Tight Left Arm and Shoulder Symptoms

Video Transcript

Denis: Do you get the club too far inside on the backswing and end up bringing the club over the top on the way down? Often with players I see with this fault, they end up having quite a flat shoulder plane which can encourage the club to the inside and as the shoulders realign themselves back into position it can encourage the club to come from outside the target line to inside the target line after impact. Quite often I see this fault having its roots once again in physiology, perhaps the misconception that the left arm really needs to be tight and straight at address combined with the fact that the repetitive nature of the game tends to create the left side of the body going a bit higher than the right side of the body for a right handed player. Ramsay: So you start to see that the front muscles, the pectorals and biceps, get really tight, and this starts to affect the feel and the strength of the muscles on the opposite side, the triceps, the rotator cuff and the lower muscles of the back of the shoulder blade. This causes the arm to start to get disconnected or tight and having no feel through the shoulder on takeaway. This also causes a lot of injuries because the shoulder blade is forward, we get a lot of impingement and a lot of tension going through the arm itself. It is really important that we try to get away from this position and get a proper golf lesson to make sure this does not happen and prevent injury. Denis: To get a feel for where the left shoulder should be at address and where the left arm should be, we can go back to the exercise we did earlier on. Put a club vertically down your spine and tilt forward to your address position, bring the club back out in front of you and then hold your arms out to the side, then just let your hands fall into position in front of you. You should become aware of the relationship between the upper left arm, the chest and the shoulder area. As soon as I start to tighten or put excessive strength into that arm it starts to change the position of the shoulder. Ramsay: We are now going to show you some exercises, once again that you have to do in sequence, that will prevent a tight left arm from happening. We will also give you some physiological corrective exercises to make sure that you get in good technical positions.

Ramsay McMaster
The Melbourne Golf Injury Clinic
1100 Dandenong Road
Carnegie, VIC 3163
Melbourne, Australia

Ramsay McMaster is Director of the Melbourne Golf Injury Clinic and serves as a fitness consultant to PGA Tour Pros around the world. He is also the author of Get Fit for Golf and Training for Golf.

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