How Chiropractic Care Can Help With Your Shoulder Pain From Swimming

Swimming is a great sport for everyone. Whether you are still young or even up to your 80s and beyond, you can benefit from swimming. No matter someone’s background or level of experience at swimming, they can still benefit from it.

Many health benefits come with swimming, as stated in an article by Better Health Channel, such as a normal heart rate, building endurance, improving muscle strength, and maintaining cardiovascular fitness.

Since this sport engages our whole body to navigate the water, we can easily provide a full-body workout since you’ve been using head-to-toe for swimming. Indeed, swimming has a good impact on both our physical and mental health.

On the contrary, our bodies can also get worn out by excessive swimming and repetitive motion, which can cause pain. Since swimming mainly requires the shoulders to get through the water, they are more prone to pain than other joints and muscles used for the said sport.

Almost every swimmer has experienced pain in their shoulders more than once in their lives, and good treatment options for relieving discomfort have been offered to help others recover from the pain they got from swimming.

More so, it can also be used in other body conditions which can cause pain such as neck pain, back pain, headaches and migraines, knee pain, and even hip pain.

Understanding Shoulder Pain with the Help of Chiropractic Care

Our shoulders are used as flippers when we swim through the water, and it is evident that it’s one of the most used parts of the body when it comes to swimming; that is why shoulder pain is a common condition among many swimmers.

Here, we will dive deeper into shoulder pain and how chiropractic care could help.

The most common condition that causes shoulder pain is a swimmer’s shoulder which affects almost 80% of swimmers, according to statistics provided by Science Daily on youth swimmers. Swimmer’s shoulder occurs due to overuse and repetitive motion within the shoulders, which can cause the tendons to get inflamed and press on nearby bones, muscles, and even other tendons.

Sometimes, swimmers with a swimmer’s shoulder wouldn’t notice the symptoms at first, but it would gradually develop and become worse the longer they swim and stay in the water. Swimmers with this kind of shoulder pain can have a reduced range of motion and increased joint laxity compared to the other shoulder that isn’t damaged at all. If not brought to attention, a swimmer’s shoulder can limit the range of motion in the shoulders.

Another Type of Shoulder Pain

The other type of shoulder pain is shoulder bursitis, which happens when the bursa, a fluid-filled sac that protects the tendons and reduces friction within the shoulder, becomes inflamed. This type of shoulder pain is also caused by overuse and may trigger pain, discomfort, weakness, and stiffness in the shoulder.

Pain from shoulder bursitis can be felt suddenly, and stiffness is one of the most common symptoms of this condition. People suffering from shoulder bursitis can also report pain going worse during nighttime, as their shoulders get pressed when they lay down their mattresses.

According to chiropracticcare.today, these shoulder conditions that cause shoulder pain are treatable and manageable by chiropractic care. One way to relieve discomfort from these conditions is by chiropractic adjustments, which use the hands of your chiropractor to apply a sudden yet controlled force on an affected joint. In this way, the body’s range of motion will increase, improve physical function, and address joint fixations.

Another way to treat shoulder pain with chiropractic care is through therapeutic exercises, which your chiropractor has specially designed for your type of shoulder pain. Since shoulder pain can cause muscle spasms within the shoulder, soft tissue therapy is also performed.

Before conducting any exercises or chiropractic adjustments, you may have to receive a comprehensive physical examination first, so chiropractors know your history and accurately diagnose your condition. Then, they’ll give you adjustments to the problem area by doing exercises and treating them based on the severity of your pain.

After your chiropractic sessions, you’ll receive suggestions from your chiropractor about modifying your swimming training plan to help reduce the risk of a shoulder injury and speed up recovery.

Swimming does wonders for our body, but sometimes, overusing our bodies for swimming can cause us pain. Even if you are just a beginner attending swimming lessons or a competitive swimmer with years of experience; we cannot impossibly avoid pain completely. However, with the help of chiropractic care, we can help recover from the pain and continue with swimming.

Our team at Biotune Chiropractic is a group of experts passionate about providing quality chiropractic care for patients who want to start being active again in life. We are dedicated to helping people move freely without worrying about pain as we practice a lifestyle of fitness, mobility, and nutrition. Our holistic approach drives us to understand your needs and improve your wellbeing. If shoulder pain has been bothering you for such a time, we are happy to assist you in your recovery.