Strength and conditioning for swimmers 1

Prehabilitation exercise for the shoulders

Prehab is sometimes scoffed at by athletes of various sports, however it is becoming a major and integral part of many an athletes strength programme.

Physiotherapists and sports masseurs have been using pre habilitation to ensure that athletes stay at the top of their game and obviously to minimise the risk of injury and then having to enforce rehabilitation as part of the plan.

One of the best shoulder rehab exercises for swimmers or even upper body athletes is shapes, quite simply the shoulder's make the relevant alphabetical shape during a four movement functional movement pattern. This session can be used as a warm up, part of a conditioning set or on a stretching routine where functional movement patterns form part of the stretching. The following movement pattern may help to improve fine motor skills used during swimming.

Start position - lying face down on a bench or step, ensure your chest down to the top of your knee is supported by he bench, hands hanging down to the front of the bench shoulders relaxed (fig 1)








Execute the following movement pattern ensuring that

Start at the start position for each phase All movement is controlled Perfect technique is conducted throughout the routine for each movement pattern If fatigue sets in do fewer reps

Y (fig 2)





T (fig 3)




M (fig 4)





L (fig 5)



Coaching points

Don't cheat by throwing the arms out
Or moving the chest off the bench
Shrugging the shoulders up towards the ears


Exercise prescription
Start with body weight and progress to light dumb bells no more than 2kg
For best results ensure you start the movement patterns at a different point each time you conduct the sequence, this ensure stat the muscles fatigues at different points.
Vary the sequence as well as in
First time execute one of each movement until required reps sets complete
Next time do only the t's first then the y's and so on.
Also repeat the pattern in reverse.

Variation
Try the movement patterns whilst seated on the edge of a bench ensure the spine is upright and stable.

Watch out for more conditioning drills from T.O.D Coaching.