Swimming – Injury Prevention and Treatment with Osteopathy

With those New Year’s Resolutions well underway and the school term getting started, swimming is taking over this time of year.

Whether it be school swimming sports or a way to keep fit, it’s an important life skill and can be a fun activity for the whole family to enjoy! Swimming is a terrific ‘whole-body’ exercise, using many muscle groups and gently moving most of the joints in the body.

But did you know that swimming can also lead to musculoskeletal pain and other preventable injuries? The most common of these are inflammation in the shoulder and rotator cuff tendinopathies, which Osteopathy may be able to help with. We can also assist with increasing your range of motion in the spine, neck and shoulders to make your stroke easier.

Often we’re in such a hurry to jump in the pool and do a few laps of freestyle that we forget to warm up our muscles, so as to prevent these injuries from occurring. But taking less than 5 minutes to do so could save you a lot of pain further down the track! 

Two quick and easy favourites of mine are leg swings and backward chicken arms. Yes the names sound a little crazy but they work! Next time you go for a swim, try these (directions below) before you sprint away!

Book in for a biomechanical assessment of your swimming posture, especially for those teens who are starting to increase their training load and start racing, or if you’ve recently jumped back into the pool after a period of time. Being a former swimmer, synchronised swimmer and swim instructor, osteopath Hannah Wilkerson has over 12 years of experience in the industry. 

Warm up Exercises for Swimmers

 Backward Chicken Wings 
- Place your hands on top of your shoulders 
- Move your elbows in a backwards circle motion 
- As the name suggests - a ‘backward chicken wings' movement 
- This is great at warming up your shoulder blades and associated muscles 
- Repeat for 5 - 15 circles  

Leg Swings 
- Support yourself on a wall with one hand 
- Face straight ahead (hand at 90 degrees to your body) 
- Swing one leg forward and back 
- Keep your posture tall and core engaged 
- Relax your hip joint as much as possible |
- Let momentum move your leg 
- No aggressive swings - gentle movements 
- Repeat 20 swings on each leg  

See your Osteopath if you are having any difficulty with these exercises, or your swimming in general.