Usually when you hear of sports injuries you assume that the person plays a contact sport like, hockey, lacrosse, football, or basketball, and not of a competitive swimmer getting hurt. People think that because competitive swimming is a non-contact sport you can’t get injured. Well those people are wrong. Although swimming may not be a contact sport you still are able to get injured in different ways.

Most swimming injuries are caused from  overuse or repetitive stress injuries. You hear complaints about how someone on your teams shoulders or knees are hurting. This is from swimming the stroke wrong or from a lot of long practices. Its the constant action of pulling with your shoulders that makes the problems. While you’re swimming your shoulders are pulling you along which is a lot of stress on the shoulder. Breaststroke is a cause of  knee injuries because of the awkward looking and uncomfortable kick you do can irritate your knees! Other kicks such as the kicks you do during butterfly and the flutter kick you do during backstroke and freestyle may irritate your knees too. Too many stressful and long  practices can result in these injuries.These injuries could potentially keep you out of the pool.

You would think that since your lighter in the pool, swimming would be easy. But swimmers put constant pressure on their shoulders and knees. Everything they do involves their shoulders and their knees. I know that swim practices are longer than the average sports practice, sometimes I have practice for 2 hours and 45 minutes! Thats a long time to be moving your body around. So as you can see there are swimming injuries even though swimming is not a contact sport!

-Julia Waldron