Mission Accomplished, Mission Begun

By Terry Laughlin

Timeline

Sept 30 2004: Completely rupture rotator cuff while lifting weights
Oct 2004: Limited swimming in significant pain – unable to swim freestyle
Nov 2004: Rest: No swimming, by doctor’s orders
Dec 2004: Resume swimming with adjusted stroke to avoid pain.
Jan 2005: More rest: Pool out of commission for three weeks.
Feb 2005: Surgery, followed by three weeks with right arm in a sling and three more weeks of PT but prohibited from swimming.
April 2005: Resume swimming – actually drilling -- v-e-r-y gently, testing shoulder.
May 2005: Swim an encouraging mile race, but experience significant fatigue.
June 2005: Rebuilding basic and race fitness
July 2005: Swim the best race of my life.

Truly, that’s a highly improbable conclusion to the events outlined in the time line. If you’ve followed my account of returning to swimming from a complete rupture of my right rotator cuff – ordinarily the most catastrophic of injuries for a swimmer – you know that I’ve turned this experience into a personal study project on how to intelligently get back into action after suffering an injury common to athletes in middle age. The email response to these article has told me that the subject of remaining active or resuming favorite activities following a sports-related (or other) injury is a popular one. So if any lessons or encouragement may be drawn from my personal experience, I’m happy to say my project has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

Those of you joining this story now can get the complete back story by reading previous articles in this series at:

• Swimming with Injury or Handicap
• Shoulder Rehab: The Long Road Ahead
• Restorative Swimming: Back from Shoulder Injury
• Can "Therapeutic" Swimming also Improve your Stroke Efficiency?
• Rehab Swimming Continued: Fine Muscle Tuning
• The Road Back from Rotator Cuff Surgery: Racing Again

In brief, I hurt my shoulder while lifting weights on Sept 30. I was unable to swim normally for two months but by adjusting my stroke, I not only got back to swimming without pain in late January but was soon swimming as well as I had before the injury. However significant pain in my shoulder was inhibiting me from virtually all other daily activities and making it difficult to sleep, so my HMO finally approved an MRI, followed by surgery on Feb 14.

Following surgery, the doctor told me my injury was worse than he anticipated, then delivered the bad news: I would have my arm immobilized in a sling for three weeks, should not swim at all for three months and should not expect my shoulder to regain full strength for 9 to 12 months. On hearing that I momentarily despaired of being able to participate in open water racing this summer or, at best, to swim very slowly, simply for the pleasure of participating, then set out to beat his projections.

To get straight to the denouement, on July 16, exactly five months after my surgeon’s sobering prescription, I swam the best race of my life in the U.S. Masters National 2-Mile Cable Swim Championship in Lake Placid, completing the swim in 45:45 and finishing 2nd in the 50-54 age group. By way of comparison, last year I did the same race on the same course (in 2004 it was the Adirondack Championship, rather than a national event) and was the overall winner in 49:20. After that swim I reported in Total Swim how excited I was to outswim dozens of younger swimmers to reach the top of the podium, in what I felt was one of the best races I’d ever swum. To swim nearly four minutes faster this year, just five months removed from major shoulder surgery, certainly fits into the category of “beyond my wildest dreams.”

To what do I attribute this? Essentially that, from the day of my surgery, it became my primary mission to return to top swimming form – and not just that, but to come back better than ever. That sense of mission drove me to adopt a constructive, opportunistic attitude of making lemons from lemonade at every turn. At every stage I focused totally on what I could do, rather than on what I couldn’t and on finding ways to turn the conditions imposed by injury and rehab into learning or improvement opportunities. Here’s are the critical points in the process:

1) During the first weeks after my injury, when it hurt too much to swim freestyle, I explored every possible form of swimming movement I could do without pain, including breaststroke, TI drills, and extraordinarily gentle movement of my injured limb. Over the last two decades, while experiencing the range of sports-related strains that typically befall active adults, I’ve found that I recover most quickly if I keep the injured area gently activated with movements that don’t exacerbate my pain. So in October and November, I used every swimming-related movement that could gently activate my injured shoulder in ways I trusted were therapeutic.

2) After my gentle-movement therapy had reduced the pain I felt, I resumed swimming at the highest level possible. I adjusted my stroke by entering my hand more steeply and deeply and took time to “set” my anchor and didn’t stroke until I could feel my arm in a stable position. Though my only goal was to avoid pain, the new catch soon had me swimming as well as I had in several years. And my emphasis on keeping my activity at a high level meant that I went into surgery with a strong shoulder, allowing for a more rapid recovery.

3) After surgery, while my arm was in a sling, I used the treadmill, stairclimber and elliptical machine at the gym, to avoid weight gain and to maintain aerobic fitness. When I began physical therapy, I mimicked my PT activities in the pool, in particular doing the TI UnderSwitch drill, working on shoulder range of motion, with support and gentle resistance from the water. I was careful to avoid using shoulder muscles in any way I’d been cautioned by the physical therapist, but I could feel my shoulder rapidly regaining mobility and strength. Thus I was “swimming” again, in six weeks, rather than three months.

4) Guided by how I felt, I steadily increased the range of movement and dynamic of my movements, careful to stay tuned for any sensation of pain or strain. I was a bit nervous at times, but after 40 years as a dedicated athlete, I’ve come to be very aware of my body. The physio did frequently caution me that “it’s guys like you who hurt themselves by being impatient during therapy” so I exercised extra care in the water.

5) Two months after surgery I progressed to whole-stroke freestyle, with fins on and a steady (6-beat) kick to minimize the load on my arms. I swam initially as a range of motion and gentle activation exercise. I also iced my shoulder several times a day to promote healing blood flow to the joint and religiously did the PT exercises that had been prescribed.

6) I began swimming without fins at the 3-month post-surgical mark, but gently, to allow my shoulder to accommodate the increased load. Because I was limited to superslow and supercareful swimming, I used this period to work on improving my catch and the first 30 degrees of my stroke, using deep concentration to increase my awareness of subtle changes in hand and forearm pressure.

7) And finally, at every stage of rehab and retraining, I focused with deep conviction on the goal of swimming stronger in the 2-Mile Championship than I had last year. I swam a 1650-yard freestyle (the metric mile) race on May 21, followed by three 5-Kilometer (3.1 miles) open water races in June and early July. In each I swam more slowly than the equivalent races I had done the previous year, but course-setting isn’t necessarily accurate in these races and the conditions were quite rough on each. The encouraging thing was that I felt good, won my age group, and experienced no post-race shoulder soreness in all three.

Now that I’ve exceeded all my expectations by finishing 2nd in a National Championship race (I was actually leading the eventual winner of my age group with 200 meters to go, but that’s a story for another day) and swimming nearly 4 minutes faster than the year before (this was also my lifetime best time for two miles) I set my next mission within an hour. During the awards ceremony, I noticed a list of national records for the event. The listed record for the 55-59 age group is 47:13. My mission for the ensuing year was immediately set – to swim faster next year than I did this year, and to break the 55-59 national record next year. I plan to fulfill that mission by concentrating better than any other swimmer in the world over the next 12 months.

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