Swimming with injuries

This week I had the unfortunate pleasure of colliding with one of my teammates on an I.M. turn during practice. The end result was the top my teammate's head going full speed into my left shoulder. I spent the remainder of the week in pain and under ice.

The blessing and the curse of swimming is that there is always a way to practice even if you're hurt. If your shoulder hurts- you're having an all kick practice. Foot cramp? Not a problem! You can just pull till your foot feels better.

The swim culture allows little room for injury and recovery. As swimmers, our bodies are our greatest weapons. We constantly push ourselves to our limits, which means we will battle quite a few injuries throughout our swim careers.

Being injured this week was a huge struggle for me. Luckily it was just a bruise, but it slowed down my training while I lacked full mobility.

I discussed with my best friend, Sam, the way swimming as a whole responds to injuries. When you're younger, you're looked down upon for sitting out or stopping at practice. Sam recalled many times where she was told to swim through the pain. The punishment for stopping wasn't worth the 45 seconds of stretching. Sitting out was out of the question.

In the last year, Sam started CrossFit. Their injury culture seems to be the opposite of swimming. Sam says that they encourage modifying their activities, whether in weight or action, so they don't further injure themselves.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is that sometimes it's okay to stop. Healing is more important than going all out on a stroke set. Sometimes your body needs rest. An injury is an easy excuse to sit out, but not taking time to heal properly is the worst way to train. Even Michael Phelps has to take a rest day.