By Olivier Poirier-Leroy on SwimSwam
It happens to use all at some point:
We’ll be swimming along all fast and smooth, and then boom—
A painful twang in the shoulder joint. A finger gets caught in the lane rope. Or we break our wrist slipping on some ice on a cold and wintery Michigan morning.
Injury isn’t just frustrating, it can make us feel like we are adrift and disoriented. Our goals are put on hold. Progress we painstakingly worked for feels lost. And now we are poolside, watching our teammates and imagining our competitors swimming off into the magical land of improvement without us.
But here’s the truth:
Injury isn’t the end of progress. For many swimmers, it is a fresh start and an accelerant for improvement.
Two of the greatest swimmers in history—Natalie Coughlin and Michael Phelps—each dealt with significant injuries during their careers. Instead of getting derailed, with time, patience, and adaptability, the injuries helped to refocus and rebuild them into even better athletes.
Here’s what you can learn from Coughlin and Phelps to stay on track in and out of the water.
Natalie Coughlin: A Torn Shoulder and a Game-Changing Kick
Before Natalie Coughlin became a 12-time Olympic medalist, she suffered a torn labrum in her shoulder during her final year of high school.
She spent over a year in physical therapy, and spent months unable to use her upper body in the pool. So she kicked. And kicked. And kicked some more. Her legs and core turned into weapons.
The result?
By the time her shoulder healed up the following year, she was smashing records and winning titles at NCAA’s. Largely thanks to her legendary underwaters, developed while kicking her brains out while recovering form injury.
Michael Phelps: A Broken Wrist and a Stationary Bike
A year before the Beijing Olympics, when Michael Phelps won those eight gold medals beating Mark Spitz’ longtime most-golds-in-a-Games record, he slipped on some ice, fell, and broke his wrist.
The doubts and uncertainties flooded in.
Talking to his longtime coach, Bob Bowman:
“I was upset as I could be. I told Bob, I think I just gave away gold medals. I guess it was a good try, I said. I’d had a good run. I don’t know how I’m going to come back from this.”Bowman talked his protégé from the ledge:
“The meet’s not next week. Let’s see what you can do.”While waiting for surgery, Phelps pounded out the miles on a stationary bike. Post-surgery, he had a couple of days rest, and then it was more stationary bike, and then a plastic bag around the wrist and big kick sets in the pool.
The injury, as annoying and untimely as it was, became a catalyst.
A year later, the Beijing Olympics kicked off and he swam his way to eight golds. He credited the injury as a tool for refocusing his efforts.
“In a weird way,” Phelps later said. “The broken wrist gave me an urgency that in the long run turned out to be a positive.”What You Can Do vs What You Can’t Do
When injured, your attention will naturally fixate on the things you cannot do. And watching your teammates continue on with training, joking between reps, grinding out challenging main sets from poolside is a bummer.
But with many injuries, there are plenty of things you still can do. You have an opportunity to strengthen overlooked skills and develop next-level resilience that will be a huge net benefit in the long-term.
Which is all to say that this is an opportunity to work on things like:
Improving your kick.
Time to build a lethal kick! Kick sets, like vertical kicking in the deep end or kicking with a swimmer’s snorkel are an opportunity to build legendary lower body strength and fitness. Whether it’s building a stronger finishing kick or developing a thunderous underwater dolphin kick, it’s time to feed the wolf.
Obviously, you are going to want to work around the injury—whatever it is and wherever it is—but you’ll find that mastering a specific skill like faster kicking will yield big benefits down the road when you are injury-free.
Boosting core strength and stability.
Core strength is vital for fast swimming, and a weak core is also linked to increased injury risk in athletes (Kibler et al., 2006). Work around the injury and throw some core exercises into the mix to build a stronger and more stable trunk that will help you streamline and swim even faster when you are back to 100%.
Core training in the best of times is highly effective for improving swim performance (Khiyami et al., 2022; Karpinski et al., 2020) and with some pool-free time on your hands, it’s a perfect opportunity to get after a stronger, more stable core.
Refocus and reset.
Being sidelined is a great chance to reflect and rejuvenate your swimming. Not just physically by working some skills and muscle groups that are ripe for improvement in the water, but hitting reset on your mindset and motivation.
Whether it’s recommitting to doing your pre-hab stuff before practice or simply feeling more gratitude for the sport, being injured doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom. And in many cases can provide the mental rocket boost for what comes next.
The Comeback Starts Today
Injuries are frustratingly common in the pool.
In terms of just swimmer’s shoulder, a survey (McMaster and Troup, 1993) of USA Swimming athletes found that 23% of elite development swimmers and 26% of national team members were actively experiencing interfering shoulder pain. Woof!
But while injuries will happen, it doesn’t have to interfere with your training (well, situation dependent, obviously).
Do what you can, adapt, refocus, and make today the start of your comeback story.
ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer. He’s the publisher of YourSwimBook, a ten-month logbook for competitive swimmers.
He’s also the author of the recently published mental training workbook for competitive swimmers, Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High-Performance Mindset.
It combines sport psychology research, worksheets, anecdotes, and examples of Olympians past and present to give swimmers everything they need to conquer the mental side of the sport.
Ready to take your mindset to the next level?
Click here to learn more about Conquer the Pool.
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