Cows, Knees & Cross Training

I am currently enjoying the gentle sound of rain falling onto our tin roof. Awesome. For the farm it means new grown grass in 2-3 weeks and that means happy cows. Actually, the cows are calving and that is how I happen to be lying down writing this blog.

About 4 years ago a cow gave me a happy handshake to my right knee. After the initial phase of pain and swelling, it settled down to a grumbling meniscal issue that flaredup whenever I enjoyed my passion - running. It took a good 6 months of grieving until my acceptance arose, phoenix like with the sun and I started to seriously consider swimming for cross training. Now I regarded swimming as a means to get out to the next wave, or something you did between falling off water skis and getting up again. Certainly not something that you would spend hours pursuing a week.

But hey, gotta do what you gotta do and with love handles starting to grow ....

So over the next 18 months I built up to 3 times a week of around 1800 - 2000m. I was pretty happy, but figured I needed help with stroke technique, program design etc to maintain my momentum. So I bought a couple of books, integrated ideas and -  stayed about the same. That was until I needed to roll a dead cow.

Now most of you have experienced lifting a sleeping baby/child and had that experience of dead weight. Well a dead cow is DEAD weight - about 500kg actually and feels a whole lot more when you are on your hands and knees and trying to roll it over. So, short story was I injured my left supraspinatus (shoulder) and was like a one winged pelican trying to take off, when it came to swimming. Or like a squid going forwards for that mattter!

This put my burgeoning swimming career on hold, so out came the running shoes and water running belt. Fortunately the knee was in symptom remission and stayed that way over the next 14 months. It took that long before I could muster a freestyle stroke again - but it felt pathetic. Anyway I built up distance again, but always had a lingering pain if I pulled too hard, swam a bit too far or generally got to excited  in the water.

So with the help of a pool attendant and iphone I collected some video of my swimming.

I had been introduced to Paul Newsome's approach at SwimSmooth and straight away identified with some of the 'Overglider' character traits. Reviewing the video footage showed some pretty obvious reasons for my sore left shoulder - not the least that I was crossing the midline and had the common overglider habit of a dropped elbow and my hand was acting as a brake as it entered the water.

Now armed with drills and a structure to follow, I focused on my CSS (for fitness) and drills to improve my technique. My initial (17/7/2012) 400m was 6.44 and 200m 3.20. I repeated them again mid January and had 6.36 and 3.06. I find that my swimming is more enjoyable, I am swimming four times a week 2.7 - 3.0kms and I don't have any shoulder pain.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that I realised I was no ' longer' carrying my left shoulder, just pulling as strongly as my lungs would allow. With the same helpful attendant I re-filmed.

In some ways, I feel that my swimming had improved more than was obvious in the most recent video, but I still have to watch the left shoulder. That is one aspect that I have come to love about swimming. Always plenty to improve on - and I never notice the black line.

Anyway, I am lying down listening to the rain outside, as I had my athroscope on the right knee yesterday, and am doing the right thing. Physician, heal thy self.