Hi there fellow golf ball wackers - heres a very valuable lesson.

But First,  lets look at repetitive strain or golfers/tennis elbow.

Let me tell you, this is very painfull and most times it will stop you from playing golf and if servere enough will stop you from doing any arm related movement ( even picking a drink up of the table).

It can occur in a few ways. One is over-practising, getting pain and ignoring it.  Another way it can occur is from changing a swing pattern. Once your muscles have groved a pattern, any change will effect new muscles which will need to build up like the old ones to protect the tendon. Without this, obviously,the tenden will be strained.And there you have it, elbow, shoulder and hand problems.

There are many exercises you can do to get all the muscles in your arms and shoulders to a much better condition.  If you can't find any yourself, stay tuned, because I'll be posting them on this site soon.

Muscle tone contributes to strength, and strength also contributes to distance. Just look at, say, Greg Norman and Carrie Webb. They're not large people, but they hit the ball a mile!  Why?  They are FIT.  They have built up their bodies to tolerate every day playing of golf.  They have built up as much protection as they can to protect their bodies from such things as repetitive strain injury.

Now, you probably don't play as much as the pros, but it is just as important to understand and to hopefully prevent these problems in yourself. 

One more thing - I have been unable to play golf now for the last 4 months due to golfer's elbow.   Hmm...  I wonder why?  I have been trying my hardest to work out why it's happened.  I have always practiced a lot and always been quite fit. So what happened?  ...I ...Don't ...Know. Only kidding~!  I have always had a good understanding about golf, but this one i missed.

I have a set of Ping irons which i love, but just like a lot of golfer"s I'm always trying to get just a bit more distance. I always thought that the clubs were a bit short for me, so after talking to a few people, I decided to extend the shafts an extra 1 inch. The one thing i didn't do after that was check the swing weight.

What I did was change everything .The weight, the lie angle and the flex. Apart from the lie and the flex, the weight, I believe, did it. I changed the weight from a D1 to a D6, creating much more weight and pressure on my wrists and elbows.  By the way, after changing the club back to standard, my problem has improved greatly. All I can say is that golf is a learning experience that never ends ..............