GrooveTime!group - CLOSED!!! (Page 143)

stevebradley - 2010-05-04 9:59 PM ANNE - I said before that it arbitrary, choosing hat distance, but it's probably not that simple. I guess he has figured that's a good distance at which to push things, feel the burn, etc. But for you -- and even more so me -- those lengths of climb just aren't local. So we have to adjust, and that's either accepting 300m instead of 500m, or pushing it harder on the repeats, or increasing the number of repeats. In my really keen days, I increased the numbe rof repeats, simply because that was the easiest one to quantify. That is, 10 is moe than 8....but I couldn't figure out how to adjust my intensity to make the difference in intensity meaningful. (Of course, there's nothing that says that 10 is truly more meaningful than 8, either!) Does that help? Maybe only marginally --- but it's how I cope with those dicrepencies between what's in a plan and what's in my "neighborhood"!

lufferly - 2010-05-01 10:22 AM First tri of the season, over and done with!  Thanks for all the well wishes, and STEVE B for the splash down!!  Unofficial time of 1:52:58 (which I think will be pretty accurate).  Temp 79 degrees at start of race.  Had problems controlling my breathing on the swim (water temp 76 degrees) ... can't wait to practice some OWS in Arkansas next month; bike felt great; and run was OK; transitions were OK.  Temp 85 degrees on the way home.  Really nice race and definitely plan on keeping it on as one of my regulars.

Hope DENISE and DWAYNE have/had great races!  And can't wait for the next update on STEVE A ... I tried to figure out how to track him last night but couldn't figure it out, so keep the updates coming.  Thought of all you during my race ... DENISE's nice pool swim while I was in the lake hyperventilating, STEVE A's red hills bike ride as I was biking in the woods, and DWAYNE's firey run (wasn't there something about fire in the Warrior Race) while I was sweating the run!

Keep up the good work everyone!!  Now off to do some chores at my mother's house.

Lisa

smarx - 2010-05-04 9:34 PM

STEVEB, ANNE, Others who want to chime in...(SteveA how could I forget about you....I'm not worthy!!, enjoy your rest!)

To ask another question...I'm getting ready to put in an order from Tri Zone and am curious about if there are some other small things maybe I'm missing that would make my life (or my tri life) a bit easier or more enjoyable...

So far I'm planning on getting:

• Aero drink bottle
• tubes
• CO2 chuck
• run visor
• HEED (maybe change to Accelerade)

I already have speed laces and a race belt...What other things would they have that I should look at?

stevebradley - 2010-05-04 10:38 PM



TRACEY -

Okay. Here goes.

What I think you have done is suffered some degree of shoulder impingement. Hopefully, it is just minor, kind of a wake-up call that something in your mechanics has caused a tendon (the supraspinatus [sp?]) to get caught between the head of your humerus (upper arm bone) and the acromion (sp?) arch. (It might be useful to google a picture of shoulder structure, ads it is almost impossible to explain all of this stuff. )

Impingements hurt, and for me it works just as it does for you -- top of shoulder and down the arm maybe to the elbow. The worst spot on the arm for me is the deltoid, which is the muscle in which we receive inoculations; is this about where your arm is sorest?

When I said above that this is due to something in your mechanics, that is supporting what you felt was the causative movement -- bringing your arm in too close to your body in your trying to pass another swimmer without hooking arms. Here are the three things swimmers can do to INCREASE the risk of impingements:
(1) Bring their extended arm across the midline of their body (that is, your arm as it enters the water is enetring over at the other side of your midline).
(2) Position the entering hand so that the thumb and forefinger enter the water first. If you hold your arm (and do this with the arm that is NOT hurting right now!!!!) in front of you with the palm facing straight down.....and then pivot it inward almost 90 degrees so that the side of the thumb is closest to the floor.....and then pull your arm back slightly to mimic the bend in your arm as the hand enters the water......you should feel some pressure on your shoulder. Yes?
(3) Modify their recovery so that the arm is very close to the body as it is traveling forward.

So, as you describe it, i see #3 as the cause of your sore shoulder, and I can dig it because when I had my bad shoulder impingement about three years ago, that was clearly the cause. (I was trying to imitate the arm recovery of an olympian who I had seen on a video, and within about ten strokes I knew I had done something not good at all.)

The good news is that since then, I have hurt the shoulder several (5-8?) times, but each time it has been fine after a day or two of rest. It scares the dickens out of me, though, because....

The bad news is that first time it happened I didn't swim for a couple of months and had lots of physiotherapy for it!

HOWEVER, I suspect you've just suffered a minor pinching of that tendon between those two bones, and it will feel fine before too long --- so don't panic yet!! One test for severity, i think, is how high you can extend the affected arm. For my original one, putting on a buttonless top was a problem; I couldn't comfortably extend my arm above my head as I normally do when putting on a t-shirt or sweatshirt. At times, it worked best bending at the waist with my arms pointing straight ahead, rather than towards the ceiling (even though the extension seems the same, bending at the waist, I guess, puts the upper back in a different type of flexed position that better accommodates the arm's extension).

When you return to the pool, avoid drills such as the "zipper", as that requires that the arm stays very close to the body (#3 above). And even though it seems that all great swimmers have their hands angled so that thumb and forefinger enter the water first (#2 above), that's a movement that works for them but doesn't help us and our sore shoulders. And if you think about #1, in order to get the hand to cross over the midline of our body, it has to assume the angled position of #2; the further you reach across your body, the more the arm has to pivot down and in -- a movement that some shoulders (that would be ours!) respond poorly to!

Your mechanics, then, should have you with a relatively wide recovery, and with your enetring hand being flat. These two movements, combined, will mean that your shoulder will not be carried so high, shich is contrary to T.I. beliefs....but really, a high elbow is kind of a relative thing, anyhow. You can still have a moderately high elbow, even if your recovery is wide and your hand is not angled as it enters the water.

As I said before, keep the ice on the soire dspots -- deltoid and top of shoulder. Use anti-inflams so that the swelling that is likely in that tendon goes down. And again -- I have had the one bad impingement, but many lesser ones that worry me, but that are cleared up within a day or two. i sure hope that's how yours responds!! (And let me know if putting on a jersey-type top is a problem for you.)

I hope some of this helps with your understanding, and ask about anything that doesn't make sense!

stevebradley - 2010-05-05 8:19 AM



Do you ever go tho the gym to ift, or do it at home. If so, another thing that can impinge a shoulder is are lifts -- especially lateral ones. If you do those (and they are a staple lift for me), do them in front of a mirror and make sure that your arms don't rise above your shoulders. It's not quite so bad with front arm raises, but still best if you keep the maximum height of each rep below the level of your shoulders.

If you do lift, I can tell you some other exercises to approach very carefully.

LadyNorth - 2010-05-05 11:30 AM
Mandy,

Have a great race this weekend.  Will it drive you crazy to have to swim in a pool?

Denise