Keep Your Wrists Hingeing all Season Long  Special to PGATOUR.com Continuing with our series on how golf fitness training and exercises can benefit your game during the season, we move on to the area of the body that has caused a few problems as of late at the professional level, the wrists. 
Yes, the wrists are involved in every phase of the swing and are very active in the execution of the golf swing. Outside of the lower back, the wrists are the most commonly injured area of the body. Why is the case? The answer can be traced back to the biomechanics of the golf swing. The physical structures of the wrists are used excessively in the golf swing. The wrists beginning with address and gripping of the club, into rotation of the forearms, hinging during the backswing, maintenance of the hinge towards impact, and release of the club are placed under stress each and every swing. Multiply this workload on the wrists over one round or an entire tournament. You can begin to see how much work the wrists have to do in the execution of the golf swing. Knowing the amount of work the wrists are required to perform in executing the golf swing, we can begin to understand why they are often injured as a result. Referring back to information we have discussed previously, we are aware that the golf swing is classified as a "repetitive athletic movement". This means the muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons of your body are performing the same movement pattern over and over again for an extended amount of time. Over time these structures of the body become fatigued and once the muscles, ligaments, or tendons of the body are tired they can easily become injured. This is exactly what can happen to your wrists. To counteract the stresses placed upon the wrist by the golf swing, as well as to prevent fatigue and injury, steps can be taken on the "physical side" of the equation. These simple steps are the development of increased strength and endurance in the structures related to the wrists. The actual physical structures we are talking about are the muscles of the hands and forearms. Increasing the endurance and strength within these muscular structures can help prevent a wrist injury from occurring. So exactly how do we go about preventing injury? It's the same as we do with the lower back -- through the implementation of golf fitness exercises for the hands and forearms. Such exercises will develop strength and endurance in both your hands and forearms thus assisting in the prevention of an injury. A simple-to-execute golf fitness exercise for the wrists is what I call Rotators. This is a great exercise for the hands and forearms involving rotation of the wrists. Simply grasp a pair of light dumbbells with both hands. Place both of your elbows next to your ribs. Bend the elbows at 90 degrees with your palms facing inward. Slowly rotate the palms upward keeping the elbows next to your ribs. Focus on creating the rotation in the forearms. Continue to rotate the palms upward until they are facing the sky. Pause for one second and slowly reverse the movement by rotating your palms towards the floor. Again, keep the elbows in contact with your ribs. Continue to rotate the hands downward until your palms are facing the floor. Pause for one second and repeat the rotation upward. Alternate back and forth for 12-15 repetitions. Remember to execute the exercise correctly, use a weight that you can handle, and stay consistent with this exercise. |
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