Spring is in the air and that means golf balls are too.
Planning and preparation are important for having an enjoyable and successful golf season. This time and effort not only improves your game but may also help prevent injuries and loss of play time. In this article, you will learn how to maximize performance and minimize injuries.
Our local courses have been busy preparing for the upcoming season; patching winter damage, fertilizing, tuning up carts, taking inventory and stocking the pro shop, all sorts of things must happen for a successful season at the golf course. But what about the golfer? Ideally, the golfer should take the same time and attention to get a good start on the season. If you are a golfer, what have you been doing to prepare for this season? Some of you have been playing these past months in “winter mode” and have maintained your golf fitness. You are the more seasoned and serious golfer. Others have hung up the clubs and switched to other seasonal activities like snow sports, indoor sports, hunting, fishing or just taking a break. Let’s look at some things all can do to have a great season ahead.
Golf is a sport with high speed asymmetrical repetitive activities. And it’s hard to perfect, requiring incredible precision! That’s why many magazines can publish monthly articles with numerous tips on your stance, your hips, your backswing, your follow through, your grip… I’m leaving that sphere of the sport to the Pros. But, the aspect of a breakdown of body mechanics and repetitive stress on the body affecting performance or causing harm is well within my familiar territory. It is estimated that 8 out of 10 golf injuries are “overuse related”. A good golf swing requires both strength and flexibility. Another way of saying that is stability and mobility.
Certain areas of the body are critical to the motions of a good swing. Here we will focus on a few; your hips, shoulders and mid back (thoracic spine).
Hip Mobility:
The hip joint is a ball in socket joint and should have good mobility in multiple directions. Walking is primarily movement in the flexion and extension directions. For golf swings, the internal and external rotation is critical. Limited internal rotation of your lead leg can impair your backswing and transfer excess rotation to the lead knee and low back causing torsion (twisting). This increases the risk of meniscus injury in the knee as well as disc and sacroiliac joint (SI joint) injury in the low back. You may be experiencing pain in your knees or low back that is essentially stemming from a lack of hip mobility. Adding hip exercises to your routine can often relieve such pains.
Mid Back Mobility:
The thoracic region of your spine should have good rotation. Often this gets stiffer over time due to poor posture and traumas to the rib cage such as past rib fractures or open heart surgery. Lack of mobility in the thoracic spine forces compensatory rotation in the lumbar spine (low back) and puts torsion and sheer forces into the lumbar discs. These excessive and repetitive forces are known to weaken discs and lead to painful injury. Slinging your club across your shoulders and doing a few truck twists is not adequate to regain mobility in the thoracic spine, it takes more consistent exercises to regain and maintain full range of motion.
Shoulder Stability:
The shoulder is a complex structure that includes the upper arm (humerus), the shoulder blade (scapula), several joints, and the numerous muscles that provide strength and stability for upper extremity function. Weakness or improper strength ratios of key scapula stabilizing muscles such as the lower trapezius and serratus anterior can cause distal problems. A golfer may “pull” with the arms and wrists to generate power in this case and that increases the risk of “golfer’s elbow”. This is a strain injury also known as medial epicondylitis. Focus on strengthening the muscles that stabilize the scapula is critical to solving an elbow issue.
Evaluating for the listed issues can be done in several ways. A good golf pro can notice a lot and getting some time with one can clean up a lot of bad habits and body mechanics. To take a deeper dive into strength and flexibility you can go through specific evaluations from a knowledgeable health professional. There are also app based programs for at-home use that are designed to give feedback of your biomechanics by taking a selfie video of your swing. A more advanced video-to-software based evaluation tool is made by Kinetisense, which has a specific Golf Swing functional movement evaluation and provides personal corrective exercises based on the results. Given these options, you can choose what seems best for your particular situation.
As you can see, the golf swing is a whole body effort and dysfunction of one body region can lead to pain and injury in another area. It is important to remember that the problem is not always where the pain is felt. Finding problems of mobility and stability is the beginning of creating a golf fitness routine that improves your golf score and reduces the risk of injuries on and off the green. Take time to plan and prepare your golf conditioning routine for your best season on the course.
