slick's shoulder surgery blog

Not much to report lately as new developments are slower to come these days. On a daily basis I don’t even notice my shoulder any more…..unless I am doing my PT exercises or I am in the pool, things are feeling fairly normal! I’ve steadily continued to improve with my range of motion and right now I’d say I’ve got 70-80% of my full range back. It’s been almost 3 months since the surgery (11 weeks, 2 days) so I’d say that’s pretty good! I can get into a streamline position fairly easily now

I see my surgeon for my 3 month follow up at the beginning of February. My PT wants me to ask her if she wants me to continue PT until I get 100% of my full range back, or if I should slow down and hang out around 90% or so for a while. The theory is that my range will fully come back in time, so it’s more about becoming too loose too quickly. I imagine that I’ll loosen up quite a bit after I start swimming again, so no huge reason to rush back to 100% when 90% may be better for the long term for now. In fact many of my measurements are actually considered ‘normal’ at this point, even though I still have a bit more to go to match up with my other shoulder. However that isn’t a bad thing since my other shoulder is, of course, quite flexible and could be considered a bit loose anyway.

I’m hoping after my 3 month visit that I will get clearance to start doing some breaststroke and get a better idea of what my timeline will be for getting back to regular strokes. Until then, I am still in kicking purgatory. And it is definitely purgatory!! It’s been a love/hate relationship the past few weeks, that’s for sure. There are days where I feel all lonely in the gutter lane while I watch my teammates zoom by, but at the same time I am just thankful to be in the water. I constantly have to remind myself that I knew exactly what I was getting into, and that this is for the long term, and that I’m still putting in the time. It is frustrating though because I just want the time to go by faster, yet I know that there really is no rush. Such conflicting feelings!

I’ve still been averaging 2500-3000 3x per week, which is about as much as I can do if I want to keep my legs from feeling like complete jello. My legs are sore ALL the time these days and I can definitely feel it with just one flight of stairs! My ankles are also super sore and crazy flexible right now too, so my big fear at the moment is that I’m going to trip, stumble, and/or fall and re-injure my shoulder, lol. Coach says its time to start weaning off the fins so that might help a bit with the soreness (but not with the boredom! lol).

To help combat the kicking purgatory I’ve also started to re-vamp my gym routine. I’ve recently been given the OK to start using some of the upper body weight machines so I’m really starting to focus on strengthening work again. I’ve upped the weight/resistance on a lot of my PT exercises and have been incorporating a lot of core work too. Last year I literally focused the entirety of my strengthening work on my shoulder(s), so I’m trying to bring back some balance now that I don’t have to worry about my shoulder as much

Till next time….which will probably be in breaststroke purgatory