GenInv – Health and Wellness

Just a few months ago I thought that I would never play golf again. What started out as a sore shoulder had deteriorated until I was in constant pain, I lost the strength in my shoulder and raising my arm to shoulder height was impossible yet alone swing a golf club. To add insult to injury it was stopping me getting any sleep at night so that I was becoming more irritable with each passing day.

It all started when I was helping a friend to put up a timber garage. We had the first three sides

up and were just putting in the fourth when a gust of wind caught it. I grabbed the panel to stop it falling and felt a popping sensation in my left shoulder.

The next day my shoulder was painful so I took some pain killers and just carried on. What I was unaware of at the time was that I had torn my rotator cuff. It was only a partial tear but the problem was that where the muscle had become damaged and inflamed it was now catching on part of my shoulder blade and getting damaged more each ti

me that I tried lifting my arm up to the side or front.

After two weeks of increasing pain I visited my doctor who diagnosed a rotator cuff problem and sent me to a specialist. After normal conservative treatment with steroids and physical therapy, my shoulder was still no better so eventually I was sent for surgery to free up the shoulder impingement.

By now, I had been away from the golf course for six long months and was not too happy when my surgeon told me that I was facing anything up

to an 18 month recuperation period. I had a couple of weeks off work to rest my arm, post op,so decided to spend some time reading up about shoulder injuries on the internet. Typing one handed slows you down a bit but I persevered.

I found out that shoulder exercises are the key to a full recovery. This is equally true of simp[le shoulder injuries as well as recovery from surgery. So once my surgery wounds had healed I started exercising. By now my shoulder was weak so I had to start with passive exercises, designed to maintain and improve mobility and then gradually brought in low weight, low resistance exercises to build up the muscles.

The aim is not to just focus on the rotator cuff but also to focus on every muscle that is involved in shoulder movement. A rotator cuff tear is unlikely to mend quickly but you can still have a healthy fully working shoulder as long you strengthen all the other muscles. They in turn support the rotator cuff taking the strain and allowing it to heal more quickly.

There are two important things to know about a successful shoulder exercise programme. One is to make sure that you rest the muscles properly in order that they can heal  beforehand, the other is that you build up the exercises gradually, being careful to avoid any exercise that causes you pain. In shoulders, pain invariably means that you are causing more damage.

I managed to reduce the eighteen months down to four months and have been playing golf again now for about eight weeks. The sweetener in this whole episode is that I now find myself hitting the ball about ten percent further on the fairways.