Can swimming cause upper back pain?

tripper167

Hi,

I'm not looking for medical advice, this is more a question about form specific to swimming front crawl.

I was just wondering is there anything in the way someone swims that can cause upper back pain and pain in the side of the rip cage?

I was thinking that I might just be hyper extending muscles when I'm on the reach part of my stroke. I also tend not to rotate my body enough when breathing. Could either of these movents cause pain if done incorrectly?

Cheers for any replies.

mad m

Yeah it can happen, are you breathing every 3rd stroke or every 2nd stroke? Bilateral Breathing evens out your stoke plus your roll.


Edit: Back pain could also be to do with your stroke when your doing front crawl...

http://www.swimsmooth.com/bilateral.html

http://www.swimsmooth.com/injury.php

tripper167

mad m wrote: »

Yeah it can happen, are you breathing every 3rd stroke or every 2nd stroke? Bilateral Breathing evens out your stoke plus your roll.


Edit: Back pain could also be to do with your stroke when your doing front crawl...

http://www.swimsmooth.com/bilateral.html

http://www.swimsmooth.com/injury.php

I do tend to breathe on one side only, I'm trying to get myself to breathe on both sides at present as I know I will end up being fairly asymmetrical if I don't nail that down soon. I find it hard to roll properly when breathing on my difficult side.

Clseeper

The pain in the sides of your ribs could be your oblique muscles. Try some of these [http://www.fitnessthroughexercise.com/stretching-obliques.htm - just a quick google, there are better stretches] stretches and see if that hits the spot.

Can’t really think of anything common off the top of my head that you could be doing that would be repeatedly causing damage? Probably breathing as pointed out by mad_m. Is this happening all the time or have you just recently taking up swimming at a higher level than normal? Is could just be DOMS URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_onset_muscle_soreness"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_onset_muscle_soreness[/URL and your body reacting to the new intensity. A proper stretching routine should help this but DOMS is totally normal for the first few sessions of a new program.