Bailey's Injury Update - Chattahoochee Gold Correspondence
I can't cut and paste emails from Chattahoochee Gold because they responded to my wife's intial inquiry by calling. However, I can and will break down their suggestions and comments...
The Gold team was sorry to hear that Bailey was hurting and alarmed that it was a problem, stating it is a huge red flag for a 10 year old to have shoulder injuries.
They also commented that it was unfortunate that the problem was with freestyle, because that is the most basic stroke and most of practice is build around that. If the problem was another stroke, she would be able to go through most of practice regularly, but be pulled aside and monitored when the other bad strokes comes up (often this is breaststroke for swimmers).But with free being the problem, she will be limited in the entire practice.
Here is how they said they'd handle this situation...
- To begin with, once she is cleared to begin swimming again, they feel she should do private lessons to work out the kinks in her stroke. This will insure someone is watching and working with her, it will also allow the coach to limit the amount of time she swims. They suggest doing this "until she gets it right".
- Once she returns to practice with the team, Gold suggests having her initially isolated from the rest of the team (in the injured lane). Make sure one of the coaches or volunteers keep an eye on her at all times. Still limit what she does and keep practice times to about 30 minutes
- Once she has graduated to real practice, keep her in the back of the lines, especially during freestyle, and keep reinforcing the correct mechanics and monitoring her for backsliding.