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Shoulder pain in golf is incredibly common, and it can affect either shoulder depending on your swing. But here’s what most golfers don’t realize, the pain you’re feeling in your shoulder during or after your round might not actually be a shoulder problem at all.

If you’re a right-handed golfer swinging from right to left, you’ve probably experienced that nagging discomfort in your left shoulder, the one that crosses your body during the backswing. This is actually the most common type of golf shoulder pain. Why? Because your lead arm has to go through an extreme amount of motion to keep the clubhead overhead while keeping your elbow straight. That puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the shoulder joint, and over time, that pressure leads to pinching and pain.

The same issue can happen on your trail shoulder (the right shoulder for right-handed golfers), especially during the follow-through phase after you make contact with the ball. Once again, that arm is coming across your body, and if you’re forcing the movement, you’re putting more stress on that joint than it should be handling.

The good news? There are proven ways to reduce and even eliminate this pain without giving up the game you love. In this post, we’ll break down exactly what’s causing your shoulder pain and walk you through the most effective solutions, starting with changes that don’t require you to add a single new exercise to your routine.

Which Shoulder Hurts and Why?

Before you can fix your shoulder pain, you need to understand which shoulder is bothering you and what’s happening during your swing to cause that discomfort.

Lead Shoulder Pain (Left Shoulder for Right-Handed Golfers)

This is by far the most common type of shoulder pain golfers experience. If you’re swinging from right to left, your left arm has to travel across your body during the backswing, and that’s where the problem starts. To keep the clubhead overhead and maintain a straight elbow throughout this motion, your lead shoulder has to go through an extreme range of motion. That creates a lot of pressure on the joint itself.

Your arm is reaching across your body, rotating internally, and doing all this while maintaining tension to control the club. All that pressure concentrated in one joint is what leads to the pinching sensation and pain that so many golfers deal with round after round.

Trail Shoulder Pain (Right Shoulder for Right-Handed Golfers)

Your trail shoulder can also experience pain, though it works a bit differently. If you’re feeling pinching in your right shoulder during the backswing, that’s usually a strength issue and less common overall.

The more typical scenario is pain during the follow-through phase, specifically after you make contact with the ball. As you move into your follow-through, your right arm is now coming across your body just like your left arm did during the backswing. That same cross-body motion creates stress in the joint, and the further that elbow comes across your face, the more difficulty and pain you’re going to have in that shoulder.

It’s Not Just Your Shoulder

The pain you’re feeling in your shoulder is often just a symptom of a much bigger problem. The real culprit? You’re not getting enough rotation through other parts of your body, so your shoulder is being forced to pick up the slack.

When you swing a golf club, your body works as a connected chain. Ideally, rotation should happen smoothly through your hips, your trunk, and your mid-back (what we call the thoracic spine). When all these areas are moving properly, your shoulder doesn’t have to work nearly as hard. But when you’re lacking mobility in any of these areas, your body has to compensate somehow, and that compensation usually happens at the shoulder joint.

The Three Key Areas Affecting Your Shoulder Stress

There are three areas where limited mobility can force your shoulder to overwork

1. Thoracic spine rotation – Your mid-back needs to rotate to allow your upper body to turn properly
2. Hip rotation – Your hips need to turn freely to support the entire swing motion
3. Overall trunk mobility – Your core and torso need to move as a unit to distribute forces evenly

When any of these areas are restricted, you’re forcing rotation to happen at the shoulder instead. And that’s going to put more stress on that joint than it was ever designed to handle.

Understanding the Pinching Mechanism

That pinching sensation you feel in your shoulder is what happens when your arm is trying to come across your body, but you don’t have enough rotation coming from your hips and mid-back to support the movement. Your shoulder joint is literally running out of space to move, and the structures inside start rubbing and compressing against each other. The shoulder is doing work it shouldn’t have to do, and pain is the inevitable result.

The good news is that even small improvements in rotation can take a tremendous load off your shoulders.

Solution #1: Improve Your Rotation (The Most Effective Fix) 

This is the number one way to reduce shoulder pinching and pain, and it doesn’t require you to add any new shoulder exercises to your routine. Instead, you’re going to change the posture and mechanics of how you’re swinging by improving rotation in the areas that should be doing the work in the first place.

The Power of Small Improvements

Even a 5 or 10 degree improvement in rotation can take a tremendous amount of load off the shoulders that come across the body. You don’t need to become a flexibility expert or spend hours stretching every day. Those small gains in mobility make a massive difference in how much stress your shoulder has to handle.

When you can rotate more freely through your trunk and hips, you’ll notice that it becomes much easier for your arm to come across your body. The movement feels smoother, less forced, and most importantly there’s less pinching.

The Three Areas to Focus On

To get the rotation improvements that will actually fix your shoulder pain, you need to work on mobility in these specific areas

1. Thoracic Spine Mobility – Your mid-back needs to rotate freely to allow your upper body to turn during both the backswing and follow-through. When your thoracic spine is stiff, your shoulder has to compensate for that lost motion.
2. Hip Rotation – Your hips are the foundation of your swing. If they can’t rotate properly, everything up the chain suffers. Working on hip mobility allows your lower body to support the rotational demands of your swing.
3. Trunk Rotation – Your entire core and torso need to work together as a unit. Improving how your trunk rotates as a whole distributes the forces of your swing more evenly across your body instead of concentrating them in your shoulder.

Finishing Your Follow-Through Completely

One critical adjustment that ties into rotation, make sure you’re finishing your follow-through completely. When you rotate your trunk fully through the swing, your arm doesn’t have to come across your body as much. The further that elbow comes across your face, the more pain you’re going to have in that shoulder. By rotating your trunk so that your arm never has to reach its maximum range crossing your body, you eliminate the primary cause of that pinching sensation.

Solution #2: Modify Your Swing

If improving your rotation isn’t enough on its own, or if you need a more immediate solution while you’re working on mobility, you have another option, shorten your backswing.

This is a less popular choice because it’s going to decrease your distance overall, but it can be effective for reducing shoulder stress. By limiting how far back you take the club, you’re reducing the extreme range of motion your lead shoulder has to go through. Less range of motion means less pressure on the joint, which typically means less pain.

When to Consider This Option

Shortening your backswing might be appropriate if you’re dealing with acute shoulder pain and need relief right away, or if mobility improvements alone aren’t solving the problem completely. Some golfers also find that a slightly shorter backswing actually improves their consistency and control, even if they sacrifice a bit of distance.

Beyond shortening your backswing, you can also adjust your overall posture during the swing. Small changes in how you set up and move through the swing can redistribute forces and take pressure off your shoulders. The key is finding modifications that reduce shoulder stress without compromising your entire game.

Solution #3: Strengthen and Stretch Your Shoulders 

Now we get to the solution most golfers think of first, actually working on the shoulder itself. While this is listed third for a reason, because it addresses the symptom rather than the root cause. There are times when shoulder-specific work is absolutely necessary and beneficial.

When Shoulder Work Makes Sense

If you’re dealing with weakness in the shoulder itself, or if you’ve lost range of motion over time due to the repetitive nature of the golf swing, then targeted shoulder exercises can help. The typical prescription here involves two main components, increasing shoulder strength and increasing range of motion into internal rotation.

Improving Internal Rotation Range of Motion

Internal rotation is the movement where your arm rotates inward toward your body, exactly what’s happening when that lead arm comes across during the backswing. If you’ve lost range of motion in this direction, you’re going to experience more pinching and discomfort.

The hand behind the back stretch is our next best option to get that mobility back to where it needs to be. This simple stretch helps restore internal rotation by gently encouraging the shoulder to move through that range in a controlled way. Consistent stretching can gradually rebuild the flexibility you’ve lost and make the cross-body motion of your swing less problematic.

Building Shoulder Strength

Strengthening the muscles around your shoulder joint helps stabilize it and allows it to better handle the forces of your swing. When your shoulder is stronger, it’s more resilient to the repetitive stress that golf places on it. This is especially important if you’ve identified that your trail shoulder pain during the backswing is a strength issue.

The key point to remember, shoulder strengthening and stretching work best when combined with improved rotation through your hips and mid-back. Don’t skip Solution #1 and expect shoulder exercises alone to fix the problem.

If there’s one thing you take away, it should be that your shoulder pain is most likely caused by limitations in other areas of your body, not the shoulder itself. Before you start loading up on shoulder exercises or considering drastic changes to your game, focus on improving rotation through your mid-back, hips, and trunk.