One of the more common shoulder injuries for golfers is shoulder impingement. This can be particularly troublesome in the backswing of the lead arm. When impingement occurs, the rotator cuff muscles (supraspinatus) and bursa become inflamed as they get pinched between the head of the humerus and the acromion. This can occur for many reasons but to avoid hurting yourself in the gym there are some lifting rules you will want to follow.

Rules For Improving Your Golf Swing:

• • Avoid lateral raises or side shoulder raises past 90 degrees of shoulder abduction. That is, don’t let the hands rise past shoulder height when doing the exercise.

  • Take the upright row exercise out of your workout routine as this movement creates the same mechanism (internal rotation and shoulder elevation) that can lead to impingement syndrome

  • Be cautious when lifting overhead. If you do any overhead lifting make sure it is done with dumbbells and not a barbell. The dumbbell will give you freedom of movement to accommodate the range of motion of your shoulder. If you have poor upper-body posture you may want to get rid of overhead exercises all together as they are not really doing much to strengthen your rotator cuff musculature or your scapula stabilizers.

  • If you love to bench and do pullups make sure you devote enough time to training the rotator cuff muscles as well. Strong rotator cuff muscles work to stabilize and depress the arm keeping a comfortable open space between the humerus and the acromion. If the deltoid and pec muscles become overdeveloped, they may overpower the smaller stabilizers of the shoulder and lead to shoulder pain later on.

If in your golf swing you are having pain in your lead arm on the backswing you may want to make sure you are not over rotating your hands in the take away. In addition you may need to create more trunk rotation to take the stress off of the lead arm as it works its way into the backswing. If you are having some pain in your shoulder, seek out a good trainer as they may be able to evaluate your current lifting program and make suggestions as to what exercises you should be doing and shouldn’t be doing.