Has anyone else experienced this? I have never in my life (52 yrs.) had any problem with heartburn or acid reflux. But often when I'm doing my swim practices, and pushing hard, I get something like acid reflux - a slight burning in my esophagus. At times it persists throughout the day. I never have a problem on days I don't practice. I've thought of experimenting with calcium pills before workouts, since I know working muscles hard uses a lot of calcium, but I have no basis for thinking that is related.
I'd be interested in any thoughts on its cause, remedies, etc. It's a minor annoyance, but striking for me since I've never had problems of this nature ever before.
Thoughts? Experiences? Solutions?
Since this thread resurfaced, I thought I would supply a follow-up. When I originally wrote this I had completed my first year back into swimming, and had trained hard for the entire year. I made a lot of progress, and swam some of my fastest times around this point. But I suspect my core muscles were not yet as strong as they would become. After a semi-forced period of somewhat lower-intensity swimming last year (2010), due to other life complications, I am back training hard again. My core muscles are stronger and, thanks to some clinics by SwimWorks (Brad Burnham - our college coach and one of our Masters group coaches), my form has gotten a lot cleaner. I am now swimming sets in workouts that are much faster than anything I've done before in Masters, and pushing at least as hard as I was when I wrote the original post.
The tag line in all of this is that I haven't suffered anything close to the acid reflux I had earlier. I wonder if I was using my non-core abdominal muscles to try to accomplish things my core muscles weren't capable of (or possibly shouldn't have been doing due to not-so-great form), and in the process putting that large pressure on my stomach's sphincter muscle. It's just a guess, but there have been very few substantive changes in my swim routines otherwise.
Regardless, I am back to having virtually no acid reflux issues.:)
Since this thread resurfaced, I thought I would supply a follow-up. When I originally wrote this I had completed my first year back into swimming, and had trained hard for the entire year. I made a lot of progress, and swam some of my fastest times around this point. But I suspect my core muscles were not yet as strong as they would become. After a semi-forced period of somewhat lower-intensity swimming last year (2010), due to other life complications, I am back training hard again. My core muscles are stronger and, thanks to some clinics by SwimWorks (Brad Burnham - our college coach and one of our Masters group coaches), my form has gotten a lot cleaner. I am now swimming sets in workouts that are much faster than anything I've done before in Masters, and pushing at least as hard as I was when I wrote the original post.
The tag line in all of this is that I haven't suffered anything close to the acid reflux I had earlier. I wonder if I was using my non-core abdominal muscles to try to accomplish things my core muscles weren't capable of (or possibly shouldn't have been doing due to not-so-great form), and in the process putting that large pressure on my stomach's sphincter muscle. It's just a guess, but there have been very few substantive changes in my swim routines otherwise.
Regardless, I am back to having virtually no acid reflux issues.:)
