Subject: RE: Medial Epicondylitis I had an elbow issue a few years back (traumatic injury rather than tendinitis, and I remember doing a lot of dolphin kick with fins, backstroke kick, one-armed free, and one-armed fly. You don't want to overdo the one-armed stuff as you could end up with a strength imbalance. I found that after a few weeks, breaststroke didn't bother me, although freestyle did. So I added some breaststroke sets to the mix. I kept the reps short (like 100m each ) without much rest in between. After a few weeks of that, it got to the point where I could do the freestyle pull but not the extension on the catch, so I did sets of dog-paddle (using fins )! Probably didn't do a whole lot for conditioning but it does help you keep your feel for the water and if you're not aggravating the injury, the water and range of motion probably promotes healing. When things had gotten a bit better (maybe four weeks in ), I was able to swim freestyle with fins and started working on endurance. A benefit of that injury was that it forced me to master breathing to the left--I usually breathe to the right, but at that time could only breathe comfortably to the left. Gradually weaned myself off the fins and back to breathing bilaterally, pulling, others strokes, and longer/harder sets.
My PT basically said I could do whatever didn't cause things to get more painful either in the water or after swimming, so I used that as a guide. |