Golf everyday to none at all

It has now been nine weeks since I last picked up a golf club, nine weeks since I last walked for more than 30 minutes, nine weeks since I was able to move without having pain in my back. At first when the back pain started I thought it’d be resolved within a week or two, one month later still experiencing server pain I started to see a physiotherapists.

First physio gave me a list of exercises to perform, which was as useless as the proverbial chocolate fire guard, as all of the exercises she instructed me to do are the ones I’m already doing routinely.

Second physio went through exactly the same process as before, no treatment but did at least give me two different exercises to try. By this time when I stand up I’m obviously leaning to the left, this is being caused by the tightness in my lower back muscles, so one of the exercises was to try and loosen this area up. Second visit with the same physio, was extremely frustrating as he barley remembered anything from my first visit and what he did remember was wrong. Furthermore after the first visit he said he’d refer me for a second opinion, of which he’d plainly forgotten about and made constant excuses as to why he hadn’t before assuring me this time he’d refer me.

Deciding not to wait to be contacted, the following week after not hearing anything, I contacted the physio department and arranged an appointment to see a senior physiotherapist. That session I ended up cancelling due to work commitments and eventually got to see the physio for the fourth time in nine weeks yesterday (20 April 2012). At first this session started like the last few and I was obviously getting frustrated as she commented to the fact that I seemed to be quite dismissive of her instructions. Finally she started to realise why I was frustrated as I’d been coming here for nigh on three months and nothing had been done at all, to which she was very surprised about.

The session then actually started to be somewhat productive, a few new exercises were introduced and a lot of manipulation of my lower spine, and for the first time discovering that L2 to L4 vertebrae are not moving freely and are almost fussed together. After a few screams and various bending and twisting the back mostly felt the same, tried a slow golf swing but at the instant of the follow through the pain shoots across my right side. To give the physio her due she did try a few other things that might help by back with the golf swing, but she obviously wasn’t o-fay with the swing.

Next physio appointment is for next Thursday and she made sure I got a more experienced physio than I have previously seen, she also seems to think that the manipulations she had performed might loosen my back up in the next two to three days, although I’m not convinced at all.

What do I do now? I’m not convinced that having any type of operation is going to help long term; I’ve already had an operation on L4/L5 ten years ago and that didn’t work. The next step is to start with a physio that specifically helps people with the golf swing, rather than someone who’s experience is generic and none specific.

To be honest I haven’t really helped myself of recent, I’ve fallen very much back in to the mode of there’s no point of even trying any more. I can’t even practice the golf swing in slow motion; I can’t putt as the bending cause’s way to much pain, and due to all this I have virtually given up even trying and not bothering with my exercises on a daily or even two or three times a week basis. And to top it all off I’m feeling guilty for not playing golf, and so I should as I’m not really helping myself at all.

I seriously need to give myself a really good kick up the arse and get this sorted, not for the sake of getting back to playing golf but purely for the sake of improving my back. No exercise, no improvement, its blatantly obvious, no matter how many times I go to the physio nothing is going to improve on its own magically.

If the back doesn’t get better, then I can’t play golf, simple as that really. Have I lost my enthusiasm with golf? I’d say no, but am I actually doing anything serious about improving my back and thus getting back to golf, the answer to that is an resounding NO!

I have now fallen in to the same routine I always do. Start something new, put 110% effort in to the endeavour and then three months in I move on to something else and give up. This time I have a great excuse, I can’t play because of my back. To make this excuse stick I don’t actually do anything significant  to help myself and help my back improve so I can continue to blame my back on not being able to play golf, rather than pointing the finger directly at my own laziness.

Am I being harsh on myself? Defiantly not, as apart from random amounts of core exercises, that I can do at any time whilst sitting or walking and occasionally a small amount of stretching, I am not doing anything else to help improve my back and thus get back in to golf. I’m defiantly stuck in rut now and I’m failing to do anything about it to get myself out of this situation. I need to once again set some achievable goals over the next week, not to do 30 minutes exercise every day, as I’d fail instantly, but to at least do some exercise. I know once I start and if I manage to keep it going for a few weeks I’ll get in to a routine and it’ll be easier to keep up and inevitably can only help improve the state of my back.

Two things to do over the next week:

1: Get a Sports Physio appointment, with Golf Experience.

2: Start my exercise routine, again.

Back pain just getting worse

Last blog posting was from two weeks ago, when I was suffering from considerable back pain, although it was seemingly improving. However over the last two weeks, due to back pain not improving at all I’ve only been able to practice my golf on four occasions. The last session was cut short after 30 minutes due to pulling my back as soon as I started practicing the full swing. To say I’m getting frustrated with this is an understatement, not being able to practice golf makes me feel like a failure and that this whole golf challenge is a waste of time now. However I’ve got to try and be realistic, I’m not practicing golf out of choice, I’m trying to practice golf but the back pain won’t let me.

Why is my back pain not improving?

One area that hasn’t helped is that since I started my new job three weeks ago I’ve not been doing my exercises as religiously as I used to. It’s essential that I get back in to a regime to continue with my exercises, as these defiantly help with the back pain. Contradictorily, I’ve been spending my time going to the golf range practicing my swing and making the back pain worse, rather than spending that time doing my exercises that help with the back pain. I now, obviously, need to concentrate on recuperation and improving my back, rather than worrying about not playing or practicing golf. If my back pain doesn’t improve due to neglecting to do anything significant about it, then I won’t be playing golf at all in any consistent manner. Therefore I have to stop worrying about not playing much golf recently and feeling guilty about it and getting concerned that I’ll never get anywhere near achieving my golf challenge. Regardless of being able to shoot a par round within a year, at this rate I won’t even be playing golf by the end of the year, which is the most important part of this golf challenge. With that in mind, I’m not going to play golf this weekend; I’ve already cancelled my golf lesson which was scheduled for Tuesday. I now plan to do nothing golf related until next weekend and solely concentrate on improving my back.

Why is my back pain persistent?

When I started this golf challenge back in October I’d already been playing constantly for a month, and it wasn’t until late in December that the back pain started to cause problems. At this time the back pain didn’t last for days on end, let alone weeks, so I still managed to continue with practicing. It was in Late December that I first started trying to get my hips out of the way in the downswing. This requires me to disconnect the hips from the shoulders, rather than both of them being in the same angle during the whole swing. I believe, (although it could be coincidental,) that this was the start of my back pain problems and the more I have tried to practice this move the worse my back pain has got. The move does require quite a violent twist of the hips and it could be this that is contributing to my back pain problems. If I can determine specifically if this is related or even a direct cause to my back pain problems then I’m going to be in a problematic situation. This part of the swing is what creates the power and gives you your distance and when I get this move right I get an extra (on average) 30 yards. Which is a significant improvement, so rather than hitting my 7 iron 130 yards it’s now going 160 yards with a perfect swing, 150 yards at least with an average swing. Therefore if this movement is the cause, then one of two things is going to have to happen. One lose significant yardage or two learn a different way to swing the club that compensates for my back problems. With that in mind I’m now going to seek out a sports physiotherapist who has experience of the golf swing to be able to determine accurately what the problem is and suggest actions to take to prevent it getting worse. Need to find more information like this until I get to see a sports physiotherapist. Two things have helped me make this decision, talking to my wife Deborah about it and the guilt I feel for not playing and the Golf Geek. Both have made the same suggestions and that’s to take a rest for a while, guilt free and concentrate on my exercises for my back. I have kept this to myself for too long and not really talked about it at length, now that I have I feel I have managed to lift the burden of guilt.

Back Pain attributed to Golf for two weeks?

With one free week left before I restart work, I thought I’d get some decent time practicing unfortunately I started developing server back pain.  On the second day of practicing on the local pitch and putt course attempting to improve my short game, I slightly pulled my back after playing for 40 mins. Rather than stop I did a few exercises to try and loosen up the back pain, then I hit three more balls of the next tee and on the third I screamed out in pain. I had a shooting pain down the right side of my back, which made it a struggle to even walk back to the car.

I’ve always had back pain since I was around twelve years old, and spending twelve years as a nurse didn’t help matters either. So I’m used to having back pain and always do specific exercises to try and prevent any injury to my back. However this doesn’t always work, sometimes I can pull my back just my turning or bending over and subsequently I usually have back pain for two or three days.

The next day my back pain was even worse, so I got some thermal straps to apply to the area and took as many Ibuprofen as I could. I continued in this vein until Saturday when I had a golf lesson. Waking up with little back pain to speak off and just an aching back, I went to my golf lesson. Within half an hour of starting the lesson, the back pain had started to flare up once again. Deciding to stop there and then I didn’t do anything golf related until the following Wednesday.

Going to a new golf range, as I’m now commuting between Sheffield and Leeds I decided to take it very easy and only got 50 balls. Starting with the sand wedge and slowly building up through my irons to the 7 iron, my back was seemingly holding out, until the last few balls, when I felt a sharp twinge in my back.

The next day after wearing a thermal strap on back all day I decided to go back to the golf range and try again. This time I had no back pain at all when I started and even when I’d finished I just had a slight ache, which is common. Surprisingly even though I have barely done any golf for over a week my swing was relatively smooth and the ball striking was very consistent, looks like the old adage “A change is as good as a rest” has worked somewhat.  I had been worried over the last week that I wasn’t doing any golf and this would ultimately have a detrimental effect on my Golf Challenge. Fortunately the time off doesn’t appear to have been detrimental at all, in fact it’s done the opposite.

So I’m now hoping the back has got better, but on Friday I decided not to go to the range and actually spend some quality with Deborah as I had barely seen her all week. Today I’ve done no golf, but I have done a full session of exercises and the back still feels relatively fine, no back pain at all.

Tomorrow I’m going to be playing a round at a new golf course (Sitwell Park Golf Club) with Sam, I will be taking it very easy and I won’t be bothering myself with the score, obviously I’ll keep score, but that’s not the aim tomorrow. The aim tomorrow is to just play a round of golf, enjoy it and finish without any back pain.

Golf practice update – FLAT LINING

Since my last Golf Practice Summary my progress has basically flat lined, I have defiantly plateaued. This might be disconcerting if I hadn’t expected it to happen. Over the first three and half months I was seeing significant progress in my golf practice sessions and on the golf course. Since the start of this year that progress has now become almost imperceptible. The areas I’m seeing improvement in are tiny, such as I don’t duff shots as often, my swing feels smother and more in control and shot striking is more consistent.

So what am I moaning about then?

I wouldn’t say I’m moaning I’m just convincing myself that this was inevitable. As I mentioned in my last blog improving from having no skills in golf to having a modicum of skill is relatively easy, but once you get down to around a 15 handicap level progress then becomes exponentially harder. This is somewhat difficult to except after seeing months of improvement week in week out in both golf practice session and on the golf course.

The focus now with my golf practice sessions is to continue being consistent and increasing the feel of the downswing and follow through. Often during my golf practice sessions I have moments where I have amazing feel of the swing, unfortunately this doesn’t happen for long. The positive here is that when I have this feel my shots are almost perfect, which strengthens my resolve and commitment to my Golf Challenge.

This feel is starting to last slightly longer as time increases and the best part of this is when I have the feel the shot is effortless. I’m not swinging the club as fast as I can, wrenching my body round or even thinking about hitting the ball. In these situations my only focus is to be smooth and in control of the whole swing. This focuses my mind on my body and not the ball and then I’m not actually controlling anything I’m just letting the swing happen naturally.

There are two things I suddenly realised last night that I’ve stopped doing in my golf practice sessions and on the golf course and that’s using my Clear Key© and anchoring my great shots. When and why I stopped doing this I don’t recollect, so I now need to get this back in to both my golf practice sessions and on the golf course.

I now have about 6 weeks before I can start to get my handicap, I’m aiming to get a 15 or better. What will I feel if it’s worse than that? I’ll be disappointed of course, but I will accept it and move on positively knowing that If I hadn’t have done all the work over the last 4 and half months I’d have been lucky to have got better than a default 28 handicap.

Golf Challenge four months in

As suspected at the start of my Golf Challenge, my initial improvements were quick and noticeable, especially on the golf course. At the start of my Golf Challenge I scored a 125 (+53), just over three months in to my Golf Challenge I got down to 88 (+16). Amazing progress one might think, 37 shots taken off my score, I’m not going to pull myself down or my achievements but this part of the Golf Challenge is relatively easy. I have now got to a level where the majority of golfers are at and struggle to get passed.

The average golfer’s handicap is around 15, and this average hasn’t changed for over 20 years, despite the vast improvements in equipment, why? The most obvious answer to that question is that it’s bloody hard to get better than that and requires an immense amount of time and commitment to improve. Most people don’t have this time and the time they do have they would rather be playing than practicing. Furthermore practice isn’t just about going to the range and hitting some balls thinking the more balls I hit the better I’ll get, it doesn’t work that way. To really improve your handicap you have to practice the right things in the right way for a long time.

I’m happy with my progress up until now, however this is now when it starts to get really hard. I set my Golf Challenge to break par in one year, this doesn’t mean I’ll have a really low handicap, but it does mean I need to be more consistent. To that end I need to be breaking 80 on a regular basis, I have set myself the goal to have broken 80 by the end of April, so I have two months to go. By that time I will be halfway through my Golf Challenge.

With golf once you have the basics of the swing laid down then it’s about small imperceptible tweaks here and there in the swing and also making sure I don’t start slipping into my old ways. I feel I know and understand the basics but as mentioned in yesterday’s blog, implementing these into the full speed swing is anything but simple. Other crucial areas also need to be focussed on these being putting, chipping and pitching. To that end I play on par three courses a lot to hone my short game, and spend many hours a week just practicing the short game.

I still remain confident that I can succeed in my Golf Challenge, even though I do have days of disillusionment and think what the hell am I doing. I also have strong feelings, especially recently that I’m never going to get this, but then I counter them with knowing that it takes time and plenty of it. I’m putting in the time and I’m practicing the right things and I know I’m now at a stage where massive improvements are no longer going to happen. The main conciliation is that I’m becoming more consistent on the golf course which is the main area that is going to improve my score and enable me to achieve my Golf Challenge.