You’re injured. What now?

If you do injure yourself, the best course of action is to consult a medical practitioner as soon as possible as the quicker these things are dealt with, the shorter the recovery will be. Far too often I see patients where the injury happened a few weeks earlier and they had left it to calm down because they thought it would get better on its own. That rarely transpires. In fact, the delay often makes it harder for the practitioner to help get you back out on the golf course quickly.

Like any medical consultation, the practitioner will go through a full case history covering the pain, the onset, the nature of the pain and past medical history. Then, if appropriate, they’ll run through the necessary medical and orthopaedic tests to come to a diagnosis, prognosis and treatment plan. The primary goal of treatment is to reduce pain and achieve full recovery of the injury. In addition, the practitioner has to fully assess and treat the mobility, flexibility, stability, and local/ global muscle strengths and weaknesses. Usually the practitioner will demonstrate a number of exercises to help reduce the pain further and to start addressing the dysfunctions found.

Post treatment continuum that will help to reduce the reoccurrence of such issues include resolution exercises, rehab and restorative exercises before moving into strength and conditioning and the implementation of an effective pre-round warmup routine.