantar flexors. J Appl Physiol 2000;89:1179-88.
- Power K, Behm D, Cahill F, Carroll M, Young W. An acute bout of static stretching: effects on force and jumping performance. Med Sci Sports Exerc 2004;36:1389-96.
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