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As children, if we learned nothing else from those “scary” nursery rhymes, it should have been that “stuff” happens! Scary? Yes, Scary! Jack fell down and broke his crown… Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall (worse yet, they couldn’t put him back together again!)… The wind blew and down came cradle, baby and all… little Miss Muffet had her meal interrupted by a spider… and two little Piggies got there houses blown down. Is that scary enough for you?

What’s with these nursery rhymes? Were our parents trying to raise a generation of Stephen Kings? I never gave it a second thought as a child, but now that I reflect on it, we grew up on nursery rhymes filled with mishaps that should horrify any little child. I don’t think it was the intention of our parents, or the creators of these nursery rhymes, to actual scare children. But, it is odd, don’t you think.

So, maybe there was a secret message in these mishap filled nursery rhymes. Were they preparing us for real life? In real life, stuff happens. And, if we know life will be filled with these little mishaps, shouldn’t we be prepared? Unexpected mishaps can reek havoc on the best kept finances, if they are not treated as “expected” expenses.

Like the moral of the Three Little Pigs we must build a strong house so the wolf can’t blow it down! A good plan for preparing for these little mishaps in life is to build an emergency fund. Your emergency fund provides a strong foundation to prevent mishaps from bringing the house down.

Be prepared for life’s little mishaps. Set aside money to get you through the financial consequences when “stuff” happens. When daddy, or mommy, fall down and break his/her crown, who will earn money to pay the bills while they recuperate?

It’s O.K. to start small. I know that in life sometimes we get ourselves in tight financial situations. But, even if it’s only a tiny percentage of your paycheck for now and you increase the amount as possible, you’ll be ahead of the game. Slowly, yet consistently, include a plan in your budget to build this emergency preparedness fund. You’ll be prepared when life’s little mishaps are determined to bring the house down.

Note: If you have substantial debt, your needs and priorities will be different. Debt steals your time away. It’s hard to make any advancement towards productive financial goals until you’ve eliminated debt. But, that’s not saying that the one month that your mishap occurs, you won’t be prepared. In fact, you are already somewhat prepared and may not know it. If you are paying extra funds towards reducing debt each month, you already have an emergency fund built into your debt elimination plan!

As per your usual debt elimination plan, you should apply extra funds to reduce debt each month. If you are already managing your money to control spending and budgeting to pay down debt, you’ll have those funds available every month. I recommend that you build up a small emergency fund of about $500 – $1000 (depending on your financial situation). Then continue to apply any extra funds each month to your debt elimination goals.

If an unexpected expense arises, you’ll just redirect any extra funds (simply pay your minimum debt payments that month) normally posted to your debt elimination goals and take care of your mishap, if necessary. And, you’ll always have your little back up emergency fund if needed. Then, when all is taken care of, you’ll get back to focusing those funds on debt elimination.

Many people seem to dread the day that they hear they need to have a colon cleanse for their body. In reality there are times that you are going to need to have a colon cleanse done so that you are able to stay healthy for a longer time. This is all possible because when you are getting the colon cleanse you are getting rid of all the toxins that are in your system. You do not want to turn up your nose when the word colon cleansing is said around you.

When you do go to have a colon cleanse you will see that it is a disgusting job that needs to done so that you are able to live a more natural life without much pain. If you see that you are having more pain in your stomach than you used to a while ago then you are going to want to talk to your doctor about a colon cleanse to help with the stomach pain you are having. This could happen because of all the toxins that you are getting in your system from the food that you eat. There are times that it will happen because of the air that you are breathing every day as well.

If you were to think about all the different things that you might be taking in on a daily basis you may want to think about having a colon cleansing done so that you can get rid of all the different toxins that you are taking in. If you see that you even have a lot of gas as well, stomach pain that too is a good idea to talk to your doctor about a colon cleansing. Then you will be sure to make sure that you are getting all the toxins out of your system before they do more damage than what has already been done.

The worse thing that you can do is not to have a colon cleansing done when your doctor wants you to have one. They are going to want to just make sure that you are going to be able to live a healthy life with out all the different toxins in your body. If you find that you are having any kind of problems with your stomach and gas, as well, you will want to make sure that you are talking to your doctor about all the different problems that you are having and what can be done for it. When you are having a colon cleansing done, you will know that you are taking care of yourself the way that you should be so that you are going to have a healthy life for as long as you can.

A wedding day is a very special, in fact unique, day for the bride and groom, and for close family and friends, especially those who play a part in the ceremony, such as the bridesmaids. In most cases, the bridesmaids do get a fair amount of attention as part of the supporting cast, and it is usual for bridesmaids gifts to be given as a memento of the occasion.

As bride and groom, though, you may want to say a big thank you to the bridesmaids and do something a bit special for them. So, you may be considering an unusual bridesmaids’ gift to show them their role was more important to you than they may have thought; and, that they are not and will not be forgotten.

Wanting to give an unusual bridesmaid gift is one thing, but finding one is a different matter altogether. However, maybe “finding” is not the right way to go about it. You want to thank the bridesmaids for their support on your special wedding day, so why not thank them by arranging something special for them, in which they, not you, are the focus of attention?

What you do will, of course, depend on budget, and what you think the bridesmaids will all appreciate. Here are just a few ideas for unusual bridesmaids’ gifts that you could arrange.

Bridesmaids’ Bash

On the wedding day itself, you probably had a reception and maybe a disco or some form of entertainment for the wedding guests. Again, the stars of the show were you, the bride and groom. One sure way to show appreciation is for you to stand aside and bring the bridesmaids to the fore, to feel very special and appreciated.

One thing you could do is to arrange a Bridesmaids Bash, a party arranged just for them. If you are going away for a honeymoon, would it not be nice to get back home, and a few days latter have a special party organised for the bridesmaids Of course, you can give them a small memento also, but as the main, and unusual, bridesmaids gift, a fun bash in which they are the focus, could go down really well.

Bridesmaids’ Beauty Binge

There is no doubt that almost every bride and groom goes to great lengths to look their best on the wedding day; the same is true of the bridesmaids. There is also no doubting that girls and young women across the bridesmaid age group do feel special when they are having a lot of attention being paid to their health and beauty.

For an unusual bridesmaids’ gift, how about negotiating with a local parlour for a group beauty session for all the bridesmaids? It would be fun for them to go together a couple of weeks after the wedding, and have a makeover, pedicure, manicure, new hairdo, massage; whatever you can afford to make a fuss of them for an hour or two, or three.

Bridesmaids’ Bloat Out

Another bridesmaid gift idea that is a bit unusual is, rather than the full Bridesmaids’ Bash, take them all out for a special meal a week or two after the wedding. This idea is not for those on a diet, but as they are all young and probably in good shape, some sort of feast, a Bridesmaids’ Bloat Out, could be a good idea. It is best to sound them out in advance, so you can choose a venue they will all be delighted with, whatever their age.

To make it special, you could arrange for a local florist, or the establishment manager, to deliver flowers, or some other gift, to the table. A little bit of imagination could make this a fun occasion to all and give the bridesmaids the special attention they deserve.

In recent years changes in diet and lifestyle in many western societies have led to an increase in the number of people suffering from high blood pressure.

High blood pressure (otherwise known as hypertension, or more correctly arterial hypertension) is a serious condition which rarely carries any symptoms and which, if not detected and treated, can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure, arterial aneurysm or renal failure – all of which are series life-threatening conditions.

So just what is high blood pressure and what causes it?

The arteries of your body and constantly filled with blood which exerts a normal “background” pressure on the walls of the arteries. As the heart pumps freshly oxygenated blood around the body it forces this blood into the arteries momentarily raising the pressure exerted on the walls of the arteries during each beat of the heart. These two pressures are known as the systolic pressure (the higher pumping pressure of the heart) and the diastolic pressure (the lower “background” pressure).

Normal levels of blood pressure vary from individual to individual but, on average, systolic pressure should be around 120 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury measured on a manometer) and diastolic pressure should be about 80 mm Hg. This is ordinarily expressed as a blood pressure of 120/80.

If your blood pressure starts to rise and remains at a level above 120/80 then you are described as being “prehypertensive” and, while this is not serious in itself, it is an indication that you may be at risk of developing hypertension and the problems associated with it. Once your blood pressure reaches, and maintains, a level of 140/90 or above you are said to be suffering from hypertension and action needs to be taken to reduce your blood pressure.

But what causes your blood pressure to rise and remain elevated?

Well, there are several factors at play here and the first is a group over which you have little, if any, control. This group includes a low birth weight, a variety of genetic factors, certain forms of diabetes (in particular type 2 diabetes) and your age (as we grow older our arteries tend to become fibrous and lose their elasticity, resulting in a smaller cross-sectional area through which the blood can flow).

The second group of factors is much more within your control and includes leading a sedentary lifestyle, high levels of salt and/or saturated fats in the diet, being overweight, smoking, alcohol abuse, stress and working in certain occupations such as flying or motorway maintenance, which involves exposure to long periods of high level roadway noise.

The vast majority of these factors are of course treatable and, in many cases, a simple adjustment to your diet and the addition of some form of exercise into your daily routine is all that is needed to solve the problem. The difficulty however is that, without any real symptoms, most people simply don’t know that they are suffering from high blood pressure in the first place.

So how do you solve the problem?

Fortunately the answer to this question is very simple. All you need to do is to pop into your doctor’s office on a regular basis (for most of us a couple of times a year will do the trick) and ask the doctor, or practice nurse, to check your blood pressure. The whole process is painless, simple and fast and will give you peace of mind and possibly save your doctor a lot of time, work and expense later on when you are forced to present yourself at his office once hypertension has set in.

If, like most people, you are not so keen on visiting your doctor then an excellent alternative today is to simply monitor your own blood pressure at home. A wide range of easy to operate and relatively inexpensive monitors are available today, allowing you to keep an eye on your own health, and that of your family, in the comfort and privacy of your own home.

It’s no mystery why we take supplements. The body is a complicated mechanism that fights every day to preserve its own well-being. Therefore, the body needs plenty of nutritional support that foods can’t always adequately provide. Because of high starch content, bleaching and over processing, many foods don’t contain enough minerals to adequately support the body. A deficiency of just one or more nutrients can leave the body vulnerable to disease. Furthermore, we must acknowledge that we each have biochemical individuality, so our bodies require different things depending on our age, environment, activity level and genetic makeup. The same goes for our pets. Every dog and cat is unique and requires specific increases in nutrients for many reasons.

Also, our pets’ demand for certain nutrients fluctuates. Vitamin B is great support to the body during stressful periods and additional zinc is a helpful nutrient for many breeds; such as, huskies. No matter how well a diet is formulated, there are always nutrients, which are not in the diet. The body knows what it needs and it has its ways of communicating these things to us. It is up to us to pay attention to our animals’ behavior as well as their appearance to make sure they’re getting all the nutrients they need. For instance, is your cat sleeping more than usual these days? Or does your dog have less of an appetite? Perhaps they need supplements. It doesn’t hurt to try supplements to see how your pets respond to them. You may see a drastic change in their mannerisms or their appearance. When we give our pets supplements in conjunction with healthy well-balanced meals, their bodies intelligently draw what they need from the supplements and allocate them properly. Rather than taking a specific vitamin or mineral in calculated amounts, herbs deliver many nutrients in various amounts to the parts of the body that require it.

Chose a dog supplement that contains the rather unusual Ester C (Calcium Ascorbate), which is non-acidic, rich in calcium and other minerals and better absorbed than regular Vitamin C. It is usually not added to dog foods because it was once thought that dogs don’t require C because they manufacture it in their liver.

This way of thinking about dogs is archaic because we must now consider the way dogs’ eating habits have evolved from years of domestication. Out in the wild, dogs ate prey that had intestines filled with grasses that contained C. Now at home, they eat the foods we give them and they occasionally take a bite out of the neighbor’s lawn. Now, it seems as if dogs aren’t getting enough C. Vitamin C, considered a vital antioxidant, supports the bone, teeth and gums, blood vessels and the immune system. Nutritionists consider it a “conditionally essential” nutrient, meaning that it is needed in higher amounts during certain times in the animal’s life such as sickness, separation anxiety, stress from shows, visits to vets and confinement due to long distance trips.

Just like humans, it is recommended all supplements be taken along with plenty of exercise and proper diet.

Copyright 2006 Mary Desaulniers

Our mind is often the best resource we have for creating and solving problems. This is certainly the case when it comes to insomnia. Those who have problems sleeping know far too well the way anxiety about not sleeping perpetuates the problem. You cannot sleep; you toss and turn; worrying about having to be up by a certain time the next morning exacerbates the situation and you toss and turn even more.

There is, however, something you can do to turn the situation around.You can trick the mind to get better sleep. The mind, after all, can be tricked into compliance, especially if you work at re-programming what it understands to be a time for wakefulness and a time for sleep. Here are a few suggestions you might find helpful to trick the mind into compliance with a sleeping schedule.

a) Maintain good Sleep Hygiene or setting a regular schedule and routine for sleep. Getting habituated to a set routine at bedtime works well because it programs the mind and body to a set of expectations: the same time every night, in the same bed with the same routines. Nothing convinces the mind more of your seriousness and expectation than repetitive action. You might experience sleeplessness for the first night or two, but if you persist with the routine schedule, chances are within a week, you will have little difficulty falling asleep. According to a report in the Boston Globe, a study of insomniacs found that those who had set and regulated their waking and sleeping times, who avoided naps during the day and used their bedrooms only for sleep, were able to reduce their sleepless period ( after retiring to bed) by 54%. This percentage is significant considering that a control group using relaxation therapy experienced only a 16% reduction while a placebo group had only a 12% reduction. Maintaining good sleep hygiene is one way of tricking the mind to get better sleep.

b) Lower the temperature of the bedroom before sleep. Cool temperatures make for better sleep because they can trick the body into lowering its temperature, a prerequisite for deep sleep. The body’s temperature is triggered by an internal clock. Although the average body temperature for humans is about 97 degrees F, it fluctuates in a regular pattern on a daily basis. Body temperature hits its low (about 88 degrees F) between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., then climbs steadily through the morning before dipping again at around 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

c) Wearing socks and mittens to bed can also trick mind and body into better sleep. Socks and mittens widen blood vessels in hands and feet, a necessary step to inducing sleep, according to a Swiss study. In this study, researchers found that as the body prepares for sleep, the blood vessels in hands and feet dilate. This dilation precipitates the cooling of the blood as it flows through the open channels near the surface of the skin; when body temperatures fall, sleep automatically follows.

d) Do not go to bed hungry. Hunger will keep you alert and tense. A bedtime snack that contains amino acid tryptophan is best. The body converts tryptophan to sleep-inducing chemicals. Having a small, lean slice of turkey (rich in this amino acid) with a piece of toast is best. Another alternative is one oatmeal cookie with a glass of milk (also rich in tryptophan).

e) If stomach problems like heartburn or acid reflux prevent you from getting a good night’s rest, consider sleeping on your left side. Studies show that patients who sleep on their left sides are less likely to suffer from acid reflux. According to Dr. Anthony A. Star-poli, a New York City gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at New York Medical College, when you sleep on your right side, your stomach is higher than the esophagus, allowing food and stomach acid to slide up your throat. However, when you sleep on your left side, you turn the situation around and stomach acid slides down.

f) Focusing on staying awake rather than trying to fall asleep can do the trick as well. In what is known as “paradoxical intention,” the mind that focuses on being awake will sooner relax than the mind that is struggling to fall asleep. If you aren’t asleep 30 minutes after you retire to bed, get up and read a book—preferably one that you know is dull and tedious. Research shows that the longer you lie awake in bed, the less likely you will have a night of uninterrupted sleep. Far better it is to get up, do something else until you feel sleepy.

g) Getting at least 1-2 hours of sunlight each day is another trick to get better sleep. Research suggests that getting enough sunlight keeps our biological clock on track. Out master body clock is a tiny cluster of cells that lies deep within the brain in an area called the hypothalamus. This area controls basic functions such as food intake and body temperature. This cluster of nerve cells is influenced by light which regulates the secretion of melatonin, a hormone that controls the circadian rhythm of our body (when we sleep and when we stay alert). During the day, sunlight slows the production of melatonin (which is a reason why we feel so alert during the day); at night, the production of this hormone increases, allowing us to feel relaxed and drowsy. Getting 2 hours of sunlight during the day will ensure that the natural wake and sleep cycles of the body are maintained.

If you still have difficulty falling and staying asleep, make sure you see a physician because insomnia can be triggered by physiological conditions such as sleep apnea, menopause or depression. Some drugs that can disturb sleep include antidepressants, beta-blockers, diuretics and painkillers.

Resources: The Body Clock Guide to Better Health by Michael Smolensky Ph.D and Lynne Lamberg No More Sleepless Nights by Dr. Peter Hauri

Once your new web site is up and it is open to the public, it is vital to begin formulating a promotion tactic. The apparent objective is to catch the attention of as many visitors as you be able to. One of the finest ways to do this is by using a “Linking Campaign”.

A lot of non-reciprocal inbound links tells a search engine that your site contains valuable information, so you need to get those, but how do you do that?

Let’s say you have one more additional site with some pages already indexed in the search engines. Instead of promoting the new site that you want to rank high by placing a text link to it on all of the pages on the other site (which may be looks at as spam by many SEO experts), using a non-reciprocal link exchange network like LinksDealing.com, you can get hundreds of text links to your desired promoted URL with the anchor text of your choice from quality sites spread all over the Internet, which is something good for your link promotion efforts.

LinksDealing is an automatic system that enables you to promote sites by almost instantly receiving many text links pointing to your promoted URLs. The text links are placed on quality sites, most of which are related to the same theme group as your promoted site, and these text links to your promoted site stay on those sites for a lengthy time.

How does it work? When you signup as a member of the LinksDealing network, you contribute areas of text link placement on your other site’s pages; these sites are named Donor Sites. You also specify another list of URLs that you wish to promote using the LinksDealing network; these URLs are named as Promoted URLs. The Promoted URLs in turn get text links from other members’ donor sites’ pages.

The more donor sites you contribute to the Links Dealing network, the more text links from other members’ donor sites’ pages you get to your promoted URLs, thereby increasing the number of visitors to your promoted URLs and their search engines results pages placements for your desired keyword.

Promoting your site and getting new incoming links to it should not be hard work, Visit http://www.LinksDealing.com to find out how to instantaneously receive many non reciprocal links to your website without the hassle of engaging in link exchange activity all day long.

Click fraud is a multi-faceted problem, it costs ALL advertisers, it costs Google, and ultimately, it costs legitimate publishers in lost ad revenues. Anyone who has worked in law enforcement and loss prevention in the brick and mortar world can tell you that community involvement in policing efforts is one of the single most effective crime deterrents in existence. As a community of concerned web publishers and advertisers, we can take our cue from the most effective crime prevention tactics of the brick and mortar world. Take a look at how many cities have cleaned up their streets to see how those efforts can translate to the online world and PPC advertising.

Step I: Hold Open Community Forums

The first step in any community policing effort is open communication between law enforcement and the community. Bringing everyone together allows them to share and define common goals, and create strategies to meet them. An open forum for advertisers, publishers and providers will create a sense of community and foster disclosure of methods, metrics and tactics. By opening the discussion to input from all concerned, the community can air concerns and share solutions.

Open discussion also fosters another type of interaction that has been proven to increase effective community policing: brainstorming. When you bring together many minds, solutions emerge that no one person working alone would have imagined. Those solutions include innovations based on existing strategies. This is the basis of open source software communities, and it should be the basis of creating software aimed at detecting, preventing and eliminating the sources of click fraud.

Step II: Increase Police Presence

In the ‘real world’, police departments increase police presence in a community by deploying more officers to neighborhoods in trouble, establishing community work stations and developing relationships within the community. In the Internet world, community policing has to take on a different face. There are no streets, no neighborhoods or beats to patrol. Instead, each shopkeeper is responsible for protecting his own property. And there’s the rub: the protection is only as good as the sum of the owner’s knowledge and economics.

A community solution to click fraud includes free, openly available and scalable click fraud detection software that is easily extendable. By maintaining open discussions in the community via a forum, developers can create add-ons to the existing software and make them freely available to increase the capacity of the entire community to protect itself.

Step III: Educate the Community and Notify the Wrongdoers.

Believe it or not, one of the more effective tactics of real world crime prevention is openly advertising the presence of community watchdogs. Community policing efforts that make a lot of noise are an effective deterrent to real world crime.

A community forum for click fraud prevention serves as a central distribution point for data about click fraud, its extent and the newest methods being used to defraud and to combat fraud. One of the more obvious examples of how this type of community works is in the realm of virus protection, where a number of high profile communities track the progress of new viral infections and collaborate on methods of removing them from infected computers.

Back in 1999, a new virus hit the internet that frustrated users whose efforts were thwarted as the software reinstalled itself time and again. The first mention of the virus hit the tech community boards at 5 AM EST. By 7 AM, two hours later, there were dozens of users around the world working on the solution – nearly three hours before the major commercial virus protection companies had even posted an alert. By 8:30 AM, the open community forum had isolated the solution in bits and pieces, and working from each other’s successes, had posted an effective solution to remove the virus from infected computers.

Imagine that kind of power and backing to identify, isolate and combat new methods and perpetrators of click fraud.

Step IV: Leverage the Power of Numbers to Bring About Change

There’s strength in numbers and networking. At the moment, the PPC engines rely on pre-click filtering to weed out fraudulent clicks before payment is issued for them. They respond to requests for refunds if the advertiser can prove their claim of fraudulent clicks. By leveraging the power of community, advertisers and publishers can:

- Share strategies for tracking click fraud down that goes beyond pre-click analysis.

- Support each other’s efforts when seeking refunds by sharing data to help establish a trend/pattern and make proof easier to display

- Demand more transparency and accountability from the search engines and PPC providers. This will in turn allow advertisers AND publishers to monitor their own sites more efficiently as well as report back to the PPC engines on the effectiveness of the filtering efforts.

By sharing information and support, we can make a difference and put a major dent in the losses due to click fraud. Click Sentinel is designed to capitalize on the strength of community. The Click Sentinel community is more than software – it’s a blueprint and infrastructure that is designed to foster, support and extend community and hit click fraud where it can’t fight back.

Snapper Inc manufactures a number of models of lawn mowers apart from the generators, utility vehicles, leaf blowers, and leaf vacuum etc. Read about the lawn mowers manufactured by this company

“It’s That Easy”, Says Snapper Models

The snapper mower models are available from Snapper Inc. These models come in Walk behind, rear engine rider, zero turn mowers, lawn & garden tractors, rear tine tillers and the like. Snapper Inc. also have the utility vehicle and the golf carts. Here we will consider only the walk behind and the riders models and get the details of one or two models and review them in detail

Walk behind models: These models come in easy speed and easy line series. The easy speed models incorporate the disc wheel drive that connects the engine power directly to the wheels so easy movement of the wheels. It is like 4-wheel drive for the lawn mower and the operation is very smooth. There are no clutches and the lawn mower purrs into action as soon as you start it.

The high wheel model comes with raised rear wheel of 12-inch diameter and 8 inch front wheels that are swiveled for easy action. Easy action seems to be the watchword in all the models of easy line series.

There is another model with a rear discharge bag so that you know the amount of grass you have cut and you can stop after you fill up the bag in front of you. The bagging is done by hi-vac system, so all the cut grass is sucked and bagged.

The mulching blower model incorporates patented Ninja Mulching system. The model churns out the cut grass by cutting and re-cutting into fine mulch that is then fed to the ground. The grass just disappears after being cut. The effect is good for grass growth.

Snapper rider mowers: Snapper has the rear engine drive invented by the engineers of Snapper Inc. The models are available in three-in–one discharge models so that you can bag, mulch or side discharge as per the choice selected by the driver. You can select the operation depending on your wish or the condition of the greens.

The snapper riding models incorporate some unique features so that the drive through the grass is smooth and without any problem. The features are,

You can have a variety of Kohler or Briggs & Stratton engines according to your requirement and easy operation of the lawn mower.

It has a firm frame that can follow the contours of ground as the frame is pivoted at one end and free at the other end.

It features disc drive transmission that is sealed and 4+1 speed gearbox. It has synchromesh transmission on all gears so that you can change the sped as you go.

The response from the steering is quick and the small turning radius gives the driver extreme maneuverability so that even the tight spaces are well covered while cutting the lawn.

The rear engine models have 16 inch tires that are friendly on the turf.

If you wish to service the engine or the transmission, the machines have a unique feature of Stand-on-end so that maintenance becomes easy.

The sizes of the width are 28 to 42 inches.

You can use the Snapper with easy and that is why the company says, “It’s that easy”.

We all know the clubface must be square at impact and the club releases thereafter. Generally speaking a large amount of golf swing mechanics center upon returning the clubface to square at impact. Additionally, the golf swing is a “total body” movement incorporating every joint in the body. In order for the clubface to be square at impact all of these joints must work in coordination to allow this to occur.

In relation to the body, specific muscles are very active in returning the clubface to square. One joint directly involved in the squaring of the clubface at impact with the golf ball is the shoulder joint. The shoulder joint is a “ball and socket” joint allowing for the arms to move through a large range of motion. Review of the biomechanics of the golf swing, it becomes very evident the arms move through a large range of motion.

That being said, there are specific muscles involved in the rotation of the arms. Again, these are not the only muscles involved in squaring the clubface, but from an anatomical perspective, these muscles are active in the internal and external rotation of the arms during the golf swing.

Going back to squaring the clubface, internal and external rotation of the arms is required. To get a sense of internal and external rotation, simply stand up with your arms hanging at your sides. Rotate your hands inward and outward. This is a simple description of internal and external rotation of the arms. Now if you relate this movement to the golf swing you can see how the arms internally and externally rotate during the backswing, downswing, and follow through.

Certain muscles within the shoulder complex have a direct effect on internal rotation, external rotation, and stabilization of the shoulder complex in the golf swing. The muscles we are talking about are the rotator cuff muscles. Yes, the rotator cuff.

Not necessarily a group of muscles that go “hand-in-hand” with the golf swing and probably more thought of when we talk about baseball and pitching. Nevertheless, these muscles are an active in the golf swing. The rotator cuff is a reference to four muscles in the shoulder complex. For those of you that love the science behind this stuff, the four muscles that comprise the rotator cuff are; supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis.

The rotator cuff has a couple primary functions when it comes to the shoulder complex. First off, they act to stabilize the shoulder capsule. The skeletal structure comprising the shoulder is a ball and socket joint. The “socket” part of this joint is very shallow. As a result the muscles of the rotator cuff in addition to muscles in the “back-side” of the shoulder assist in stabilizing the shoulder during movement. An over simplification would state these muscles assist in keeping the arm in the socket. If the rotator cuff muscles did not assist in stabilizing the shoulder, the arm would literally come out of the socket every time you swing a golf club.

Secondly, these four muscles are actively involved in elevating, internally, and externally rotating the arms. All of which are movements involved in the golf swing. Beginning in the take-away and completing with the follow through, the muscles of the rotator cuff are active in every phase of the golf swing. That being said, we know the muscles of the rotator cuff are under stress each every golf swing.

It is important to understand the muscles of the rotator cuff are very small. They are not big muscles such as your quadriceps or deltoids. They are very small muscles asked to perform a myriad of activities. As a result of the size and workloads placed upon these muscles. They can become fatigued quite easily. Once muscles become fatigued they begin to falter in performing their required activities. In addition once muscles are fatigued, they can easily become injured.

During my years on tour, I have never seen someone injure a cuff muscle from swinging a golf club. I have seen rotator cuff injuries impede a golf swing, and if you have ever injured a rotator cuff muscle you know how debilitating an injury it can be. The point being this: The rotator cuff muscles are actively involved in the golf swing. Injury to a rotator cuff muscle can be very debilitating to your golf swing or any activity for that case.

Knowing what we know about the mechanics of the golf swing, the rotator cuff, functions of the rotator cuff, and how they affect the golf swing. This information invariably indicates to us it is necessary to keep the rotator cuff healthy and strong. How can one achieve this goal? Simply by adding a golf fitness program incorporating rotator cuff exercises.

Rotator cuff exercises will focus on these four muscles. These types of exercises will develop higher levels of strength and endurance within these muscles. This will assist in these muscles handling the workloads placed upon them during the golf swing or any athletic activity. So I strongly suggest if you are an avid golfer or a weekend warrior. Add some golf fitness and rotator cuff exercises to your training program. This will help keep you in the game and off the sidelines.

Sean Cochran