Journal of Healthy Living

How to Prevent Common Golfing Injuries

I’ve recently picked up golfing, a sport that my dad is an avid fan of. I remember, many years ago, watching him practice for hours each night. He’d stand on the back deck and hit balls into a practice net over and over and over again. Never, in the years I’ve watched him do this, has my dad, who is over 50, complained about any injuries and it amazed me. How could he take swings are a hundred balls a night, minimum, and not suffer the same injuries I heard others suffer from? While I don’t know, I think a lot of it had to deal with his focus on form.

Now, years later, I’ve decided to pick up on golf and the elbow soreness I experienced from leaning into the bar at Body Pump has made me more aware of potential injuries. My dad actually sent me a mat, one that my uncle no longer used, and a practice net to put up on my deck. Now it’s my turn to swing a club a hundred times a night. So, in an attempt to preempt injury, I learned all I could.

Most golf injuries fall into three areas: lower body, arms, and wrists. With the lower body it’s your lower back and knees, with your arms it’s your shoulders and elbow, and finally wrists really mean wrists and hands (and fingers). The number one cause of injuries is flexibility, underscoring the importance of stretching before playing or practicing. When I was younger, I didn’t need to stretch before anything. Now, if I don’t stretch I risk injury at worst and soreness at best so always stretch.

Lower Body

With the back, it’s important that you do plenty of back stretches because of all the rotational movement involved. Also, your back does a significant amount of work so consider focusing on it for a while when you do your strength training.

Unfortunately with the knees, there’s not much stretching or weight training you can do to prevent an injury. If you do feel tenderness or pain, it’s important that you rest rather than try to fight through it. Your knees are composed of ligaments that will not improve with use, rest is the best medicine.

Arms

The two biggest arm injuries in golf are Tennis elbow and Golfer’s elbow. Surprisingly, Tennis elbow is more common. Tennis elbow is inflammation, soreness or pain on the outside of the upper arm near the elbow. Golfer’s elbow is the same thing but on the inside. Both are caused by repetitive stress.

Wrist & Hands

Stretching your wrists consists of rotation your hands and then stretching your fingers, though most of the wrist and hand related injuries are the result of repetitive stress. How do you avoid repetitive stress? The biggest culprit is once again hitting the mat, so focus on getting a good clean shot, but ultimately you need to make sure you don’t push yourself too hard. If you feel pain, it’s best to take a few days off until the pain subsides. If you are feeling some prolonged discomfort, here are the names of several common ailments, do some research to see if they apply to you:

• Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: Pain in the wrist, specifically the tendons that connect the hands and the muscles of the forearm.
• Trigger Finger: A tendon in your finger locks up and puts it in a position that looks like it’s on a trigger.
• Wrist Impaction Syndrome: Sounds as much fun as it feels, it’s pain because the bones of the wrist bang together and you feel it at the top of the wrist during your backswing.
• ECU Tendon Subluxation: Subluxation refers to when bones slide out of place and put pressure on the nerves, the ECU Tendon (extensor carpi ulnaris tendon) is the tendon, held in by a ligament, that runs within a smooth sheath in a groove at the wrist joint. So, put that all together and you have a slipping of that ECU tendon from that groove. What happens now is that the ECU Tendon, slipping in and out of that groove, may roll over the wrist bones and cause pain as you rotate your wrist.
• DeQuervains Tendonitis: Tendonitis refers to when tendons swell and DeQuervains tendonitis refers to swelling of the tendons that connect your thumb to the wrist. You’ll feel this in your left hand if you’re a right handed golfers and your right hand if you’re a left handed golfer.
• Hamate Bone fracture: The Hamate Bone is the bone in your hand that is connected to your pinky. While this is rarer, repetitive stress may cause small fractures in that bone.

Now, armed with that knowledge, I can hopefully prevent some of these injuries before they happen!

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