Injury layoff of a week or so--ho long to regain form?
Former Member
I have a friend who has a shoulder injury (mild but enough that she doesn't want to risk delaying recovery to swim). Have any of you had layoffs from swimming due to injury or other issues and when you came back to the pool did it take you long to regain your form. She is freaked a bit because she loves swimming and is so afraid she will lose all the fitness she has gained over the last few months. She has done short swims of 1750 or so, maybe once a week. So not a significant layoff. But maybe a week or so. Any help or positive encouragement is welcome!
thank you!
At the risk of sounding contrarian here, I think that it's important to realize there are injuries and there are injuries.
As swimmers, we are all prone to anxieties about our shoulders since major damage here can lead to temporary (or in worst cases) long term sidelining from the sport we love.
Other tweaks to our bodies, from sore feet to back pain, tend not to freak us out nearly as much because we don't tend to view these as critical to our swimming. Thus you can be hobbling around on a twisted ankle and not be all that upset about it; but a little shoulder discomfort is reason to check into the shoulder ICU for a massive diagnostic and therapeutic bivouac!
Which brings me to my larger point: I think we are too quick to baby our shoulders. I used to agree wholeheartedly with Ande--err on the side of caution. But then I started to realize that when I would have a somewhat sore shoulder and err on the side of caution, its rate of improvement was no faster, or slower, than if I just continued swimming with some minor modification. Indeed, the discomfort usually got better faster if I didn't stop swimming.
Here is what I recommend: get some fins and continue to swim with your team, using the fins to "de-weight" the effort of your pull. If you have to, just let your sore arm go through the range of motion of the stroke without actually putting any power into it at all. I don't know of any doctor who recommends not moving a shoulder that has suffered a slight tweak. You may want to avoid sprinting, but there is usually no reason to get out of the pool and/or stop all motion.
If you shoulder is so sore that you can't even go through the range of motion, then you might have a more serious problem. But as Dr. Richard Hawkins, MD (of the legendary Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Colorado) once told me, the vast majority of shoulder problems will heal on their own provided you don't just bludgeon the joint. I'd caution conservatism about MRIs and the like, and even more conservatism if such unearths (as they usually do) some sort of lesion that requires an expensive repair.
Have your friend do some stretch cord exercises for the rotator cuffs and scapular stabilizers, then buy some fins and keep swimming. She will be fine, and this approach will not make things worse.
At the risk of sounding contrarian here, I think that it's important to realize there are injuries and there are injuries.
As swimmers, we are all prone to anxieties about our shoulders since major damage here can lead to temporary (or in worst cases) long term sidelining from the sport we love.
Other tweaks to our bodies, from sore feet to back pain, tend not to freak us out nearly as much because we don't tend to view these as critical to our swimming. Thus you can be hobbling around on a twisted ankle and not be all that upset about it; but a little shoulder discomfort is reason to check into the shoulder ICU for a massive diagnostic and therapeutic bivouac!
Which brings me to my larger point: I think we are too quick to baby our shoulders. I used to agree wholeheartedly with Ande--err on the side of caution. But then I started to realize that when I would have a somewhat sore shoulder and err on the side of caution, its rate of improvement was no faster, or slower, than if I just continued swimming with some minor modification. Indeed, the discomfort usually got better faster if I didn't stop swimming.
Here is what I recommend: get some fins and continue to swim with your team, using the fins to "de-weight" the effort of your pull. If you have to, just let your sore arm go through the range of motion of the stroke without actually putting any power into it at all. I don't know of any doctor who recommends not moving a shoulder that has suffered a slight tweak. You may want to avoid sprinting, but there is usually no reason to get out of the pool and/or stop all motion.
If you shoulder is so sore that you can't even go through the range of motion, then you might have a more serious problem. But as Dr. Richard Hawkins, MD (of the legendary Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Colorado) once told me, the vast majority of shoulder problems will heal on their own provided you don't just bludgeon the joint. I'd caution conservatism about MRIs and the like, and even more conservatism if such unearths (as they usually do) some sort of lesion that requires an expensive repair.
Have your friend do some stretch cord exercises for the rotator cuffs and scapular stabilizers, then buy some fins and keep swimming. She will be fine, and this approach will not make things worse.
