Amateur Aches
The spine, and particularly the lower back, account for the greatest overall incidence of injury (up to 36.4%) for amateur golfers. The elbow (up to 33%), the wrist and hand (up to 32%), and the shoulder (up to 18.6%) are the other most frequently injured sites for weekend warriors. Injuries to the lead side (left side for right-handed golfers) are five times more frequent than the trail side (84.5%)
A number of factors contribute to the common golf swing injuries:
• Over-swinging
• Poor body mechanics and suboptimal swing mechanics
• Poor conditioning
• Lack of flexibility
• Poor ground reaction forces
• Age
• Sitting in buggies
• Overuse and over-practice
• Not warming up the muscle/joints for the required movements properly
• Rotational stress placed on the spine, ankle, knees, hips and neck
• Incorrect grip and setup
• Traumatic force to the body resulting in a poorly executed swing
• Making swing changes that the body does not have the capacity to adapt to
• Intermittent Play
Published research concerning risk factor is of relative low quality but most golf injuries generally occur as a result of a joint, cartilage, muscle, ligament, fascia, tendon, bone or disc having to absorb more stress/strain than it can cope with at that particular moment in time.
To understand golf injuries and how to avoid them we first have to understand the mechanisms that predispose someone to these injuries. The golf swing is a highly explosive athletic movement that relies on the whole body moving in a powerful, fast and sequentially integrated fashion.
Movement occurs from the ground, to the feet and up into the knees, pelvis and spine and from the club head into the hands, through the arms, elbows, shoulders and into the spine. To allow this highly complex movement integration to occur effectively, each joint along the chain has to maintain its own mobility, flexibility, stability, and local/ global muscle strengths to sustain its individual integrity and function. If a joint in the chain is missing any one of these vital elements, the stress load will have to be absorbed by another structure. This structure might not have the ability to absorb this load effectively and this invariably leads to a breakdown into injury and pain.