The Bad: My shoulder started to bother me about 3/4 of the way into the workout. I'm hoping I didn't irritate an old shoulder injury from playing rugby for 5 years. Basically, I used to have some pretty bad joint pain in my rotator cuff. The result of lots of pounding...er...tackling. It really hasn't bothered me since I stopped playing rugby in college. I'm not sure why it was bothering me, but it was mainly on the pull component of the swim.I'm open to any suggestions?
The Good: It was actually a really productive workout until the shoulder started to hurt. Today's workout was a pyramid of intervals: 100, 300, 500, 300, 100. Each one increasing in intensity and pace. Almost every set was done with excellent form and power (from my perspective) and I was really feeling the water. With warm up and drills, I got in 2000 yards. Would have gone more though, if I didn't have the shoulder pain. And if I wasn't so scatterbrained and in a rush to get out the door, I probably would have remembered to bring my watch. And I KNOW these sets were faster than any of my previous workouts.
I'll just have to take the good for now and look forward to the next workout, which will include my watch. I'm just hoping the pain recedes enough to let me continue to swim. I know...don't push it if it hurts. I won't mom...
I'm just guessing here, but as a coach, a lot of the swimmers I see with shoulder pain are not pulling underneath their body (with the hand close to the centerline of the body), they're pulling more to the outside (with the pulling hand underneath the shoulder or outside of it). Typically once they get the hand underneath, the pain dissipates. Just something to check out in case that's it.
ReplyDeleteThat part of my shoulder get sore swimming sometimes too. I've never injured it (although I did play rugby in college ;), but I haved talked to my coach about it. He said that when I feel it there, like Robin said, it is due to how I'm pulling. He said to focus on the "over a barrel" feeling to use the... um... bigger muscles at the back of the shoulder (I forget the name) instead of the smaller shoulder ones.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how to explain the over the barrel part... one way I think of it is you sorta feel your armpit become more open. The other is like you are swimming over a beach ball, and instead of a straight pull picture your arm curving around the shape of the ball (or barrel).
Hope this helps! I'm working on the same thing and play to try Robin's thoughts for it, too :)
Thanks Kylie and Robyn! I've got a swim workout planned for tomorrow morning, so I'll let you all know how it goes ;)
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