Swimmers shoulder

I do shoulder rotation drills with a band, both internal and external. 

I also "spell the alphabet" with a 5 pound dumbbell.  You hold the end of the dumbbell with both hands and "draw" the alphabet in big letters.  Works good for range of motion.

Best thing is to figure out why you got it in the first place and correct your style. Usually it's only one shoulder and relates to something you do to just one side such as breathing or asymmetric pull because one arm is stronger.

In my case my problem is when I swim back stroke, lacking flags 5m before the wall I've made a habit to look at the lane rope for when it change colour, I always look to my right it's easier to see ahead since on the back I (circle) swim to the left. It may also be that my left side is stronger. 

BR

I got swimmers shoulder in my right side and it was because of my hand entry.

Palm tended to face OUT which was the stressor, correcting it was easy, palm always facing IN !!

Now, no shoulder problems.

An exercise that I used to do is attach one end of a resistance band to the floor, and while standing, draw the bungee across your chest, follow through with extending the arm outwards. Do sets of like 15-20 at a time. Really seemed to help.

Yes, this first.  You need to correct the cause first.  If you don't, no amount of "fixing" is going to help or last.

The time I had it, I realized I crossed the centerline of my body with one arm occasionally - I forget which arm to be honest, I was a while ago.  It was either when I was taking a breath or on the stroke that I wasn't.  Again, I can't recall.

It's good to try to recover, but look for the cause.

Amazing to me how many people stretch after every run; stretch after every ride; but never stretch after swimming.

Here are some do's and don'ts: http://www.usmsswimmer.com/201001/swimmer_stretching.pdf

hmm. i do everything on the first page. i should probably read this.

Something that helps a surprising amount is to breath on the alternate side as the side that worsense the shoulder.

I get recurrent bad shoulder tendinitis on my breath-right, no matter what I do. I've had my form looked at by high-level coaches, videoed, and all of them agree my pull with breath-right is better with my (bad) right arm than my left. Yet that's the arm that hurts, even though it has the better palm position, better EVF, and results in 7-10sec/100 faster speeds with same HR/effort.

However, I'm retraining to breath all-left since for whatever small reason, I get nearly no rt shoulder strain when swimming that way. Might have to do with the arm position on the breath, but whatever it is, it was unfixable even with a coach and experimenting for the entire year last year with it (and getting a lot faster in the process). 

I'm rebuilding now - am about 7-10sec/slower /100 than I used to be which is frustrating, but finally able to swim without being limited by shoulder pain once I go over 3000yds/workout.

http://www.usaswimming.org/ViewMiscArticle.aspx?TabId=1645&mid=702&ItemId=700