Reduce Swim Injuries Through Greater Efficiency
In competitive swimming, various opinions exist on just how much volume is required for success. The high-volume vs. efficiency debate has been ongoing for years. Yet the statistics continue to point to the negative consequences associated with high-volume swim training in the form of overuse injuries.
It has been documented that most competitive swimming programs can expect to experience between 40 – 80 % occurrences of swimming-induced shoulder injuries. Swimmer’s shoulder is one of the most common injuries, resulting from the unique and repetitive motion of a swimmer’s stroke, which strains the arm and shoulder muscles. When you consider some elite swimmers swim up to 9 miles per day during training – which translates to more than 2,500 shoulder revolutions in each training session – it’s no wonder! In addition to shoulder injuries swimmers experience knee, neck and lower back injuries.
Some interesting stats exist regarding injuries among elite swimmers. Though the following information from a collection of studies and surveys is more than a few years old, in my coaching experience it still holds true. According to a variety of studies:
Injuries in competitive swimmers are very common. NCAA swimmers surveyed found an injury rate of 4.00 injuries for 1,000 hours of training for male swimmers. Female swimmers had an injury rate of 3.78 injuries for 1,000 hours of training.
Shoulder pain is the most frequent orthopedic injury among swimmers, with 91% of elite swimmers age 13 to 25 reporting at least one episode of shoulder pain.
Knee injuries are the second most common source of pain in elite swimmers, with 86% of competitive breaststroke swimmers had at least one episode of knee pain related to swimming breaststroke.
Low back pain is a common injury in swimmers, with a study revealing incidence rates of low back pain as high as 50% for butterfly swimmers and 47% for those swimming breaststroke.
Given the high incidences of pain and injuries, why would a swimmer not consider alternative training methods to achieve success? Quality of movement is critical in not only swimming success, but in reducing the occurrence of injuries.
