Shoulder Injury: Recovery and Rehab

I know I just wrote about Bob’s back , but I recently received an e-mail from Patty, who lives in Kansas City, Mo. She asked some questions that I felt were important and needed to be answered to all our visitors.

She gave me some background on herself, including the fact that she played 50 to 60 rounds a year. She had taken many lessons, most of which wanted her “to turn her left shoulder under her chin.” She then noted that she began having pain in her right shoulder last year, and that arthroscopic surgery revealed more problems than just a tear in the labrum (that’s the fibrous ring of cartilage attached to the rim of a joint.) The doctor found a tear in the rotator cuff as well. So she’s now faced with a much longer and more demanding rehab and recovery. She then stated, “I started thinking about changing my golf swing as golf may have caused this.”

Her first question, and a really good one, is, “Does your swing help people who have recovered from shoulder surgery and has it helped them avoid re-injuring it?”

Absolutely! Positively! You Bet! The Peak Performance Golf Swing (PPGS) will help players who have recovered from shoulder (back, knee, hip, and elbow) surgery and will help them avoid re-injuring it. There is an orthopedic surgeon up North who routinely gives his rehabbed golf patients my name and phone number, telling them if they come to see me and learn the PPGS they won’t be back as patients!

The rotational swing requires the huge backswing torso turn. It requires swinging the arms around the body (with the PPGS, the arms are swung in front of the body) and emphasizes the maximum extension/stretching of the arms at the top of the backswing. This places the neck, shoulders, arms and back under extreme stress. This forcing of the maximum width of arch and stretching the arms as far away from the torso as possible, really places extreme forces on the neck, shoulders and elbows as well as the back. Then, the powerful and fast torso turn to the finish, along with the right arm remaining straight and extended (and swinging around the body) hits all the same body parts again with even more torque, tension, stress and strain. All this keeps pulling and stretching muscles, tendons and ligaments to their maximum limit. They get tighter and tighter until, like a guitar string wound too tight, they tear and you are injured.

The human body is not designed to turn and twist 90 or more degrees in the backswing and well beyond 90 degrees to the finish like most conventional instruction is teaching. The human spine from the neck to the pelvis has only around 25 degrees of rotation from top to bottom. The body is like any tool in a tool box. It has a design and function. If you violate that design and function, the body will not perform efficiently and consistently and, will likely break if you put too much stress and torque on it.

Lastly, Patty asked how does the swing I teach, the PPGS, differ from Natural Golf, as she was looking at that method until she found the PPGS website.

Natural Golf’s swing motion is close to the PPGS as far as swinging vertical and hitting the ball with an ON line and square impact and finishing with the torso relatively square to the target. The big difference is all in the setup. Natural Golf wants the feet extremely wide, and the arms extremely high (as they want the club gripped in the lifeline of the left hand) and they are extremely extended/stretched out, causing problems with balance at address as well as during the swing. Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr .Ned Armstrong (my mentor for body design and motion) believes and teaches that a wide stance, wider than shoulder width is one of the chief contributors to back problems. Add over stretched arms, causing the upper torso to be bent over too much and out too far from the hips adds to the stress in the back as well as the upper body. Simply put, the Natural Golf setup is anything but natural or dynamically balanced. With the high degree of stress in the swing, the probability of injury increases.

The PPGS is based 100 percent on physics and physiology. It has married both these sciences to produce the most holistic golf swing that is in harmony with nature. The PPGS is the most energy efficient, has the least margin of error and is the least stressful golf swing on the human body. These qualities reduce and almost eliminate completely the stresses that cause injury and, after rehabbing an injury, help avoid a recurrence.

The Surge!

P.S.  Check out our new DVD offer on the Painless PPGS.

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