New Chiropractic Patients
There’s nothing like a good round of golf for fresh air, exercise, and getting out into the great outdoors especially if it happens to be one of our magnificent Winchester golf courses!
However, although it appears low-impact, the repetitive nature of golf, especially the swings plus all that walking, does place some strain on your joints and muscles. From your upper body to your hips and knees…
Therefore, if you’re a keen golfer there’s a good chance you will experience some minor, and not so minor, injuries at some point.
So, in this post we are going to look at some of the most common golf injuries and how chiropractic can help.
Common golf injuries include:
Fortunately, chiropractic can offer a comprehensive approach to dealing with, and even preventing, these types of golfing injuries. If you are a golfer, that’s going to be welcome news.
If you’ve ever played golf, you’ll understand golf swings involve more than just ‘whacking’ a small ball! And that an effective golf swing is actually a precision movement that requires similarly precise body coordination…
It’s also a repetitive action so, like most repetitive actions, incorrect or poor technique places a lot of unnatural stresses on your body and opens the door for repetitive stress injuries.
Repetitive stress injuries can cause either ongoing, persistent discomfort, or sharp pain.
Either way, should golf injuries hit and pain strike, it is going to affect more than just your golf game! In fact, many of these injuries are movement and performance restricting and can impact your lifestyle in general.
Common golfing RSI’s include:
Golf swings can lead to shoulder injuries and strain, often to your rotator cuff muscles. (The rotator cuff muscles and tendons hold your shoulder joints in position and allow your shoulders and arms to move).
These injuries happen because the forceful rotation required for the swing places stress on your shoulder muscles and tendons. Over time, the repetitive swinging motion can cause micro tears, inflammation, or tears in these structures, particularly your rotator cuff.
Similarly, lateral epicondylitis, or tennis elbow, is common in golfers, although you may know it as ‘golfer’s elbow’!
Tennis elbow is usually associated with racquet sports but golf swings also place significant strain on forearm muscles and tendons. This can stress and inflame the attachment points (entheses) in your outer elbow bones.
Sprains, tendonitis, and inflammation in the wrist joints are common golf injuries too.
They occur through overuse, incorrect wrist positioning and grip during swings, or excessive impact force when hitting the ball.
Again, the repetitive nature of golf swings places continual strain on the joints and tendons in your wrists so if you’re swinging the wrong way…
Golfers frequently suffer from some degree of lower back and hip pain.
This is because, when making a golf swing, you bend forward slightly and rotate through your torso. This puts stress on your lower back and hips.
Having good core strength and flexibility does help but even so, the repetitive nature of golf swings can still lead to discomfort or even more severe back and hip problems with time.
Last, we come to your legs, and their role in a good golf swing! Indeed, you’ve probably spent a lot of time working on your leg placement during swings because it is the anchor for an effective swing.
Unfortunately, though, the rotational forces and weight shifts required to make good, effective swings pass through your knees. That means your knee joints, and their ligaments and tendons, are subject to a great deal of stress and strain. As a result, they can easily become sore and inflamed.
Equally, unfortunately, knee pain can affect your overall stability. To compensate, your body makes adjustments elsewhere, and these can in turn lead to ‘compensatory injuries’ in other structures.
And, whilst walking is great exercise, sometimes the hilly nature of golf links can add unnecessary stress to damaged hips, knees, and other joints.
Chiropractic care for common golf injuries may not be something you immediately think of when you’re nursing a tennis elbow or torn rotator cuff muscle. Nevertheless, it can help relieve some of the symptoms of these injuries.
More importantly, it may also help address underlying musculoskeletal issues contributing to your golfing injury woes. Your chronic tennis elbow for example may be the result of associated musculoskeletal conditions in your back and neck rather than poor technique…
Our common golf injury ‘tool kit’ includes:
Our golfing clients tell us they experience:
Golf is a low-impact sport yet the repetitive nature of golf swings, and the physical demands of walking golf links place a surprising amount of strain on your body. This can lead to a raft of golf injuries that impact both your game and your daily activities.
Chiropractic care offers a holistic, non-invasive way to improve your musculoskeletal system so you experience fewer injuries during a game, and can also better manage those you have acquired – shoulder strains, lower back or hip pain, knee and wrist discomfort etc.
