slick's shoulder surgery blog

So yesterday was the 20 week mark! And I must say things seem to be going along ~swimmingly~ at this point, haha!

I seemed to have finally kicked the major soreness I wrote about last month. At my last writing I was about to go out of town for 4 days and I decided that I would do NOTHING shoulder-related during that time, not even my PT exercises or stretches. Well, that seemed to do the trick! I guess I just had to listen to my body and take a bit of rest. I’m not sure what my PT will say about this, but I don’t think I’ll care anyway since it feels like I did the right thing. Right after that long weekend I went back to the pool and felt GREAT….and things have just been picking up since then!

As of yesterday I was able to do a whole 500 yards freestyle non-stop after diving in for warm up, woo hoo! And on top of that, I was able to complete the entire 1500 yard main (freestyle) set with my zoomers and snorkel. So that’s a whole 2000 yards of swimming right there at 5 months post-surgery. Very stoked about that! (And I know I’ve said this before, but I again must give mad props to my snorkel. Seriously people, best. tool. ever!!! Not having to turn my head to breathe has been SO valuable at this point in my recovery. The snorkel has actually been an instrumental tool throughout my entire process thus far. Best $30 ever spent….I <3 my snorkel lol!)

It’s crazy how exhausting these practices have been. I am just moderately swimming along doing about 1:25/100yd pace WITH the zoomers and I feel like I am going to DIE afterwards lol. But I hope this progression can continue at this rate and I can get back to my old self soon. Right now I just want to focus on getting the yardage/endurance back. Still icing after every practice but no need for nsaids at the moment. I still haven’t really attempted much backstroke yet….I’m a bit wary of it actually since the first few strokes I did take were nowhere near comfortable. Backstroke was the most irritating to my shoulder before the surgery, so I’m in no rush. At least I got my underwaters all ready to go lol!

Yowza, the shoulder has been acting up quite a bit the last few weeks! Its hard to pinpoint the exact cause due to multiple possible contributing factors:

1. During my last PT appointment (which was 2 weeks ago now), I got quite a good stretch. I have my appointments in the morning, so when my PT reported that I hadn’t made any progress in my external rotation, I assured her that I most definitely had made progress and that my shoulder just wasn’t warmed up yet. So I got a bit of a stretch to help out with that, which turned out to be quite intensive and I feel like I’m still recovering from it. Note to self: next time (god forbid there is a next time) make series of PT appointments for the afternoon. I have noticed that I am definitely more flexible later in the day compared to mornings (makes perfect sense though).

2. New PT exercises. I am usually sore for a few days after I start new exercises…..but I think my latest set may be especially challenging since I’m literally at the “home stretch” (no pun intended, ha). Currently working on lots of muscle strengthening in extended/outstretched positions at the moment.

3. Swimming. Currently I’ve worked up to about a 600-700 freestyle per practice…..slowly but surely. I’ve still been kicking for most of the sets but I have been swimming the last length of each interval (with fins and snorkel most of the time). Last practice I did a whole ~100~ in a row, which was doable but challenging. I also DOVE into the pool as well for the first time in forever last week which was awesome! But yeah, I am definitely feeling it and it is still going to be a looooooong while before I feel any sense of normalcy.

So pretty much I think this combination of factors is hitting especially hard at the moment. My shoulder is SORE as HELL and I am occasionally getting pins and needles again. This is the probably the most pain/soreness I have experienced in my shoulder since the initial weeks after my surgery. I’ve taken up daily icing again and have been hitting the bottle of ibuprofen pretty hard. Haven’t been sleeping very well either (sleeping could also be a contributing factor)….just can’t get comfortable. Thinking about re-building the pillow fort to see if that helps. Ugh!

I’m also trying to find a balance between doing my PT stuff and swimming. I almost feel like right now it’s either one or the other. On my swim days (3x a week) I hardly do any PT exercises besides a bit of stretching early in the day, because if I did both I feel like my shoulder would probably fall off! I’m feeling like maybe my shoulder just needs a good bit of rest. I’m about to have 4 days in a row out of the pool, so I am going to try to scale back the PT exercises too and we’ll see if that does the trick. For now I think I might just kick the entire workout tonight since my shoulder is SO sore right now…..sigh.