By Reggie Reyes, BKin
and Mike Carrera, MSc.

Many of you either took the winter off or played a couple of rounds on your family vacation, so it’s safe to say that the winter layoff has probably left both your golf game and golf-specific fitness on the back burner. This is the perfect recipe for disaster as most injuries occur as a result of doing too much too soon.

The best injury prevention method is ensuring your body is ready and able to handle the physical challenges of golf. Therefore, participating in a proper workout routine that includes aerobic, resistance and flexibility exercises is important—and the best time to start is right now!

People generally relate sports injuries with severe body contact or high impact landings. At first glance, golf appears to be a leisurely activity, void of the high impact or speed-power stresses found in sports such as ice hockey, basketball and football. However, when you break down the components of the game, you realize how physically challenging golf can be on your body.

Think of how many times you swing the club in an average round; or the constant bending, twisting and squatting performed while preparing for a chip or putt; or the six or eight miles of walking completed in the average round. It is the repetitive nature of the sport that results in wear and tear on the joints and muscles.

The most common injury sites in golf include the elbow, wrist and hands, low back and shoulders. See our table for a list of the percentages of amateur and professional golfers injured at these specific sites. Since poor technique plays a major role in many injuries, notice that amateurs have higher rates.

Common injury sites and preventive exercises
Strengthening and increasing the flexibility of the muscles that surround your joints is the best way to prevent injury. The following sections provide basic exercises to perform three days per week as you prepare for your upcoming golf season. Visit the Truestar Sport-Specific Training section and try our annual training program for golf.

Elbows, hands and wrists
Medial epicondylitis is the technical term for “golfer’s elbow.” Most pain symptoms are felt in the inside of the elbow as you grip the club. If your swing plane is too flat, pain is also felt in your elbows during the backswing and follow through. Since this condition is associated with aggravation to the muscles that begin at the elbow and cross the wrist, prevention includes flexibility and strength exercises that involve your forearm muscles.

Improper swing mechanics and overuse also result in pain symptoms in the hands and wrist. A vicious cycle forms where pain causes poor mechanics which results in pain and so on. Besides improving your swing mechanics, strengthening and flexibility exercises for the muscles of the wrists and hands are important. Aside from the exercises found below, squeezing a tennis ball for several minutes a day also helps strengthen the hand muscles.

Click here for exercises to prevent injury to the elbows, hands and wrists.

Lower back
Many lower back injuries are a result of the constant twisting and rotating action of the swing. The rotating actions are initiated by the muscles in the hips, abdominals and lower back. Obviously, a golfer with weak core muscles is more likely to injure the lower back area. Therefore, to reduce the risk of overuse injuries to these areas, increasing the strength and flexibility of these muscles is important.

Click here for lower back exercises.

Shoulder
The golf swing places repetitive stresses on both shoulders from the backswing to the follow through. The lead shoulder is forced through a large range of motion as it rotates across your body during the backswing and rotates again as you follow through and release. The speed and repetitive nature of these actions causes wear and tear and pain to the shoulder at the point where the collarbone meets the scapula (AC or acromio-clavicular joint). One technical change to limit the stress on the AC joint involves limiting your backswing by several degrees. Most shoulder injuries are a result of excessive stress on the rotator cuff muscles. Prevention includes strengthening and flexibility exercises along with improving your swing mechanics.

Click here for exercises for the shoulders.

References