Who is your Coach?

Our coach is the assistant coach of the local age group club and head coach of the summer club. She is very personable and gives a good workout, except for her unfortunate tendency to giggle maniacally when giving us a very difficult set.

I agree with Terry on many things so I was wondering how he could be so WRONG about shoulders. Then I realized we were just a couple of guys with hypotheses based on personal experience and anecdotal evidence. I am convinced that shoulder problems are due to a combination of bio-mechanics,volume of repititions,genetics and past trauma/disease. I suspect Terry would agree but would disagree on the relative percentage of importance of each(right Terry?) Without controlled studies all we can have at this point are conflicting hypotheses. If someone had the time and energy to do a large scale prospective study on shoulder injury in Masters Swimmers and the effect of stroke mechanics that would be great!

like from getting carpal tunnel or arthritis from using computers for so long? (we're all doomed!)

Lindsay: I will re-read the shoulder thread because I respect your views on virtually everything you've ever written. But I still recall on the shoulder thread (and I think I quoted) that Terry said his shoulders were sore and tight despite the proper biomechanics he has used in the last couple years. And I have to agree with Allen on this one. Terry is right about so many things, but I don't think shoulder problems can be cured PURELY by correct biomechanics, especially if the problems and problematic training pre-existed TI thinking. I think there are myriad other contributing factors, all of which bear analysis. But without the empirical study that Allen posits, it is exceedingly difficult to know whether a purely biomechanical approach can cure all ills. I just don't think so based on the anecdotal evidence. The same thing applies to the knees. My friend the WR holder in *** has "car wreck" knees with perfect technique. It is flat out overuse. I believe the same can be true with shoulders. Maybe it's like GO Swim, different results for different folks. Or maybe Terry is light years beyond us. I think if his biomechanical insights had been applied to my shoulders and stroke when I was younger, perhaps things would have be different now (and when I blew out my rotator cuff in college). Or perhaps different training techniques would have saved me, since I grew up in the mega-distance era which did not serve everyone well in retrospect. I do know that I compete in utterly different events than Terry: he is doing distance free while I am doing sprint strokes. So perhaps that weighs in the analysis too. It's probably not a great idea to sprint at my age. It seems to put a lot of stress on everything. Now, having said that, I do feel an intermittent and incremental improvement in my shoulders over the last 6 months or so. I attribute this in part to my shoulders getting "used" to swimming again, doing the proper exercises for the small rotator cuff muscles and trying to focus on proper technique. But, just when I think I'm all better, I do a lot of fly and long free sets or swim without fins a lot, and -- bing -- I begin feeling that creeping dull agonizing ache across the back of my left shoulder when resting that characterizes tendonitis. Having been to the super dark side of the tendonitis issue, I do not want to go back there. I just consider the shoulders a work in progress. I think this would be a good subject for Terry's next book. Such a book would likely be flying off the shelves in the USMS community judging from how many people have shoulder problems.