Golfers elbow affects golfers young and old very regularly, hence the name. This injury can be very uncomfortable and will likely affect your golf performance. If you have pain on the inside of your right elbow (if you are a right hander) or left elbow (if you are a left hander), there is a good chance you have golfer’s elbow. Do these 5 things below to decrease your pain now.
Golfer's Elbow. Courtesy of S Bhimji, MD (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Keep an activity log
Golfer’s elbow is usually associated with an increase in activity, whether that be at the course, at home or at work. As the muscles take more stress, it can expose you to injury.
To decrease the chances of big activity spikes, keep a diary of your weekly structure. For me personally, I have a consistent activity load including workouts, golf and work hours. To avoid golfer’s elbow, don’t increase your physical load by more than 25% on any given week.
Get strong Why is strength training such a good way of decreasing pain and preventing further injury? Strength training essentially increases the load tolerance of your muscles making them more resilient. This is a very important concept. If your muscles are weak, this will stress the attachment site of the tissue which connects into the bone. Therefore if the muscle and bone is under a large amount of stress, the injury cycle continues. Great exercises include wrist flexion curls, pronation/supination exercises and bicep curls. Practice on soft surfaces Do you practice on golf mats? Secondly, are these mats placed on top of concrete? Practicing on golf mats is a sure way to create problems for your elbows and wrists. Instead of the club head sliding through soft grass, you tend to get a hard collision trauma when hitting balls off a hard surface. As you can imagine, your muscles and bones are taking more load to try and control the club face after having a strong deflection from the mat. As a way of preventing injury, mix up practice surfaces where possible and take rest in between shots if you feel your forearm muscles are getting fatigued. Get a brace Using a golfers elbow brace is a quick solution for your symptoms. For some of my clients, they get an immediate reduction in their pain and therefore can continue playing golf regularly. Most golfer’s have probably seen a member at their club that wears a brace every round. The brace acts as a support to the muscles and the compression like effect can decrease pain in itself.
Get swing advice
If you are a player who takes big divots and gets very steep on their irons, you are at risk of golfer’s elbow. Due to the fact you have heavier turf interaction, the force placed on your wrists and elbows is greater than someone who has a shallow swing. Sometimes getting swing advice to bring your angle of attack closer to neutral can help.
Bonus tip: get quick, effective and affordable help
If you want to save time, get relief as soon as possible and play better golf, contact me.
At the cost of a round of golf, you can get a TPI screen and start your injury recovery. Click below.
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