A snapshot of what was reporter Paul Tenorio's awful, tired, ugly stroke during Friday's workout. The video helped him analyze a lot about his injury and his swimming. (Photo by Jeff King/Curl-Burke)
Follow Paul Tenorio on Twitter
Through this whole ordeal with my shoulder injury — and we’ll touch briefly on it later in this post — I think the most important thing that’s come of it is that it has forced me to figure out what I could have been doing in my stroke that might have led to the injury.
Jeff took a video of me swimming on Friday and I’m pretty sure it was on the tail end of a 200 or 500 or something longer that I had not really tried yet. I was tired and boy was I sloppy.
So my directions over the weekend were to look at the tape and then let Jeff know what I saw. Unfortunately I had a weekend that unfolded with little time to sit and watch video (I did find a couch for my apartment, though!) and I was finally able to sit and take a look today after practice — especially because of what I had learned today in what was a very intellectual workout.
The most important things I noticed was that I was almost bobbing when I was tired and swimming. My head was moving a lot, it was way too high up and looking forward instead of tucked down, and I was swinging my arms to go forward instead of rotating my hips. That likely caused my arm to cross over in front of my body and that probably didn’t help when it comes to shoulder injuries.
This is something Jeff had harped on me about over the last few months. I had to try to imagine a line in front of me that split halfway through my body. My arm shouldn’t cross in front of that line. And yet when I was tired it almost always did.
I think I have been better about it with fins on than without, but that is mostly because I’ve done a better job rotating my hips instead of basically pulling my legs through the water without them.
Today, my lesson kind of played on that whole problem — though not necessarily directly.
The focus of this morning’s workout — after a practice yesterday that was heavy on 500 swims mixed with sprints — was all about stroke efficiency. If I have a shorter stroke and am basically spinning my arms, I’m doing more work to go the same distance…and probably slower.
Here’s how the workout broke down:
Five 50s swim. On the second 25 of the 50, I would count my strokes. I would have to decrease by one my stroke count on each of the 50s.
Five 100s sprint kick (w/ fins)
Five 50s swim – same as above
Five 100s kick
—-
Three 50s – 16, 15, 14 stroke count; descending time
Three 100s sprint kick (w/ fins)
Three 50s – 15, 14, 13 stroke count; descending time
Three 100s sprint kick (w/ fins)
Three 50s – 14, 13, 12 stroke count; descending time
Three 100s sprint kick (w/ fins)
Throughout this workout I tinkered with things to figure out how I could decrease my stroke count. I focused a ton on how strong I was coming off the wall. I tried to figure out ways to get more power on my streamline. I played with my head position and how I was reaching with my arms. Everything I did was about trying to be more efficient.
Still, for much of the workout I struggled to hit my benchmarks by one stroke or two, and things just didn’t feel natural.
As it turns out, I just wasn’t getting it.
At the end of practice Jeff had me go to the well for 10 minutes of vertical kicking with the 10-pound brick. By this point my legs were dead. I had nearly earned my first ever ‘barf buck’ during the practice because I was truly pushing myself as hard as I could on every kick and every swim.
After about seven minutes, Jeff came over and took the brick and told me to swim a 100. Each 25 had to stay at 16 strokes.
I figured I would struggle again. My natural stroke count had been 18 when I first started the day and I had not done as well at 16. But then, as I started to swim I quickly picked up on my hip rotation. Suddenly, I felt almost as though I had fins on and was having no problem staying at 16.
On the first 25 with a strong push start off the wall I hit 13 strokes, then 14 on the second and 14 on the third and finally 16 on the final lap. The entire time I felt so much better with my stroke, just as I usually do when I wear fins. I had been reaching through my hips first, then my shoulders, and everything felt more…well, effortless.
Hopefully I can build off that last 100. And I know I had been not-swimming for about 10 minutes at that point and I was well rested compared to before, so I’ll have to show I can do it consistently. But now I’ve got that glimmer of hope from doing it right without even thinking about it.
That feels very positive.
I’m about 45 minutes away now from my orthopedist appointment at 3:30. I’ll give you guys an update once I know the results from the MRI/examination or whatever goes down.
stats corner
I think it’s time…unless it’s part of the set…loose the fins. Time to take off the training-wheels.