Reporter Paul Tenorio has been doing plenty of vertical kicking as he waits for his shoulder to heal. Now he's ready to get going, even if there is a little pain. (Photo by Jeff King/Curl-Burke)
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Vacations are a terribly weird phenomenon. I had not taken an extended amount of time off since starting at the Post two years ago, so taking off from Tuesday to Saturday to go to Tampa and watch my college team, Northwestern, play in a bowl game was kind of a bizarre feeling.
The most bizarre part, however, may have been that I wasn’t in the pool every day. Being away from Jeff and practices was anticipated, and we had talked about using the week as a way to rest my shoulder — which continues to be a problem area.
Still, not having 3:40 a.m. wake up calls or at least some time in the pool was different.
So I was excited to get back this week and get going. Of course, things don’t always work out as planned.
On Monday I was tied up by work and unable to practice. Instead, I was out at Redskins Park at about 2 a.m. and worked through the day. Finally, yesterday I was able to get back into the water, though Jeff decided to bring me back slowly — not just because of my shoulder but because I had been out of the water for something like 10 days. Wow.
The set was a relatively simple breakdown: 100 kick, two 25s swim. Over and over. Eventually I did 10 minutes of vertical kick holding a brick, but the main portion of practice was spent with that rotation of kick and short swim.
The good news: I didn’t feel my shoulder acting up too much when I was swimming. Every once in a while there was a stroke where I would feel something, but it felt very manageable.
The bad news: There are still those moments, like when I jumped into the diving well for the vertical kick and I pulled myself to the surface and felt it right back in the problem spot.
Here’s what I’m wrestling with: Yes, I am going to go get it check out, but the bottom line is I’m not Michael Phelps. I am not going to go under the knife for whatever this problem is, because truthfully it’s probably not something that is going to get worse.
This morning I slept right through my alarm for just the second time since I started this project and I wrote Jeff a long email to apologize to him for the irresponsibility of snoozing through an alarm. I know my body probably needed to get some recovery sleep and that the three hours or so I was headed for if I did wake up just wasn’t going to cut it.
Still, I hate missing practice.
More importantly in the e-mail, however, is that I told him I want to try to just push through the pain. In talking with some of the other swimmers in the group I was telling them how much I miss working hard in practice and really pushing my body to levels it wasn’t supposed to go.
My shoulder might hurt here and there, but all a doctor is going to say is ice it, take some Motrin and do these strengthening exercises. I can take the pain and swim through it. I think. If the pain becomes overwhelming then that’s another thing. I just feel like this is one of those things that you have to push through and that every swimmer has probably experienced at some point.
I wrote to Jeff that I missed getting my butt kicked. That’s a dangerous thing to say to a coach who takes joy in coming up with evil sets that make you earn barf bucks. Still, I miss the feeling of walking away from those practices where I am sore and feel like I can barely walk or lift things, and this shoulder is just going to have to cooperate.
I am mentally ready to start pounding out some work and to get back into the meet state of mind to really improve my times.
In fact, I’m almost looking at this whole thing as a Start Day Two for Diving Back In. Almost like a Part II. Let’s get this thing rocking. Let’s see how far I can go now that I got through the first portion of beating my old teenage times.
It’s time to show I’m an athlete now, that I can push through small pains and just work. And then that I can walk up to the starting blocks and push myself to new best times.
I love this sport so much because I always have a finish line ahead of me, and then once I get that finish line another one pops up. It’s a constant challenge.
And now I am putting this one in front of myself. It’s time to beat this shoulder injury and push through. Time to go out and swim some more best times. Time to finally swim a 100 freestyle race that resembles the time it should be for what you swim the 50.
I’m still setting up the doctor’s appointment for my shoulder — I’m not going to be stupid about this. I just feel like if they tell me I can go as long as I can tolerate any small/mediocre pains there might be, then lets do it.
I feel refreshed today. I feel refreshed writing this. I can’t wait to get back into the pool tomorrow morning.
Tags: Michael Phelps
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Having you gotten any advice on modifying your stroke to relieve shoulder pain? Following lengthy discussions on usenet many years ago, I posted this article on two stroke habits that can lead to shoulder pain: impingement from internal rotation and the early push.
http://www.donalfagan.com/html/shoulder.html
The money quote is, “you can get rid of 80% of impingement just by maintaining external rotation during non-propulsive phases of the stroke.”
Be careful about pushing through shoulder pain. I’m no expert, but a few months after I started swimming, I started suffering from pretty significant shoulder pain and decided to go have it checked out. Turns out that I was aggravating an injury I didn’t really realize I had–a torn labrum–by what is essentially an RSS-inducing exercise: freestyle stroke. And my shoulder was partially out of the socket (something I had no clue about), so I -was- actually causing more damage, as I have a lovely groove worn in the ball of my humerus bone from the scapula because of it.
Knowing -how- your shoulder is damaged is pretty important, because you can better target the strengthening exercises and knowing what symptoms to look for. For me, it means no pull paddles ever again, and to ease up if I feel any pain.
Alix is right. Shoulder pain is no joke. You should have it checked out. Was actually surfing around for more info on leisure diving, and then came across your post. Very interesting read Paul. And good luck!