A Fish Out of Water

After over two weeks of watching others swim lap after lap improving their stroke and being stuck on the sideline, though I was coaching, I jumped in the pool tonight. Wow talk about a slap in the face. The endurance and progress I had gained during the first two months of the years was gone. Now that really sucks but it is not the biggest of my concerns. The real issue is my shoulder and keeping tabs on it. So to combat my, soon to be hacked off if it doesn’t get its act together, shoulder I called in some reinforcements.

Tonight one of my buddies, who has been swimming his entire life including college, come to the pool with me to take a look at my stroke. After a warm up he watched my stroke from different sides and underwater as well. He pointed out some trouble spots that could be causing my shoulder issues. Now of course the hard part will be to correct them, but I feel better about my chances. It’s going to take awhile but hopefully I’ve made a U turn and I’ll starting heading back in the right direction.

It’s amazing how important it is to have someone watch your stroke to give you pointers. I guess I lost a bit of that since I’ve been helping others so much lately. The plan is to get in the water a couple of times this week and have him look over my stroke again next week. It would be nice to just jump in and start cranking out the distance again, but that will have to wait. If I don’t solve me issues now I wont make it half way through my season.

I guess the litter moral of the story is to take the time to find someone who can help you with your training or when you are in need. There will always be things to learn or change, but you have to take the time and make the effort to do so. I guess that’s why even the pros have coaches. There is only so much you can correct without a having that outside opinion and point of view. Which totally goes against my do-it-yourself instinct.