Sometimes, clients tell me that they think their Doctor is crazy. "(S)He told me that I have golfer's elbow, but I don't golf". I hear a similar remark concerning tennis elbow. The difference between golfer's elbow and tennis elbow is only it's location. The names were given because of the predominance of these injuries among athletes.
The truth is that unless you're a professional golfer or hitting 200 drives every day, you will not likely develop golfer's elbow from playing golf - but golfing will make it worse and not be much fun.
Golfer's elbow is designated on the medial epicondyle of the elbow. That is, the area of the elbow closest to your body is swollen, tender and it hurts each time that you grasp something with that hand. It could occur on either elbow but tends to be on the dominant hand side.
Tennis elbow is designated on the lateral epicondyle or the outside of the elbow joint. Either condition can occur whether you are playing golf, tennis, shuffleboard or lifting too many beer mugs.
These conditions are usually a result of what is termed a CTD or cumulative trauma disorder. In other words, over time when the muscles are not given enough rest and continuously overloaded, they become inflamed where the muscle forms a tendon and attaches to the bone.
Four factors play into CTD's whether at work or play and they are Rest, Posture, Time and Force.
Muscles need time to recover from activity. Anyone who has had a muscle injury knows that the pain is often worse at night. This is because the body does most of its repair work during our rest and sleep cycles. When there is a severe inflammatory response, it interrupts our sleep and the repair becomes less effective.
If you are not giving your muscles enough time to rest, they will not repair properly and more scar tissue will develop than what is necessary. This makes the muscle more susceptible to re-injury.
Taking antioxidants, vitamin supplements and when necessary, anti inflammatories can bring this repair process under control only if enough rest is also introduced into the picture.
Trying to 'power through' pain will in most cases only make it worse. So, take a break, stretch, relax, drink lots of water, xango, monavie or your favorite antioxidant juice.
When we think of posture we usually tend to sit up straight, but you probably don't pay much attention to the position that your hand may be in right now on the mouse or the keyboard.
The same thing is true for the golf grip. Trying to develop force in a bad posture is just a bad idea.
If you have job that requires you to wear gloves, hold on to small objects firmly and manipulate them with your wrist bent outside of neutral, you are trying to work with only 10-15% of your available strength.
When muscles are either stretched or shortened out of their optimal length, they are weaker. So if you can normally generate 100 pounds of grip strength at 1.5 inch diameter grip, when you deviate your wrist out of neutral, you are only going to be able to generate 60 to 80 pounds of force, or even less. If you decrease or increase the grip diameter, depending on your hand size you will lose even more strength.
So, if your wrist is either extended or flexed at impact with the golf ball, you will be trying to generate increased force through a weakened posture. If you are already inflamed, this will not be a fun round of golf for you.
Not only, do you need to rest your elbow, you need to check the postures that you subject your hand to every day. Making some simple adjustments can go a long way to healing your elbow and getting some fun back in your swing.
Steve McMurray MPT
This intel first appeared on: http://ezgolfrx.wordpress.com
