The return of Tiger Woods was pretty phenomenal at The Masters Golf Tournament this past weekend. I love great come backs. Partly because that’s the passion that I serve in my clients, come backs to performance.
Google Golfer’s Elbow and you’ll find companies selling a billion different products under the guise of informing you first. As you probably already know information is not enough, and buying tools (for the most part) is like buying external products like new beds or endless pillows to fix an internal problem.
Don’t get me wrong, there are a few good tools, but IMO the best tools actually help change the internal environment, and information heavy articles don’t even come close to doing that justice. As a manual therapists my colleagues and I are baffled at why anatomy is even a thing that’s mandatory in education. Because, honestly, it’s not as important as other things, like understanding how pain works (and it’s a lightweight anatomical issue) the skill and sensitivity of touch, helping people create new movement patterns that break old ones.
Gymnastics instructors, martial arts instructors, etc don’t need anatomy. Why is the massage and bodywork field even thought of as part of the medical field.
Basically, when things are made medical practitioners and the public think that protocols are the proper application and they aren’t. Sometimes protocols work, when luck strikes. But for the most part, if you want something to shift you’ve got to go Beyond Protocol. And that’s what get’s my clients to where they want and need to be.
2 Step Movement Solution:
If you’re suffering from pain around your elbow, whether it’s golfer’s or tennis elbow you’ve been wrapped up in a certain repetitive motion. I can guarantee that you’re either twisting your forearm or tensing it often throughout your day. If you can become aware of doing one or both of these, that’s the first habit repetition you want to break.
Habits aren’t always easy to notice, they are so ingrained in us that we overlook how often we do them and how much impact they’ve had on us. The first step to change is ALWAYS, awareness. Become aware of the habit first. Learn as much as you can about it, not through Google, but through your own FELT experience.
The foundation of my system is Mindset, without a growth mindset there’s no room for change. I teach my clients is to expect pain, and actually, welcome it! This is the essence of awareness and getting to know the details of the issue that no professional or scan can offer.
The second thing you want to do is figure out what you do often, and do its opposite. The type of professional you go to will only offer their limited perspective. A massage therapist will tell you what’s tight. A physical therapist will tell you what needs to be strengthened, a chiropractor will tell you what’s out of alignment, and so the limitation of professions is apparent, their bias is slim and their solutions few. Your solution needs to be tailored to you. A combination of approaches will give you the best results, look at the issue with complexity and completeness.
If you rotate your forearm in one direction often, then practice rotating it in the opposite, sometimes it’s as simple as that.
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