When your body is injured, it lets you know. It speaks in the language of pain.

A sore shoulder must not be ignored. Swimmers are notoriously bad at listening to their bodies. They have been spoon fed their whole lives; be tough.

Being tough is important but there is a saying that is important to qualify toughness: tough smart or tough stupid.

To tolerate pain, in training, your mind has to take control. Normal people would stop much earlier than someone driving for a huge goal. Your mind though, for humans, can become too numb to the language of pain. Ignoring pain becomes such a normal thing that a pin-point soreness is not heeded. This is stupid.

Your body can break down from hard work and can recover too. However some break downs are more serious and only proper rest and recovery can help.

The experience to know the difference between normal soreness from training and early injury pain, is vital.

In swimming the most common injury involves the ‘rotator cuff muscles’. This is a group of muscles that are actually opposite to swimming muscles. Strange but true. These muscles get stressed because they are not generally very strong, compared to the opposing muscles, which are the giant swim-muscles; pecs, deltoids, triceps and lats.

When a swimmer trains hard those swim-muscles get big and tired. This creates an imbalance between the rotator cuff muscles and swim-muscles. Especially noticeable when a swimmer sits or stands. The rotator cuff’s job is to hold the body straight by counter balancing swim-muscles. In regular people this is no problem but with swimmers it can become a problem.

An early warning is a very specific pain on the front of your shoulder. This pain is the attachment point for one of the main rotator cuff muscles and is about to get worse. Your body is telling you.

This early warning system is important. Your body is telling you that there is a problem, ignore it at your peril.

Learn the language of pain. It could make or break your swimming career.