Hello, and welcome to your next video. In this video, we're going to talk about shoulder pain. I just returned back from swimming. So I had a great swim today, but I had an email from an athlete saying, Hey Todd, I got really bad shoulder pain. What should I do? This is something that happens to most swimmers at one point in our time of swimming. It usually happens in the beginning. It happens in the beginning because we're we go from usually not swimming to swimming. And sometimes our body goes, well, what are we doing? What are you doing to me? Right? I'm not used to doing this. So when you go from not doing anything to swimming your muscles are doing things you're not used to. And sometimes the shoulder is the first one to go in swimming. You also might find that your shoulder is starting to go when you start to ramp up your volume. Sometimes I see people getting close to their Ironman or their key race, where they really start to put in maybe an extra two swims or an extra 30 minutes here or there they find out, you know, Oh, my shoulder is starting to get sore. What is going on? This happened to me years ago before the world championships in triathlon. And I remember, I think it was like two months out and I couldn't swim. I couldn't swim the idea of, of trying to think which arm it was. I broke this one but this is the one now it's tender. But I think it was my right arm, but I don't know. I always think it's my left....... I think I could get to this height. This is how high I could get my arm. And the idea of me raising my arm past that point is like, I can't do it. Like you could say here's a thousand dollars Todd, try, and I'm not going to do it because it was too painful. It was way too painful so I could not swim. I couldn't swim. So all I would do is....... cause look, the race was coming up. I had to get myself in shape, keep feel for the water. All I did was going to the pool and I did balance drills. Those total immersion drills arms on the side where I don't have to use this arm. And I probably did some one arm swimming with his arm, but this arm did nothing. And I focused on the rehab on this shoulder. What I'm going to do now is before I go into any of this, I just want you guys to know that, look, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a physio. I'm not a Chiro. I'm not a massage therapist. You need to go get this looked at by someone who, who knows the body and how to fix it. I can give you ideas of what I've done and you know what to do. But at the end of the day, you need to get this looked after, by someone who knows what they're doing. I had to go to see someone. I went to a chiropractor and he treated me for many, many sessions. And the cool thing is he's got my shoulder ready that I could compete in world championships. And I had a great swim. It was a great swim and it was a tough lesson to learn, but it was a good one. So what I want to do now is go now to the presentation and talk to you about shoulder, shoulder injury and swimmers shoulders. Let's go into the PowerPoint presentation. Come on. Okay. So often having a sore shoulder is known as a swimmer shoulder. And first of all, what is it? It's usually a problem with your rotator cuff. The rotator cuff is..... let me just go away from the PowerPoint presentation for a second here. The rotator cuff. I know I have clothes on, so it's difficult to see, but the pain you're going to find. This is the pain that I had. It's this is my shoulder right here. And it was a right in the middle, like right in there. And when I went to push my finger and there, like, I can still feel some sensation and you can move some, some muscles ligaments and things around and you can feel it go..... Yeah, that's it. And that's why it's good to get this looked after it and get massages on just to keep it in really good shape. Let's go back to the presentation. Okay. What is the rotator cuff? Well, the rotator cuff is a group of four muscles and their tendons in the shoulder. It consists of the supraspinatus, subscapularis, infraspinatus and teres minor. These four muscles help to elevate and rotate the arm. In addition, these muscles help to stabilize the ball of the shoulder joint, the humeral head in a shallow socket of the shoulder. When the arm is overhead, the rotator cuff works, especially hard to stabilize the shoulder and provide power. This is why overhead activities lifting or throwing can cause pain in someone with a rotator cuff injury and also in swimming, right? So what is going on here? What's happening to cause this pain, there was a few things that can cause it, one of them is an inflammation of the tendon, which is known as tendonitis. You can also have something known as impingement syndrome, or you can have bursitis and you need to go have a specialist. Like I said, have someone who knows who can identify what is going on and find out, well, what is going on? Is it tendonitis? Is it the syndrome or is it bursitis? What exactly is happening? So then the next question is what is causing this? It comes down to, like I said before, too much swimming, a swim stroke error. And often I find people swimming with paddles that are too big or swimming with the paddles too often. If you find that you have this shoulder injury, here's some treatment you can do at the first one you can use as ice after swimming. You can rest. So don't do anything. Don't do any swimming, do biking or running. As long as it's not affecting your shoulder, you can get some massage, active release therapy, which is known as ART, go to a physio and get some exercises. And the question you go, well, what is happening to my stroke, that's causing this problem? I'm going to go away from the PowerPoint presentation again. And this is what's happening, or this is a, one of the main causes, I find of shoulder injury for swimmers. It comes down to the entry and the stretch. So when your arm is fully stretched out like this. After you enter and stretch, if your arm goes up high. So this is known as surfing up. This puts extra strain on the shoulder. If you have your arm down here, if you do this with me, have your arm down here and you bring your arm up, you can just feel, it feels like it's stiffer.... a lot more resistance. So after you enter the water, pay attention, are you surfing up? And a lot of people are, and if you have shoulder pain right now, there's a good chance that you're doing that. So after you enter the water and you stretch forward, make sure your arm is not going up, bring it down. And it doesn't have to come down a lot, but bring it down. This is what I had to do. I went to here, that hurts too much. So enter, I go down there and go. That's where I can swim my arm needs to be in this position. So I didn't have that extra force on the rotator cuff. And I was able to swim. Now look, when your arm is up here. Another error that people do is when your arm is here, they press down right away. And again, if you're pressing down with your arm fully stretched out. So you have all this lever out here, and as you press down, that's a lot of force from your arm that is extended onto this little tiny or rotator cuff. Right? So what you need to do is bring your arm down, rotate your elbow.... when it's lower down in the water. And then before you start to press back, make sure your elbow is rotated down. So let me say that again. I think I kind of jumped ahead there. So you enter the water, make sure arm is in a position. that's not causing a lot of force. And before you start pressing back or rotate your elbow, okay? And once you're in this position, here's the catch position, then press back. So you're not up here and pressing down and going all the way back. Okay. So do you got that? Enter stretch, bring your arm down lower, so that it is not sore. Rotate your elbow and then press back. That should help you reduce the amount of pain in your shoulder. And if you find that this is not deep enough, then go down here. And look, when you're doing this, your pain in the shoulder might happen at different points. For me, it was happening right in the front, but you also might find that it's happening like, Ah, right there. So when you're trying to do the recovery phase, by trying to keep your elbow up nice and high you go Todd.... I can't do that. This hurts way too much. I just can't do that. So if your pain comes when you're in this position in the recovery phase, what I want you to do is this, instead of having worrying about having really good technique like this. Forget it. Let the technique go out the window. Drop your arm low in the water and then swing your arm over. Is it perfect technique? No it isn't, but it will allow you to swim without or reduced amount of pain. So when you're recovering, instead of like this, you're going to swing your arm like that. It will affect your entry for sure. But it will allow you to swim. Okay? So those are two ways that you can fix it. #1 - In their front, drop your arm down lower before you rotate. And #2 the second one is to swing your arm wide during the recovery phase. When you do that, like, you know, swinging you arm like this, it's going to cause different problems in the front end. So you really have to be aware of how you enter and you are not crossing over, but it will allow you to swim. Okay. And if you have any questions about that, please let me know. Cause I know you might be thinking.... Todd, now I'm adding another problem to my stroke. How do I fix that? Let's go back and finish off this PowerPoint. Again. I mentioned about pay attention to entry and stretch. Have your arm deep in the water before rotating your elbow, avoid front crawl for awhile. A backstroke is probably not going to happen. And I want you to focus on the Balance Drills without using your arms. You can try breaststroke if it doesn't affect your shoulders. But like I said, probably backstroke is not a good idea. Stretches. I want you to visit a chiropractor or a physio or massage therapist for more detailed stretches. That will be personalized for you. Now below this video, I have posted some stretches that you can try. And I was, I did this a few years ago with Louise Taylor, who is a physiotherapist and she gave me some drills or some extra stretches that you can try to help increase your shoulder mobility and strength. This cartoon here also shows you some stretches that you can do to help with your rotator cuff. Okay. So now we know what's causing your shoulder pain. Okay. I have I've seen this happen many, many times with swimmers and I really want to caution you. If you are having shoulder pain, I want you to nip it in the bud because what can happen is it can get bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's what...... I'm speaking from experience that happened to me. I was like, it's going to be fine. I'm going to work my way through this and it's going to be fine. I back off some volume and then get back into it. But really what happened is I was so focused on that World Championship race that I just wanted to swim, swim, swim, and get as fast as possible. And what happened is I got to a point of pain where I couldn't handle it anymore and I couldn't swim. I could not swim. I couldn't swim 25 meters. The pain was, was that bad. And I don't want you guys to get to a point where you are unable to swim a length of the pool because your shoulder will not allow it. If you are having shoulder pain, I highly recommend, you take some time off, rest it. And if it's not helping, if it's not helping after you make those changes to your swim stroke. And the main main one I want you to do is a one in the front. This one here, the swinging your arm around it will cause problems as you enter the water. And you know what that's going to do as you're swinging your arm around, you are going to cross over in the front end. Is it a major problem? It can be. So let's try not to do that one if you don't have to. So I want you to get this thing taken care of. I want you to go see a massage therapist, a physio, or a chiro and ask if they can do something called active release therapy. It's known as ART and it's really, really painful. I remember when I was getting my treatment done, I'd go I think twice a week for almost six weeks. And I was so happy that my face was down on the table when the Chiro was pressing in there because I was in so much pain, so much pain.... and my face. Like I probably need to relax more, but ART it works and it works really well for me, for me, you know what I haven't, I had that episode quite a few years ago. And after all that treatment and modifying my stroke, I don't have shoulder issues anymore. I have shoulder issues from a different reason when I, when I broke my arm. But that's a totally different story. I can tell you that and how I rehab that another time. But it's very, very similar. Okay. This video is all about shoulder pain and what you can do to get through it. Hey, I look forward to hope you enjoyed this video. And if you are in the position where you're having shoulder pain, please heed my warnings in this video and take my advice and please get looked after. Hey, so I look forward to see you in the next video. I am Coach Todd saying thank you very much and happy training. Bye-bye.