With the Masters on this weekend I thought this would be an ideal time to answer a question that I get on a regular basis when Sam and I get injured Golfers come into the clinic for treatement.  Why condition golfers?  It's an easy sport that people play in their leisure time to unwind and relax isn't it.  You hit a ball, take a walk, hit a ball again, easy right?

Wrong!  The forces generated in long game shots are easily as high as any of those required for sports that are commonly regarded as far more physically demanding.  Studies of electrical activity in the muscles of golfers driving the ball have shown that this shot takes as much muscle activation (effort) as lifting a load in the gym that is so heavy you can't lift it more than four times!  That is an incredibly heavy lift!  Your gym instructor would have a heart attack if a novice lifter came into the gym and proceeded to try that lift!  Yet that's exactly what most golfers do.

Strains and injuries to the arms, particularly the wrist and elbow, are frighteningly common in golf today.  In this article I'm going to try and help solve that problem for anyone who suffers with this.  Now the focus is on golf due to that being my specialist subject but this information applies equally to any sport involving expression of force through the arms such as tennis, squash, cricket etc.

Do you find your shoulders, elbows or wrists are often painful following a morning on the fairways?  If so there is a good chance that we have a fix for you.  These types of ailments are all variations on a tendonitis theme.  Tendonitis arises from overuse of a joint, put a joint under enough stess repeatedly and it will hurt, simples!  What we need to do therefore is first figure out why the joints are being overused during the swing and then what we can do to correct it.

The most common cause of upper extremity overuse in golf is the inability of the golfer to properly stabilise the transfer of force from the ground up.  This stabilisation radiates out from the core musculature of the abdomen, without adequate strength in these stabilisers the golfer is unable to utilise the force generated from the legs to power the swing.  This is certainly bad news as we see from studies that as much as 54% of force is generated by the legs in throwing actions1.

So without this force generation coming from the legs the golfer is now faced with using the musclulature of the shoulders and arms as the prime power generators for their swing.  This is where the increased stress is coming from, so now how do we fix it?

We treat the cause of the disfunction!  The arms don't need to be stronger, the legs don't need to be worked harder it's the bit in the middle that links it all together that needs the focus.  Our core!

Targetted training of the core musculature will mean improvements in the golfers ability to stabilise and hence make use of the force available from the legs, immediately opening up that 54% more power mentioned earlier.  With the legs now contributing their fair share and the summation of force up through the body happening the golfer is going to find that their shoulders and arms are under much less stress and they can get on with enjoying their game without pain.

For help with golf specific core conditioning check out our golf page. Sports Massage may also help to reduce the symptoms of Golfer's Elbow.