Hello,
I’m dealing with what appears to be a pulled pec muscle in my Rt pectoral muscle just below my clavical (mid-clavicular). It’s been aggravating me for about 2 weeks now and I have seen a little relief from rest. I swam lightly this morning around 1000yds and am sore again today.
Range of motion does not seem to be limited and for the most part it’s just a dull pain, or even heavy-ness (not of cardiac origin).
Anyone out there strain a pec muscle? Is this a common swimming injury? Ice? Stretch? self-massage? When can I resume training?
Any Doc’s familiar with a subclavius strain? Any exercises/stretches?
Have you worked any backstroke into your swim routine? If not, consider swimming several hundred yards of backstroke at the beginning, middle, and end of your workout. As a distance freestyler, I used to have localized clavical/pec pain like you described, and my coach ‘fixed’ this by simply adding more backstroke to the practice. I have a hunch the fix worked because backstroke caused complimentary muscle groups to be stretched and strengthened. Don’t take my word for it though, bounce this idea off your coach/trainer, and definitely take it easy if you are in a lot of pain.
Thanks, I appreciate the advice. I’m not from a swim background and a bulk of our master’s group is Free (of a 3500yd workout, maybe 2-300 is spent non free).
Yep, that’ll happen if you swim hard enough, long enough… When I swam in HS, I normally had 2-3 pulled muscles at any given time. Traps, pecs, neck, and some muscle underneath the scapula were the most common. Anyway, vitamin “M” is helpful, keep moving, and keep swimming. I like the backstroke idea, too. Try to walk the line between “pain because I’m moving something that doesn’t want to move” and “pain because I’m causing more injury to myself”. I don’t know how to quantify that exactly, but strangely I’ve never had a problem knowing which side of the line I’m on.
If you’re in good with your doc, a muscle relaxer is always nice; I had my best practice ever after a few of those.
I am not a doctor either – I am a strength coach/physical therapist, but the pec minor is often what gets pulled (sounds like that is what you are refering to, not the pec major (although i could be wrong).
Have a chiropractor or therapist (and many osteopaths also do this) check your bicep tendon. It is likely out of the grove. This will not allow for rapid healing, but the pec will not heal quickly unless tendon is in place. In, fact, often the bicep is out of place, the pec minor, or major or rotator cuff over works, and that is the part that gets hurt. Not the bicep itself.
Also, long term, pay attention to your everyday posture. A great long term solution to problems like yours.
Thank you for your input, I appreciate it. I do have a quick question regarding the bicep tendon, wouldn’t there be some referred pain, or pain at the general area of the bicipital groove? I have no pain in that area at all.
Also, and maybe with your PT background you might be able help with this, the only way I seem to stretch the “injured” area is if I stand near a wall, place my hand straight up overhead and stretch it out on the wall (like I was high-fiving the wall for lack of a better description). Does this help with diagnosing the issue at all?
Yeah, walking that fine line is the biggest challenge for myself. I’ve been playing contact sports all through high school, college and a little post-college, where the causation or even remedy of an injury was usually fairly obvious. All those years and now these more enduring overuse injuries and I find myself flipping the coin between what I perceive to be rest and fitness loss or training and the possibility of additional injury.
It’s good to hear that you and your coach would “work” through these types of injuries. I’d hate to lose any gains of what has taken so long for me to figure out.
usually yes, there is some pain in the region of the grove, but not necessarily, but there will likely be some with direct palpation. I am not saying this is your problem, but it is a good idea to make sure yours is not out.
