Another progress update...

Well I'm still going to physical therapy twice a week, last night when I was there one of the PT's who hadn't seen me in 2 weeks was amazed at the additional range of motion that I had obtained in such a short period of time. Overall he feels I'm missing about 20%, but that is focused on 3 key areas, let's see if I can explain this...Laying down on your back, right arm 90 degrees from your body, then bent at the elbow straight up to the ceiling. Moving the arm as far forward as possible from the elbow and as far back as possible, I'm still tight on both of those movements. Then standing up, take your left hand and scratch up behind your back as high as you can go, I can get almost to my neck. Then with the right hand, I can only get it to the middle of my back, a LOT of tightness in the shoulder there. Problem is, that's the part that tucks in neatly into your ribs on your backswing, so I still have a bit of a chicken wing going on there.

Ahem, you know...if I was to actually swing a golf club, which I don't because my doctor hasn't approved that yet. (cough, bullshit, cough). Anyway, the first 10 or so wedges I've hit have been blocks, not a surprise since that's about 2 months early and I'm kind of tentative. But this weekend when I was out putting (oh, and chipping and hitting 40 yard pitch shots, haha) I took 4 more swings with a SW and stone cold nutted them, dead straight, no block, nice divots, ah that felt great!

So I met with the Dr. Monday for my 10 week follow up (was actually 9 1/2 weeks). So here's the prescription:

* 12 weeks - chipping and pitching ok up to 30 yards (11/28/2008)
* 15 weeks - 7 iron through wedges off a tee (12/19/2008)

I see the Dr. again on 1/14/2009, which will be right at 18 1/2, almost 19 weeks. He stated we should be VERY close to full release at that point. So starting at week 15, he told me the plan is to hit up to 7 irons off a tee and start working up from there through the 2 iron off a tee. I'm supposed to gauge my own progress there and the precaution is to watch soreness, if I get sore I have to stop for a day, two, three, whatever until the soreness goes away, then start up again. Once I get through to a session where I can go through the irons off a tee and have no soreness the next day, we can start hitting off the turf and gauge the ability to hit 3 wood and driver.

Truth be told, I don't think he's too keen on me hitting driver, but realistically, wouldn't it be more damaging to be hitting bunker shots than free wheeling a driver off a tee? Makes sense to me anyway. He contradicted himself when I asked him about being able to hit a golf course up North over Thanksgiving that is closed, planning on driving around and hitting pitch shots into greens and trying to get up and down 18 times, since nobody will be around, it would be a great time to do so and the golf course is ok with it too, win / win! He said that's ok, which is actually a full day ahead of schedule! Anyway, the point is he didn't yell at me for hitting some wedges already, reminded me to be careful, which I will. It's not a science, just take it as it comes, you can do this much starting here, but if it hurts you have to stop. Ok, well shit doc I can keep track of that, what am I paying you for?