Swimming looks gentle and is anything but. A squad swimmer can log more than a million strokes a year, ocean swimmers add chop and sighting load on the neck, and surf lifesaving season stacks board and swim volume on the same shoulders. Caloundra's pools, its ocean swim community and its surf clubs keep swimmers coming through our doors, and the patterns are consistent. They are also patterns this clinic knows at the highest level there is: principal physiotherapist Russell Smallwood served as lead physiotherapist to the Australian swimming team at the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympic Games, so the swimmer's shoulder that walks in here is managed by a clinic that has handled the same condition on the Olympic pool deck.
Swimmer's shoulder
The big one. Around the shoulder, swimming's enormous stroke volume overloads the rotator cuff and biceps tendon, producing pain through the catch and pull phases, typically front and side of the shoulder. Contributors stack up quietly: a drop in catch technique when fatigued, sudden volume jumps, paddles and band work introduced too fast, and stiffness through the upper back that the shoulder then compensates for. Treatment is progressive cuff and scapular loading plus a frank look at the training program, and it overlaps heavily with what we cover on the rotator cuff and shoulder pain pages. Complete rest almost always fails swimmers; managed volume almost always works.
Other swimming problems we treat
- Breaststroker's knee. Medial knee pain from the whip kick, managed with kick volume adjustment and hip strengthening.
- Neck pain from sighting and breathing patterns, common in ocean swimmers, overlapping with our neck pain treatment.
- Lower back pain in butterfly and in young swimmers with big dolphin-kick volume, which in teenagers we screen carefully because stress injuries of the lumbar spine behave very differently from muscle strain.
- Shoulder instability in young swimmers, whose naturally mobile shoulders sit at the loose end of the spectrum and need strength more than stretching.
Working with your program, not against it
Swimmers rarely need to stop swimming. They need their load profiled: which strokes, which distances, which equipment and which sets provoke the problem, then a graded path back to full volume while the rehab builds capacity. Where there is a coach involved we are happy to talk directly to them, because a two-minute conversation about paddles and band sets saves weeks of guessing.
Shoulder nagging through every set?
Swimmer's shoulder caught early is a far smaller problem. Call before it changes your stroke.
Call (07) 5221 5254Should I stop swimming until my shoulder stops hurting?
Usually no. Outcomes are better keeping modified swim volume while rehab restores capacity, provided the load is set correctly. Complete rest deconditions the exact tissues you need.
Why does only one shoulder hurt if I swim symmetrically?
Breathing side, a dominant-arm catch difference, or old injury history usually explains it. Stroke analysis is part of the assessment.
My teenager swims squad and has back pain. Is that normal?
Persistent back pain in an adolescent doing high training volume is never dismissed as normal. Most cases are muscular, but stress reactions of the spine occur in young athletes with high extension loads and need early identification, which is exactly what we screen for.