Pain in upper right arm

[Frostback2005]

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).

[Trig]

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!

[Frostback2005]

Thanks!

[Vickie]

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

[Vickie]

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

[Frostback2005]

Vickie:

Thanks for your reply.

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

[Frostback2005]

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.

[Vickie]

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

[Frostback2005]

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

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

[Vickie]

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