Swimming is an excellent low-impact exercise that benefits the whole body, but like any physical activity, it comes with the risk of injury. Whether you swim competitively or just love swimming at a leisurely pace, it’s essential to be aware of common swimming injuries and how to prevent them. In this guide, we’ll explore effective strategies for preventing common swimming injuries and offer practical treatment tips to help you recover quickly and get back in the water. By following these recommendations, you can enjoy the numerous benefits of swimming while minimizing the risk of injury.
Swim Safe: Prevent & Treat Common Swimming Injuries
Here are some important tips to help you avoid swimming injuries this summer:
- Warm Up: Before vigorous swimming, warm up and stretch for 5 to 10 minutes to raise your body temperature gradually. This can help avoid strained or cramping muscles.
- Use proper form: Learn how to avoid rotating your arms at the shoulder, how to keep your hips near the water surface, and how to swivel your neck during freestyle strokes.
- Don’t swim tired: If you’re tired, overheated, cold, injured, or otherwise not feeling well, wait until you’re in good condition for swimming.
- Be informed of weather: Beware of signs of dangerous weather and/or water conditions, like storms, rip currents, tidal change, etc. Don’t swim in rough water.
- Know what’s in the water: Before swimming in open water, confirm in advance that the water is clear, free of jellyfish schools, sharks, algae issues, or other threats, etc.
- Swim with others: Always swim with another person. Swimming alone, especially in a new area, increases your risk of injury due to unfamiliar conditions.
- Protect yourself: Use sunscreen, wear protective clothing and gear, as appropriate, and only dive and swim within marked boundaries at beaches and pools.
Swimmer’s Shoulder
Swimmer’s shoulder is among the most common swimming injuries to the shoulder. It is often due to the freestyle stroke. The repetitive strenuous arm movements required to perform most types of swimming strokes can lead to muscle strains of the rotator cuffs, and other muscles of the arms and shoulders. This can even result in severe damage to the affected muscles, and their supporting tendons, and other connective tissues. Most people who swim very frequently do experience shoulder pain to some degree that impacts the ability to swim during healing. Shoulder injuries from swimming include these, among others:
- Rotator cuff tear
- Bursitis
- Tendonitis
- Impingement syndrome
How to Prevent Swimmer’s Shoulder
An essential preventive method you must use to help protect yourself against shoulder injuries from swimming is being careful to use proper form in your freestyle stroke. In particular, focus on how your hand enters the water on each stroke until using the correct technique begins to come more automatically for you. Your whole hand should touch the water all at once, instead of having your thumb fully submerged before the rest of the hand.
Swimmer’s Shoulder Treatments
Talk with your doctor during your recovery process, before returning to swimming. Shoulder injuries from swimming can be treated with a combination of non-surgical options to help healing and manage pain. These methods may include:
- Rest the shoulder: Avoid stressing the shoulder muscles and wait until you are fully recovered before swimming again.
- Elevate the shoulder: Keep the injured shoulder raised on a pillow or other surface as much as possible during healing.
- Apply ice packs: Use ice on the shoulder for around a half-hour every few hours. Use a thin cloth to avoid direct skin contact.
- Light exercises: Stretching routines and light strength-building exercises can be prescribed to help increase range of motion and muscle resilience.
- Anti-inflammatory medication: Your doctor can prescribe an anti-inflammatory to manage inflammation in the shoulder during the healing process.
- Pain medication: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) can be obtained over the counter to help shrink swelling and provide pain relief. Prescription steroids may be used in cases of severe pain.
Swimmer’s Knee
The breaststroke is a relaxed way to swim and many people enjoy it recreationally. However, in competitive breaststroke races, this type of motion is especially difficult. When pointing the feet outward during intensive breaststroke competitions or practices, it is typical for swimmers to unintentionally strain ligaments around the knee. Swimmer’s knee is one of the most common swimming injuries. It can cause inflammation of the knee and pain, among other symptoms due to damaged ligaments.
How to Prevent Swimmer’s Knee
Use a variety of types of swimming strokes instead of exclusively doing the breaststroke for exercise. For a more well-balanced routine that strengthens all muscle groups, practice other strokes. The more well-rounded regimen will help improve your overall fitness condition, and help preserve the health of your knees. Balanced muscle strength helps improve resistance against any muscle injuries. Further, work on correcting the angle of your leg as it moves away from the hip (hip abduction angle) to avoid excessive knee stress that can lead to injury.
Swimmer’s Knee Treatments
A combination of therapeutic treatments for knee injuries due to swimming can include:
- Strength exercises: Prescribed knee strengthening exercises can help speed recovery.
- Coordination exercises: These can improve form, minimizing the risk of future injury.
- Physical therapy: Soft tissue mobilization (STM), or other therapeutic techniques can help increase the range of motion and relieve pain.
- Improve form: Practicing the mechanics of your breaststroke as they affect the knees can help improve your form and minimize wear on the knees.
- Use ice packs: Apply ice two times or more daily to help control swelling.
- Binding: Wrapping the knee can help relieve pain.
- Pain medication: Over-the-counter pain relievers, like aspirin or another NSAID, can significantly reduce pain.
Neck Injuries
Because of the muscle strain from the unusual way of repetitively twisting the torso during the freestyle stroke and various types of swim strokes, neck injuries from swimming are common. Keeping the head at and above the water level while performing the breaststroke is another frequent cause of neck strain during swimming.
How to Prevent Neck Injuries While Swimming
To avoid neck pain from swimming, first, practice keeping your head and torso aligned. That means rotating your whole body, vs, twisting your neck on each stroke. This technique avoids wear on the neck from awkward repetitive motion and helps prevent very common injuries to the neck from swimming.
Neck Injury Treatments
Always use a variety of stroke types when swimming, to obtain the important benefits of a healthy swimming exercise regimen. Ask your doctor to provide a therapeutic swimmer’s exercise routine to help you recover from swimmer’s neck injuries.
Apply ice packs: For the first 3 days, you can use cold applications to help reduce swelling.
Apply heat: After the first few days, you can start using a heating pad and massage the sore part of your neck. Sleep on a firm mattress and use a pillow that provides good neck support.
Physical therapy: Professional treatment may include various neck exercises, traction, ultrasound, and other strategies, as well as anti-inflammatory medications, or possibly steroid injections.
Back Injuries
Swimming involves much more repetitive hyperextension of the back than other athletic activities. Consequently, competitive swimmers may develop lower back pain. It can be due to the development of lumbar disc disease (spondylosis) from excessive stress on the vertebrae. This kind of back injury from swimming is not uncommon among people who perform the breaststroke or butterfly competitively. Swimmers may strain and even excessively arch the back to keep the head up as the hips and legs are deep below the water surface, leading to injury.
How to Prevent Back Injuries
Doing upper and lower back, neck, chest, abdominal, shoulder, and leg strengthening and endurance exercises can help prevent the risk of injuries to the back from swimming. Other ways to help you avoid back injuries from swimming include these among other measures:
- Do warm up exercises: Do a few minutes of warm up and flexibility stretching exercises to help improve muscle performance in executing the strokes for competitive swimming styles and help avoid injury.
- Use proper form: Keep the head and body aligned with the water surface and hold in the abdominal muscles to keep the spine straight and other muscles in natural positions.
- Use various stroke styles: Mix the stroke styles you use in your swimming workout to strengthen all the muscle groups of the body more evenly and improve overall fitness and resistance to athletic injuries.
- Manage perpetual motion: Regulate the repetitive motion of the lower back, hips, and legs during swimming to help control the impacts of that force on spinal discs and other structural components of the back.
- Taking frequent breaks: While swimming, take multiple breaks for a few minutes during each hour to rest the muscles and help prevent perpetual motion injuries.
- Exercise all muscle groups: Use prescribed neck, shoulder, back, chest, abdominal, and leg exercises for strengthening and improving flexibility of all muscles to help resistance against injuries.
Back Injury Treatments
Swimming in moderation is a healthy form of exercise for the entire body, including the back. However, excessive motion in competition-level swimming can lead to back injuries. There are various methods for treating back injuries from swimming, such as:
- Apply hot and cold packs: Alternate heat and cold to the lower back to help increase blood flow for pain relief and faster recovery.
- Rest the back: Take downtime to rest the back muscles during the recovery process.
- Attend physical therapy: Depending on the nature and severity of your back injury, alternate rest periods with prescribed gentle physical activity to balance the recovery program and help prevent potential adverse effects of prolonged inactivity.
- Massage therapy: Get a therapeutic massage to help relax tension in the shoulder, back, and hip muscles, to aid in recovery from back injuries due to swimming.
Swimmer’s Ear
Because of the muscle strain from the unusual way of repetitively twisting the torso during the freestyle stroke and various types of swim strokes, neck injuries from swimming are common. Keeping the head at and above the water level while performing the breaststroke is another frequent cause of neck strain during swimming.
How to Prevent Swimmer’s Ear
Swimming in natural bodies of water, of course, typically carries a higher risk of ear infection than immersion in water treated to accommodate swimmers. Lakes, streams, rivers, and the ocean are all higher-risk swimming areas in this regard. So, clean your ears well with an antibacterial agent recommended by a qualified healthcare professional after swimming.
Swimmer’s Ear Treatments
For more severe ear infections from swimming, healthcare providers typically clean out the affected ear, and apply prescribed drops as treatment to eliminate infection and relieve pain. Your treatment provider may suggest that you wait to go swimming during recovery.
Are Certain People More Prone to Swimming Injuries?
Common swimming injuries can happen to anyone who spends a lot of time in the water. So often, injuries occur because people underestimate the potential of a low-impact activity like swimming to cause injuries.
The repetitive motion involved in swimming, and using incorrect form in executing various types of swimming strokes are responsible for many common swimming injuries. Individuals’ general physical condition may also contribute to their risk of injuries from swimming.
Your physician can provide you with an accurate diagnosis and explain the cause of pain after swimming, what kinds of movement you should avoid during recovery, and even the best dietary choices to facilitate a smooth recovery.
How Long Do Swimming Injuries Typically Last?
How long pain persists from swimming injuries depends on the specific combination of factors involved:
Injury type: | The type of injury is a key factor in recovery time. A neck injury from swimming will probably take a different amount of time to heal than a knee injury. But, healing time for each will depend on the severity of the injury and other factors. |
Severity of injury: | The extent of an injury is a primary determinant of healing time. A severe shoulder injury from swimming can require a very different treatment plan over a much longer recovery timeline than a mild injury of the same type. |
Individual health: | Healing timelines can also vary widely between individual swimmers — even between two people who appear to have the same extent of the same type of injury. This is because each individual’s general physical condition and resilience can be expected to influence healing time. |
Treatment: | The length of recovery further depends on the consistency and quality of the at-home or professionally administered treatment for a swimming injury during the healing process. |
Don’t Let Pain Sink You: Schedule Your Swim Injury Session Now!
If you have pain from a swimming injury, you should have a proper diagnosis and begin prescribed treatment to start your recovery promptly. Leaving swimming injuries untreated can lead to worsening effects, make a full recovery harder, and cause it to take longer.
If you are experiencing symptoms of a swimming injury, you can contact us right here online to schedule an appointment for an examination and treatment recommendation.
This blog article is intended as general information only. It is not meant to serve as a substitute for a professional assessment or treatment prescription.