Here is a pattern worth noticing.
Ask golfers when their back, elbow or wrist started bothering them, and a surprising number will trace it not to a round, but to a practice session. Often a long one. Often on mats. Often after a lesson, when they were working hard on something new.
The driving range is where a lot of golf injuries are manufactured, and it is almost never treated as a risk.
Here is why, and what to do differently.
The Repetition Problem
Start with the raw numbers, because the comparison is stark.
In an eighteen hole round, you take somewhere in the region of 70 to 90 full swings, spread across four or five hours, with several minutes of walking or riding between each one. Your body gets recovery time whether you want it or not.
In a large bucket at the range, you might take 80 to 100 full swings in under an hour, with a few seconds between each.
Same number of swings. Entirely different load.
And the recovery time matters enormously. Tissue tolerates repeated loading considerably better when there is time between repetitions. Compressing the same volume into a fraction of the time increases the demand substantially, even though the swing count looks identical on paper.
The Fatigue Problem
Now add what happens as a session goes on.
Your mechanics deteriorate as you tire. Posture rises, the turn shortens, sequencing slips and the arms start taking over from the body.
Which means the last forty balls of a long session are hit with a swing you do not want, on tissue that is already fatigued.
That is a poor trade in both directions. You are rehearsing a pattern you are trying to eliminate, and you are loading tissue at the point where it is least able to handle it.
The golfers who get hurt at the range are frequently the most committed ones. They stay longest, hit the most balls and work the hardest. The injury is not a result of carelessness. It is a result of volume.
The Mat Problem
This one deserves its own section because it is specific and it is fixable.
Mats do not let the club pass through.
On turf, a slightly heavy shot takes a divot. The club decelerates gradually and the turf gives way. On a mat, the club bounces, and the impact is transmitted back up the shaft into your hands, wrists and forearms.
Which means the fat shot that costs you a yard on the course costs your wrists and elbows considerably more at the range.
This matters most for:
The elbow. Repeated impact and vibration through the forearm is a direct contributor to golfer’s elbow and its counterpart on the outside of the joint.
The wrist, particularly the lead wrist, which absorbs a great deal at impact.
And the hands, including the small bones that occasionally fracture from repeated impact in golfers.
What to do about it: practice on grass where you can. Where you cannot, reduce your mat volume, pay more attention to strike quality than to ball count, and treat any wrist or elbow soreness after a mat session as information rather than something to work through.
The Lesson Problem
A specific and very common scenario.
You have a lesson. You are given something to work on. You go away motivated, and over the following two weeks you hit considerably more balls than usual, performing a movement your body has not done before, with your attention entirely on technique.
Three risk factors stacked together. More volume than normal, an unfamiliar movement pattern, and no attention paid to how the body is responding.
This is one of the most common histories we hear from golfers presenting with a new back, wrist or elbow problem.
It is not an argument against lessons. It is an argument for building the volume gradually when you are working on something new, rather than treating enthusiasm as a training plan.
What a Better Practice Session Looks Like
Warm up first. Ten minutes. Easy movement, leg swings, trunk rotations, then progressively building swings starting at half speed. Your first full effort should not be your first ball.
Build in rest. Take a break every 20 to 30 balls. Walk around, drink something, let the tissue recover. A 60 minute session with breaks is a different proposition from 60 minutes of continuous hitting.
Vary the clubs. Hitting 60 consecutive drivers loads the same pattern at the same intensity repeatedly. Working through the bag changes the demand.
Cut the session when quality drops. The honest test is whether your last ten balls are better than your first ten. If they are consistently worse, the session should have ended earlier.
Favor shorter, more frequent sessions. Three 30 minute sessions produce more improvement and less injury risk than one 90 minute session.
And include short game. Putting and chipping build the part of your game that actually lowers scores, at a fraction of the physical cost.
The Thing That Protects You Through All of It
Strength work, twice a week.
The golfers who handle practice volume well are the ones with the capacity to absorb it. Hip and glute strength, trunk strength, grip and forearm strength, and shoulder strength.
This is the thing almost no recreational golfer does, and it is the single best protection against the pattern described above. It also tends to help the golf, since a body that can rotate and control force makes a better swing than one that cannot.
Signs Your Practice Volume Is Too High
Soreness that is still there the next morning, rather than settling overnight.
The same area complaining after every session.
A niggle that was once occasional and is now predictable.
Needing to warm up longer than you used to just to feel normal.
And a general sense that you are more sore after practice than after playing. That one tells you the range is the problem, not the golf.
Use the next morning test throughout. Back to your usual baseline means the session was appropriate. Clearly worse means reduce by roughly 20 to 30 percent and build back gradually.
When to Get It Assessed
Seek prompt medical assessment for sharp, localized pain rather than general soreness, pain that changes your swing, numbness or tingling in the hands, a wrist that hurts to grip or rotate, pain at rest or at night, swelling, or anything persisting beyond two weeks despite reducing your volume.
Pain in the hand or wrist following repeated impact deserves particular attention, because small bone injuries in the hand are a recognized problem in golfers and they respond considerably better when identified early.
And seek emergency care for chest pain or pressure, unusual breathlessness, dizziness or fainting during activity.
Practice Hard Without Paying for It
Most golf injuries are a volume problem rather than a technique problem, and the range is where the volume accumulates fastest.
Kriz Physical Therapy offers a free discovery visit at no cost and no obligation. You will get an assessment of your strength, mobility and movement, an honest read on where your body is currently vulnerable, and a program that lets you practice as much as you want to.
If something is already bothering you, we will tell you plainly what it is and what it will take to sort out.
