I’ve been working on the video to get it out this month (don’t jinx me now, fates), and am tentatively pleased to inform that I may be swinging again this spring or early summer.

I have talked about this mysterious left shoulder ailment that appeared sometime last year, where I went to make some swings after not having swung in days, and felt this pain or severe soreness in my left shoulder joint and in the muscles in my upper arm.

I had no clue what had caused this injury, as I hadn’t even swung a club in days and hadn’t felt anything out of sorts at the time.

It got pretty bad during the summer and into the fall, to the point I had trouble putting my jacket on.  The whole winter, no improvement.

Fast-forward to a couple of weeks back when The Welshman asked me if I thought I could still hit a 4 iron 250 yards (he’d been watching me do it on video in 2013).

I answered that if I could actually swing, I likely could do so, if not a little better, because of the theory work I’ve done in the intervening years and having fixed all of my personal flaws (left-dominant, strong grip, too right-biased in the setup due to chasing Dunaway), but my shoulder was preventing me doing so.

I was readying to book an appointment with my family doctor for a referral and imaging to assess any possible damage and surgery or rehab requirements, in fact.

The Welshman then shared with me that he’d been booked an appointment for a knee replacement (we had had to stop playing casual golf and hitting balls together around 2018 because of knee pain and a diagnosis of joint deterioration).

However, he’d begun doing isometric exercises on a whim (mostly wall squats) to see if he could strengthen the knee, and it worked.  In fact, his knee improved so much that he had canceled his knee replacement surgery.

I was dubious, but I told him I’d see what I could do with the shoulder – I began to just do range of motion exercises, which were accompanied by a good deal of pain and crackling/popping in the joint and ligaments.

Gentle motion, not violent or fast.

Gradually, my range of motion improved even as the pain and popping lessened (perhaps it was just scar tissue from an injury I hadn’t noticed when it happened?), and today, I began to lift a light dumb-bell and use a rubber tension band to simulate the load on the leading arm and shoulder on the back pivot.

That was huge, because until today, I couldn’t get more than a quarter turn on the back pivot before the shoulder pain made me abort any type of attempt at a full back swing.

I couldn’t have even gotten back as far as this, with the shoulder before:

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Still some soreness getting all the way to the top, but a far sight better than anything I’ve been able to do in the better part of a year.

I am hoping that, with this much improvement after just two weeks, the strengthening exercises will get me the rest of the way, but I’m just going to be careful and take things one day at a time.

I’ll be honest- the inability to swing has greatly affected me with regards to life quality.  I’ve been athletically active my entire life and thought that, without a shoulder replacement or other surgery, I might not be able to swing again.

There’s light at the end of the tunnel however, and it is giving me fresh incentive to slog through the video process (I haven’t made a video in 8 years and even back then it wasn’t something at which I was a natural).

I am dreaming of the day I can step back onto the range or tee deck, tee one up and let it fly.  Hopefully, that day isn’t too far off.  Anytime this year would be fabulous, I’m not going to lie.

Back to work on this video.

Thanks to The Welshman for his suggestion!