Hidroterapia em nadadores da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria

Abstract

This study had the purpose of verifying if the hydrotherapy with enphasis in water exercises prevents and treats skeletalmuscle injury and pain/unconfort in the arms, particularly the swimmers’ shoulder. The occurence of pain and injuries was verified together with an hydrotherapy program with water exercises directed to the swimmer’s shoulder. Ten subjects of both sexes were analysed, divided in two groups: the experimental group, composed by the swimmers of the UFSM team and the control group, composed by the physical conditioning swimmers, each group with 5 subjects. For the data collection, a physiotherapy evaluation file was used containing postural evaluation, shoulder functional tests and a pain scale before and after the hydrotherapy. A Student t test was used for the data comparison, with a p<0,05 level of significance. The hydrotherapy sessions were offered 2 times a week, total of 14 sessions, with the duration of 30 minutes each, always happening in the begining of the team’s training. Some procedures were used such as: warming, stretching, active and passive light mobilizations, Bad Ragaz method for the arms, muscle relaxation, manual massage therapy or with water turbulence and respiratory exercises. The results indicated no significant difference in the pain presence between the studied groups. Meanwhile, the hydrotherapy group showed better results in the pain subjective sensation. As for the shoulder functional tests, the control group presented positive results indicating a greater probability of shoulder injury than the test group, that had the hydrotherapy.