Shoulder Pain

A friend of a playing partner, EC, has been suffering from shoulder pain, especially during serves.

EC is in his late-30s, been enjoying tennis for a few years and has received some coaching before. My initial impressions of him from the first few rally hits was that he is very well-built and a big, strong hitter.

When he showed me his bruises from his TCM massage therapy (link) for his upper right arm and shoulder pain, I was surprised.

Then I noticed he was using the Wilson BLX Tour Limited (link). The specs (reproduced from link):

As usual, most pay attention only to total weight when buying rackets and 315 grams strung sounds really comfortable. 

Until one looks at the very stiff flex of RA73, extended length of 27.5", high balance point of 34 cm and a very high swingweight of 345! 

The extended length would add about another 10+ SW points to make it play closer to 355-360! That is close to, or more than what is speculated online to be Federer's and Djokovic's racket swingweights!

Really reminds me of:
Swingweight Addiction
Mysterious Arm Pain

To make matters worse, it was strung tight with thick 16 gauge full poly! Now that would be amazing if his arm didn't hurt!

Even his backup racket, a Blade 98 (18x20)(link) was not very forgiving with 16 gauge full poly tightly strung too. Although much more arm "friendlier" at 27 inches, RA 64 and SW of 335, but how many recreational players can load 16 gauge full poly in a dense 18x20 stringbed? Not to mention it was dead poly.

So I suggested good old synthetic gut...

EC added a few layers of overgrips and inadvertently added some comfort by moving the balance a little lower. That also beefed up the weight to absorb some nasty vibes. His chief gripe, was still the dead, powerless, lifeless strings.

The full poly strings weighed 18 grams.

A full bed of synthetic gut weighs only 14 grams. That 4 grams difference reduced the swingweight by approximately 8 SW points. That is significant!

Another major difference is the greater elasticity of syn gut would allow EC to load the strings better, have greater dampening and a lot more power than full poly. EC could swing the racket easier now rather than forcing every shot.

Hopefully, with some rotator cuff exercises (link) I got him to do, and the much softer synthetic gut stringbed, his shoulder and arm would get better. 

In case you missed this great article written by Toby, I think it is worth a read:
http://unorthodoxstringing.blogspot.sg/2015/01/why-i-dont-like-poly.html

Play safe to enjoy tennis longer!