I’ve not been at all discouraged by practice times dramatically slower than I was swimming just before my injury. Instead, I’ve gotten deep satisfaction by finding a way of swimming as well as I can under the circumstances.

Last September I chronicled my just completed open-water-racing season, describing how I had swum better than at any time in 30-plus years of such racing despite – or rather because of – doing no intense interval training for three or more months, swimming mostly in lakes and with no access to a pace clock. Not only that, but when I returned to interval training with a pace clock in September, I was swimming faster pool repeats than I had in perhaps 10 years. (Read the article Lessons Learned.) My point was that, freed from the typical pressure (and perhaps distraction) imposed by the presence of quantitative measures – lap counts measuring distance, pace clock recording speed – I focused entirely on the qualitative side of swimming. For three months I focused purely on the sensations attached to crafting efficient strokes. The feeling of slipping through the water, controlling it with my hands, tapping the power available from core muscle – and whether my stroke adjustments resulted in the sensation of cutting through the water faster and more strongly. Why did I race so well? Possibly because those qualitative measures are all that are available during the race itself.

Unfortunately my ego-boosting interlude of swimming faster didn’t last much beyond the day we published the article. On Sept 30, I injured my right shoulder while doing bench presses with moderate weight and impeccable form, but probably insufficient warmup. To this day I don’t know precisely what’s wrong with my shoulder – I’m scheduled for an MRI on the day I write this – but have had significant pain and weakness 24/7 for almost four months. Even such innocuous actions as pouring a cup of tea or donning a jacket require careful execution.

I’ve received three different diagnoses, have done therapy exercises religiously, have stopped swimming entirely for two periods of three weeks, and when able to swim, have focused mainly on pain avoidance. During October, virtually any form of stroking produced pain, but after a 3-week rest, I was able to resume swimming with a carefully adjusted stroke with little discomfort – though virtually every use of my arm still caused me to wince.

My stroke adjustments have involved nothing exotic – just classic TI technique executed with extra care and patience. I feel best swimming freestyle with a steep entry angle, slipping my hand in close to my head (i.e. Ear Hops) and feeling my arm in a stable, biomechanically strong position before initiating each stroke – all great for increasing stroke efficiency under any circumstances.

The most valuable aspect of this experience is that I’ve not been at all discouraged by practice times dramatically slower than I was swimming just before my injury. Instead, the great revelation of my “handicapped swimming” experience has been the deep satisfaction produced by finding a way of swimming as well as I can under the circumstances. This has reinforced for me the virtue of making engagement and mindfulness, rather than speed, one’s primary practice goal. Whatever speed I may be able to achieve at this point, while slow in comparison to when I’m at full strength, is still completely satisfying when I achieve it by substituting resourcefulness for the physical capacity I’ve lost. This has taught me how a physical limitation can be turned into an opportunity – a point made far more inspirationally by Paralympic and challenged athletes.

Faster but Easier
During a Masters practice in mid-December I swam a set of 4 x 500 Free on an interval of 8:00. I completed the first three 500s in times of 7:15, 7:10, and 7:10, but felt a bit of "slippage" in my catch on the last few laps of each. Swimming so little in the previous six weeks I’d undoubtedly lost some conditioning. But that deconditioning showed up less in general fatigue (i.e. getting tired overall) than in fatigue specific to my shoulders. I was having difficulty maintaining a good arm position for holding water in the beginning of each stroke – not just weakness due to injury in my right arm; I felt it in both arms. I concluded this reflected loss of conditioning in my shoulder muscles. Smaller muscles that control finer motor movements lose conditioning more quickly than do larger muscles that produce gross motor movements. Thus while my core-body muscles had lost little capacity, six weeks of disuse were enough to decondition the rotator cuff.

Whatever the case, because I’m always attuned to my stroke on that level of detail, I could sense a slackening in the firmness of my grip at the beginning of each stroke. So on the final 500 I exercised extra care in finding my grip before each stroke and exercised more patience in controlling the water during the first third of each stroke. My effort level went down considerably and the pressure on my hand and forearm felt lighter. Yet because I was working more effectively with each “armful” of water, I swam faster – 7:05 – on the final 500. I was just as pleased with that swim as I would have been with a 6:05 at full strength, because it was the product of thought and concentration, and the best I felt capable of under the circumstance. And probably just as important, I was beginning the process of reconditioning my rotator cuff muscles by using them, at low pressure, to fashion high-efficiency strokes.

Precision Descending
Two nights ago (Jan 18) at Masters practice, I swam the same set on a tighter interval – 4 x 500 Free on 7:30. In the intervening month I had swum only four times, so my “swimming fitness” is pretty suspect. But my shoulder has gotten slightly stronger, and feels less vulnerable. In any case I decided to push myself a bit more than usual on the 1st 500, which I finished in 7:00. I like to descend my sets because it’s good practice for a distance swimmer” but knew I’d swum the first 500 pretty close to my work limit and, lacking fitness, would have to use cunning and creativity to improve my time on the next three 500s.

On the 2nd 500, I focused intently on using the “high” side of my body to drive my entering hand strongly past my extended hand after each breath, taking care to establish my grip with the extended hand so I’d travel a good distance on each stroke. By breathing to the right on odd lengths and the left on even lengths, I gave equal attention to generating power from each side, which is good for stroke symmetry. As I touched the wall I looked up at the clock – 6:59!

On the 3rd 500, while continuing to drive the entering hand and hold water with the extended hand, I added a focus on synchronizing my leg drive – left leg downbeat synchronized with right hand entry and vice versa. (Read more about this technique in my article “Diagonal Power”) as I felt the heaviness of fatigue cloaking my muscles in the final laps, but as I hit the wall and looked at the clock, it read 6:58!!

On the final 500, with the edge of fatigue appearing earlier, I knew I’d have to look even harder for an edge sufficient to improve my time at least one more second, so I worked on two new focal points. One was mindfully trying to keep my palms facing back just a bit longer in each stroke (they tend to pitch up toward my navel in mid-stroke; I was looking for just a fraction of an inch more push on each of the 300 strokes it would take me to cover 500 yards.) Plus I concentrated on timing the approach to each of my 19 flip turns better, adjusting my stroke length in last two or three strokes of each lap so my final stroke would propel me seamlessly into the somersault. Stealing a look at the pace clock just prior to my turn at 200 and 300 I could see that I was slightly ahead of my previous pace, but tiring more rapidly. I raised my stroke count from 15spl to 16spl in the final six lengths and when I took my final stroke the clock said 6:57.

I don’t believe I have ever descended as precisely as that – taking off exactly one second on each of four 500s. Because of that and how I achieved it, this set, despite being slower than the paces I swam from January to September of last year, was as satisfying as any I’ve ever swum. And yet again, I learned the value of focusing on the process of how you craft strokes – last summer, without reference to pace clock; this winter, using the pace clock as a motivator and measure.