Pain in upper right arm
 

I have been working on getting more wrist cock into my swing and swing down on the ball. The drill I was given was the ball a foot behind the ball you are hitting (and another a few inches inside (towards the body) the ball about a foot back.

I am a 6' 240 pounder who has classic problems associated with that physique. I have the move of dropping the club behind me and swinging hard from the inside. With the new move, I *HAVE* to lift the club up more to *NOT* hit the ball that is about a foot back of the ball I am trying to hit.

So I'm striking the ball a lot better having worked with this drill for a week or two. BUT!!! the muscles in my right upper arm are getting painful. Now it may be that I am using some muscle I have not used before, and it's a matter of building up the muscle...or something else. One thing for sure, when I feel I make a really good swing, I get the pain in the muscle.

This is not rotator cuff stuff, BTW.

Should I work out the muscles there a bit more, or do I need to look at the swing. (Maybe getting the club behind me is getting painful, and I going beyond the limits of my flexibility with a proper swingplane (normally the higher I raise up my hand, the less further I can move my hands behind me).

Ask Vickie
 

I amd moving this post to the "Fit for Golf forum". Vickie Lake is the moderator and she has worked with a lot of athletes and golfers and she might be able to give you some tips on how to take care of this.

For me, I know that if I do something new I tend to get sore until the new muscles get used to it. What you are describing sounds like a muscle issue and not a joint issue - I think this is good news!

Thanks!

Not a tough fix
 

Not to worry, we can work on this easily. I am Crested Butte Colorado snow boarding and will be home on Sunday and give you a full reply. I am using a computer at an internet cafe and need to run. Will look forward to addressing this with you. I think it comes up more often than we expect. Thx for the question and the patience. Till Sunday. Vik

Finally I'm back
 

Ok, you're gonna hate this but the muscles associated with the humerous bone are affected by the core and also by the rotator cuff muscles which are attached to your shoulder blades, arms and shoulder joint, proper. So . . we could be talking about bicep / tricep or we could be talking about the deltoids. The problem could be that the point on your arm where the pectoralis and the latissimus dorsi attach is being challenged if your posture is not good and you are now holding yourself up to avoid hitting those first two balls. The best thing you can do is to 1. Get on the stretching program listed on some of the previous threads. I list a series that attend to the whole body so you can challenge the arms and the core. 2. Strength train but use lighter weight and more strict, slow movements to create full ranges of motion. You're not trying to create bulk or necessarily size (even though you will see slight increases) so keep it below 8 pounds; try bicep curls, hammer curls for biceps and tricep kickbacks and nose crunchers for triceps, forward raises, side lateral raises, and rear deltoid raises for the deltoids. For you chest be sure you are doing a butterfly motion and some sort of rowing actions with your hands both close to the body and wide from the body. Any basic strength training book will have these exercises (I love to go to the library and get some of the old standbys) and all can be accomplished with minimal weight in the comfort of your own home. You may be surprised that a 5 pound dumbbell will really challenge your deltoids if you are keeping your form (which usually means keeping your body still). If you are truly looking at well rounded fitness these exercises are only a small part of the package but these will get you started. 3. Rest between workouts atleast one full day. 4. After you have been on the driving range (especially) or on the golf course, if you feel a little sore then you are right. You are using the muscles differently and they should adapt to the new stress conditions barring some gross structural problem. Use heat on the muscles after the range either with a topical rub, heating pad, hot shower or a massage. This treatment helps to bring blood into the muscle to begin to heal the trauma created in overuse conditions.

It is just the nature of golf that we are repeatedly creating an specific action that can cause trauma. The body is designed to recover given enough rest and respect to the natural mechanical capability of the joints. Since it's been almost two weeks since your post I hope you are enjoying some relief. Please try heat for the muscle (ice is for join pain) releif and minimize the use of pain killers like aleve and advil.

Let me know how things are going. I will check the posts every two days and see how you are coming along. Vickie

Vickie:

Thanks for your reply.

I already have a few light weights at home. I will incorporate the things you have suggested.

I think one thing I have been doing is really going to an extreme to keep my hands and arms in front of me. In particular, I'm not letting my left arm come across my chest. The result is my arms are extended out from my body, and the hitting action have puts a lot of strain on the right upper arm.

Ok Frostback, Let's just get into this thing. First of all I often don't get the natural conversations of golfers because I am such new golfer and, as I have stated, I only learned with the The Golfing Machine. So please forgive me for not understanding what would be simple converstion to most golfers. I am about to bombard you with questions and beg you to be patient andstay in this process because I want so much to make good on my TGM committments. That means I have to keep learning.

1. I don't understand how you could go to an extreme to keep your hands and arms in front of you. I understand that you could lean too far forward. I understand that you could over-reach for the ball, which might be just a placement, stance, I understand how you can just loose track of your club and simple find yourself getting off plane. Could you elaborate the feeling or your intuition on this for me.

2. How can you not let your left arm come across your body? Does this mean that you somehow resist the motion? Could it be that you don't have enough flexibility and so you can't accomplish the level of reach (across your body) that you want? Or is it that you have some poor trainin habits that have you bending your left elbow or just not allowing a full extension?

3. Is the strain on the right arm because you are over-compensating for the lack of left arm activity? Or are you naturally overworking the right upper arm? Also, where exactly and when do you have the discomfort in your upper arm?

You must be really frustrated by this point but truly, these issues are the points most of us need to think thru to get the TGM mechanics working. Many people will avoid the symptoms, discomforts, you are experiencing by thinking thru these motions before the problems begin.

Lynn and I have one ,of many, exercise we are developing for TGM proper that allows you to 'imprint' the muscular pathway to reach with the left arm but even more specifically pull out with the right hand to refine the tension of your intelligent hands from address and beyond. We are working on making this available to you soon. In the meantime you can mentor me so I can apply my knowledge of anotomical function to the very appropriate mechanics of TGM.

Look forward to engaging soon. I will check daily to create a better stream of information. Thx, Vik

I guess in TGM language, I have no #4 pressure point. My swing can be mimicked by clasping your hands together directly in front of your sternum, raising them to shoulder level, and turing the torso without moving the position of the hands in relation to the sternum.. I keep my hands in front of my torso to the extreme. I feel that when I swing from this position, my right arm almosts resists the motion; I feel a reall pulling on my upper right arm, especially as the club moves through the impact area.

It's not that I cannot get the left arm across the chest, or resist it, I simply don't do it! In fact, for my morphology, it is the only area where I have good flexibility. I can get my arm across my chest almost to parallel with the shoulders...but I lack the flexibility to raise it above my shoulders.

Keeping the club in front of you is something that I have been taught repeatedly as a means of preventing getting the club stuck behind me, which is something a lot of us do that is a real swing killer

Frostback, I am going to the range this weekend and will try to work this out. My suspicion is that you are not getting enough rotation of either arm (the top of the humerus) in the shoulder joint proper and I hate to repeat myself but this is a function of the rotator cuff muscles. I am not implying that they are defective but may still be disfunctional due to lack of flex, lack of strength or simply lack of a functional agreement due to other postural issues.

Have you been doing the exercises? It sounds like we need to advance to some deltoid training which can be accomplished with simple bands and isometrics.

Please let me know about your training and I'll get back with you after I experiment a little off the tee. I think I'll get it more clearly after I fatigue my swing.

Vik

I've been doing the excercises. I have 10lb dumbells, which feels really light to me. I plan to get some 5 pounders though. I must admit I never thought to work the rotators more. I've also been doing some stretching (actually more stretching, as I usually do a little stretching). It'll take me a while to get a solid routine worked in with job, golf, chorse and the rest. I also have a Scwinn AirDyne excercise bike (one I can work with the arms f I want to).

On the course today, I took some swings with the arms in front of me to the extreme, and got he right arm pain again. I'm in a bit of a flux on this. I plan to go to Atlanta and visit y'all in a few months.

I should add that I have remarkably little power (golfwise) for my size and strength (and my swing isn't really bad, probably not great!). I've been playing since I was a kid and play 200+ rounds per year.

I got some 1.5kg weights. Using them produces a totally different feeling than the 10 pounders, and I can certainly "feel" what I am missing here. The excercises really do require the lighter weights, as suggested. I also used the arms to run the Schwinn Airdyne, and that also seems to work parts of my upper body that are really weak.

This has really made a difference, and will become part of my life for a while anyways, afterwhich I will look for a more complete tone-up kinda routine. The forward, lateral and rear raises have really revealed how weak my deltoids have become. Even after just a week or so, I'm seeing a difference in my golf. I suspect I have been compensating for this weakness somehow, causing the biceps to ache. I certainly did notice that as my deltoids became fatigued yesterday, I lost control of my swing.


If I start hitting decent length drives as a result of this, it will be a testimonail to the value of an expert inn the area of body conditioning to golf. I know a lot of people don't think much of this, but so far, for me, it's making a noticeable difference.

Thanks for the feedback Frostback. I really want to try to talk in natural tones and not like a physical therapist. So the fact that you are getting it is very helpful. It is also a real trick not to make broad generalizations and risky to be too specific. So I am glad you lowered the weights. As you increase try to keep it slow. You will see which muscles are responding more quickly and which ones need to move forward more slowly. Lynn and I have talked and I cannot quite get a clear answer to your problem. I thing the more general work will correct it. We are working on some streaming media to show some more difficult exercises than I like to provide just in print. Exercises like lunges and stretches that require a lot of refined motion, especially in the shoulders, are risky without a picture to explain the details. So I am patient until we get this going. Keep me posted and feel free to PM as you go along to refine your progress. Vickie

This is really starting to work well. My deltoids have become a lot softer and a little bigger(?). I definately have more control, shooting a 36 the last 9 I have played, which was in a competition. My normal swing, unhurried, is producing longer shots than it did before, and I must admit that accuracy has always been a hallmark of my game. Length has always been lacking though, causing me to overswing. If I can get decent length without overswinging, as I have started to get (no big deal, if I can get a drive out there 220-240, it's all I really need), it will really lower my scores.

Yea! frostback. I laughed to imagine your surprise at your success. It really is the natural outcome of consistently addressing your physiology. Congratulations, you must be doing it all right. I am happy for you. I have some more exercises I would like to add to your program, specifically some intermediate shoulder exercises and I'd like to know what you are doing for hips, lats and legs. Tweeking the program will keep your progress in motion. People often call a change in workout tricking your body. It isn't a trick at all. Your body is adapting to information. If the information doesn't change it is not required to respond. So we just address the muscles differently and the body is called to action. Elementary my dear fitness golfer. I'll get these exercises in text by the weekend and post them for you.

Thanks for the enthusiastic post. Vickie

I'm not doing anything with the hips and lats, but I do ride the Schwinn Airdyne bike every other day for the legs. My legs aren't what they should be stamina wise though.

With my game, I'm starting to overshoot greens on my approach shots, and have to redial a bit. Still can't get the driver out there though, but I figure it will come.

About time I answered this. I recommend you start walking post haste. The bike is a good cardio (heart health) exercise but it is limited in the usage of your glutes (buttocks). Since the glutes are your larges muscle and they are hugely participating if not driving the walking motion, you will limit your walking stamina if you don't train them. In the gym the eliptical training machines are the bomb. I have a treadmill ( loaned it out actually and do all of my walking/running outdoors in good weather) and eliptical trainer, a recumbent bike and a stepper (they were popular in 90's). I mix them up but use my eliptical much more than any of the others. The bike is my best bet on a day I just want to raise my heart rate but don't really want a big challenge. Now let me emphasise this is only because of the way I use the bike, it can be plenty challenging, but I find I need the glute work of a standing motion. There are ways to get more glutes on your bike by creating your motion out of your hip, you do that by intending too. Just try it, it will surprise you. Also think of trying to draw the pedal back up after you've pushed it down. Finally keep your feet flat and think of pushing thru the heel more than the toe.

Go to "increasing distance" on this forum and scroll down to Dave Clary's post. He has a link to a cycle site that could probably give you some more specific and useful suggestions for getting more out of your bike.

Just get those glutes working. Also remember that the lat is the primary stabilizer for your back so the more you use and understand it the more it can support your game.

Hope you're still seeing progress. It just may be time to tweek things. Vickie

Thanks! I will try some of the bike things (one thing I like to do on the bike is stand, it's hard on one of the parts on the pedals, but they are cheap!). I also need to start walking more. It's tough though when the cart comes with the club membership!

I got into a more armsy motion for a while thinking I was going to hit it out there with the big boys...and that just isn't happening, but upon settling down a little, my basic driver is noticeably longer than earlier, and my accuracy with short irons is substantially improved. I can do a lot more reps with the lat raises with a lot less pain too. It is an easy thing to do 2 X 20 with the 1.5 Kg dumbells every other morning for each of the 3 kinds of raises.

FWIW after all this, I no longer have the pain in the shoulder. Still do the deltoid excercises and some deltoid and other "big" torso muscle things. In the end though, doing the deltoid excercises got rid of the pain in the shoulder for me.

Just as an update. I've been working less on the deltoids, but walking a lot more (probably 36 holes or so a week, 9 at a time, occasionally 18 ).

Building a little upper body strength and stretching has lead to more of a turn of the upper body against a firm lower body (ie the X factor) than I was capable of before. This has just started to sink in, physically, though. The result is that I am exhausted after hitting not so many balls, as I am using muscles in the upper body I have not used before. What happens when I develop more co-ordination, and maybe some smoothness, who knows? But I'm optomistic.

Glad things are going so well. For torso motion make sure you are doing the torso twist and try to do some lat pulldowns with one arm at a time allowing your body to turn, as is the primary motion the lat makes. Remember this muscle is attacheed to your upper arm, your hip and most of the trunk vertebrae so if it is too tight you won't get the freedom in your turning motions. This is just a beginning at your new accomplished level . . YEAH!! The toughest thing about training your body is that is is really the same as your mind. As your body learns, improves in it's capacity to work, you have to keep adding and changing the information (exercise focus) to keep it raising to higher and higher levels. It can be frustrating unless you consider it interesting and realize it keeps you from getting bored. Keep it up and we can talk more specifically if you give me a list of your exercises. So glad your shoulder is better. Vicke