Week 39 Update

The Injury Bug

Welcome Players! Read below for the Week 39 Update.

Contents:

• Habit Tracker

• Training Log

• Skill Practice

• Golf Performance

• Wrap-Up

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Habit Tracker

Unfortunately on my bike ride last week I somehow caused a flare-up of an old SIJ injury I’ve dealt with in the past.

It’s the first time in about a year since I’ve had a flare up, which is a good thing. I’ve learned how to become well aware of what to do when the pain flares up as it leaves me pretty hobbled. Sitting, standing are painful and uncomfortable, and most athletic movements don’t feel great.

But with that being said the timeline is relatively consistent, 0-4 days of severe limitations, 4-8 days of minor limitations, and then 8-21 days for typical full resolution.

Some flare-ups are worse some are not, but I never really know how bad it’s going to be until it’s over. I’m going on day 7 as I write this and have been able to play golf and perform light resistance training workouts.

While I’m not feeling great, the silver lining is the injury doesn’t limit or cause uncomfortableness in my golf swing, so at got back to playing on Friday.

I think I’m done on the bike for the next few weeks until I’m confident I’ve fixed whatever problem caused the flare-up, and in the meantime will be changing up the focus of my resistance training workouts and trying to practice golf every day.

Training Log

• Resistance Train (Gym): 2

• Conditioning (Road Bike): 0

The road bike is OOC for now, as I really don’t want to turn a small problem (injury flare-up) into a big problem (re-injury).

I’ll pull back on my resistance training as well as I’ve been lifting heavy the past few months.

While it’s not what I’d want to be working on, the nice part of being adaptable and fluid with your training is listening to your body when it tells you to change direction. In my younger, more stubborn days I would not have been likely to comply but with experience comes wisdom and I go with the grain, not against it now.

Skill Practice

A 2.5 hour range session (partly in the rain) on Sunday morning was a great way to work out the kinks.

Coming up to the injury last week I was in a really good groove with consistent swing practice and was feeling as fluid in my swing as I’ve ever felt. Of course 5 days of no practice plus an aggravated injury means I lost a lot of the feels I developed over the previous weeks, so I was focused on just working those feels back in.

I was honestly pretty pleased with my technique considering the circumstances, but this week I’ll look to double-down and return to the point of my swing where I was pre-injury.

Golf Performance

I did play a round last week but it was off the books.

I originally showed up to the driving range just to practice, but ran into someone I knew and we decided to head out to play.

It happened relatively quick so no warm-up, no range time, literally we got there and went right out on the first tee. Not ideal scenario by any means.

I shot a 53 on the front when I decided to put away the scorecard, focus on just swinging easy again and removed the pressure of scoring from my head.

While it’s not ideal to abandon scoring mid-round, I really did it because I noticed I was focusing more on the score (or implications of scoring) on every shot and it was detracting from both my focus and enjoyment of the round.

I don’t want to get to a point where I’m constantly evaluating whether I’m playing good or poor and then sizing myself up to my own expectations. If I notice that in my mental, I’m more than OK to shut down the scoring for the day and get my focus back to enjoying the game of golf and playing within myself.

Wrap-Up

This is the first time this year that I’ve had an injury inhibit my progress.

The good news is that it’s an old injury and one I am more than equipped to deal with quickly and efficiently.

The bad news is that it definitely took a hit to both my mental and my consistency of practice.

As with all things I’m focused on staying present and focusing on the things I can control. This is the way.