Hello,
I have been taking swim lessons for about two months now. After twenty-one years of beating up my body running, I decided to give it a break by learning to swim. Well......
I now have pain in both achilles tendons. It is down low, on the back of my heels. I am still running, but only a fraction of the mileage I was doing before. I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out how my limited amount of running has caused this heel pain. It all started about two months ago. So, I have put 2 and 2 together ... it must be the swimming, but how?
I am using flippers. Could that be it?
Please help. I'm tired of aching all the time!
Thanks,
Cheryl
Parents
Former Member
Hi Cheryl,
You shouldn't have to kick hard to keep your legs up, likely there is something off somewhere else in your stroke which is causing your legs to sink such as lifting your head too high. Is your head in line with your body with your face looking straight down at the bottom of the pool? Probably a little work on "balance" in the water will fix up your sinking legs issue. As you extend your arm out in front, try pressing you chest/armpit on that side down in the water, as the front end goes deeper your back end should come up (and vica versa). People who don't rotate side to side enough to easily breath to the side will often lift their head to breath, causing their hips and legs to sink. Keeping your arms extended out in front of you for a longer fraction of the stroke cycle will also shift your balance. A drill to play with this is called catch up stroke, you keep each arm extended in front of you until the other arm catches up - so you take a pull with one arm, keeping the other arm extended in front, and then recover so that you touch the extended hand with the recovering hand before you start pulling with the other arm. Check out the Total Immersion web site for more balance drills.
Hi Cheryl,
You shouldn't have to kick hard to keep your legs up, likely there is something off somewhere else in your stroke which is causing your legs to sink such as lifting your head too high. Is your head in line with your body with your face looking straight down at the bottom of the pool? Probably a little work on "balance" in the water will fix up your sinking legs issue. As you extend your arm out in front, try pressing you chest/armpit on that side down in the water, as the front end goes deeper your back end should come up (and vica versa). People who don't rotate side to side enough to easily breath to the side will often lift their head to breath, causing their hips and legs to sink. Keeping your arms extended out in front of you for a longer fraction of the stroke cycle will also shift your balance. A drill to play with this is called catch up stroke, you keep each arm extended in front of you until the other arm catches up - so you take a pull with one arm, keeping the other arm extended in front, and then recover so that you touch the extended hand with the recovering hand before you start pulling with the other arm. Check out the Total Immersion web site for more balance drills.
