I mentioned my nagging shoulder injury in my last post. Over the past 6 weeks or so that it has been bothering me I’ve taken a number of steps to deal with it:
- I keep both hands on the leash and maintain a high alertness to our surroundings when walking the dogs. This way, I can tighten up before the dogs lunge at a bunny or squirrel and yank my arm out of the socket.
- I take an Excedrin to help with early morning stiffness and pain with Excedrin.
- I stopped several exercises that have become problematic due to the pain and/or accompanying weakness in my shoulder.
All of this enabled me to function – somewhat. But the constant pain and lack of improvement drove me to go to urgicare yesterday to be evaluated for a torn rotator cuff or impingement. I didn’t expect the doctor to do much, but I needed to see him to be referred to an orthopedic/sports medicine specialist.
Prior to making my appointment, I read hundreds of posts and articles on shoulder pain, swimming, exercise and treatments. These convinced me I should probably get it looked at because a torn rotator does not get better on its own.
Without getting into the boring details, the end result is that I got referrals to PT and an ortho. The first PT opening isn’t for 2 months! I hope an ortho can see me sooner. I’ll find out next week. In the meantime, I’m perfectly comfortable doing PT exercises based on Google “research”. Reliable instruction annd information is readily available and I’m not an idiot (at least not all the time).
In the meantime, I decided to stop swimming immediately. My shoulder injury and the chronic shoulder pain I’ve experienced for years may be entirely attributable to swimming. Swimmer’s shoulder is common with people who swim long distanced regularly. It can be exacerbated by poor technique. Add in repetitive motion, volume and inadequate rest and you’ve created a Petri dish to nurture these types of injuries.
F**k me.
I did it to myself.
I swim every day for about a mile. I’ve never been formally trained. I push through pain vs. easing off. While my technique has improved by following YouTube videos, I’m not taking a class. And honestly, I’m not willing to focus on drills and skills to get better. I swim for fitness, cardio, to calm my mind, to fill my time and for the aesthetic results. I can get all of these in other ways.
Yesterday was when I had my break through moment.
I don’t want to be semi-functional living with the constant pain and limitations from a chronic shoulder injury. I don’t want this so much, I am willing to quit swimming.
In fact, that’s exactly what I did.
We’ll see if it makes a difference. I am really hoping it does and that I don’t need surgery. If I see improvement by not swimming, I may never return to the pool.
On the other hand, I may find out that not swimming doesn’t improve my situation. If that’s the case, I’ll have to wait for the PT and orthopedic doctor to advise me on next steps. In the meantime, I’m slowly working on building up my strength doing a more well-rounded functional training program.
If I ever decide at to return to swimming, my plan is to alternate swimming with biking and hiking so that I’m not overdoing any one type of repetitive motion every day. With hindsight, I can acknowledge I was overdoing it with swimming.
What’s the point of this rambling post?
I think it is that I spent several years dealing with on again/off again shoulder pain and injury. Over various extended periods of weeks/months I’ve dealt mire acute pain/injury that limited me significantly.
During all of this I never considered that I should lower my swimming volume, let alone stop entirely. It was out of the question. Until it wasn’t.
Pain is a great motivator. It took a lot of it for me to this point of accepting reality.
All these years, I had been focusing on the small stuff when the most likely cause of my shoulder problem was splashing me in the face every day.
Somedays, I wish I wasn’t so thick headed.