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Golfers Need to Get a Grip on Ice Therapy
By Steve Mcmurray of EzGolfrx
It should be no mystery why golf gloves are so thin. They obviously aren't designed for warmth, though they may make a fashion statement. Their design is to allow you to maintain a lighter grip without the club flying out of your hand. They also allow for a minimal loss of sensation into your fingertips. To a lesser degree they may prevent blisters, as most golfers have proven. In addition to insufficient rest and poor postures, applying too great of a force through your wrists and elbows will also lead to cumulative trauma (or sudden trauma if you duff a lot). This is why you are instructed to have a relaxed grip. Not only does it prevent injury but it prevents erratic swings by decreasing your dependence on force generation in your arms. You need to be able to generate just enough force though your wrists to position and maintain a neutral wrist posture at impact. Specific gripping exercises can help in this but one of the simplest things that you can do is simply grab a tennis ball and squeeze it repeatedly until you feel the muscle fatigue in your elbows. There are other exercises to specifically train your wrist flexors and extensors also. For now though, keep in mind that you may need to lighten up and review the kind of forces that you are generating in your elbows and wrists every day. You can reduce the forces required with improved grip surfaces or small modifications in the diameter of those objects that you are grasping. On the subject of treatment of injuries, the question often comes up about whether you should use ice or heat. It all depends on what you are trying to achieve. For acute and even subacute injury, ice is most often the preferred modality. This is because you are trying to control inflammation. The direct application of ice produces constriction of the blood vessels and reduces the amount of fluids spilling out of damaged tissues. Tissue temperature can be lowered farther without damage than it can be raised without damage, so there is often a greater advantage to using ice. Adding heat to an already elevated tissue temperature brought on by inflammation can make the problem of cell death worse. In the subacute phase, because of ongoing inflammatory processes, icing is still effective in promoting healing by controlling inflammation. Heat on the other hand is excellent at producing tissue extensibility after healing is complete. Newly formred scar tissue needs to be stretched along functional lines. Heat applied before stretching can often aid in this. However, in the process of stretching newly formed scar tissue, some inflammation can develop that is best treated with ice. So often a regimen of heat before activity and ice afterward is effective. When applying ice, it doesn't take long to produce vaso-constriction. Typically within 8 minutes an area can be numbed. Applying ice directly for more than 10 minutes risks frostbite. The moist heat packs that we use in the clinic are kept in a 165 degree bath and applied with thick terri cloth padding to patient comfort for up to 20 minutes. After this time they generally cool and become ineffective. So, if you are returning to golf after an injury has healed, it needs to be stretched before you play. Before you stretch use heat for 15 minutes, but don't do static stretches less than two hours before golfing. Then after a round you are better to apply ice to the area for 5 to 10 minutes to reduce soreness. Steve McMurray MPT |
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May, 2012
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