The Key to golfing with good form and keeping your back safe is to have good mobility in your hips… If you do not, then you will elevate your shoulders more to get the rotation and the force will then come from the back… You have to get the rotation from somewhere else if you do not have it in your hips..
This is a problem overtime is you will eventually get back pain. If you follow me with anything else that I say, is that you have to get to the source of the problem or you will always have the problem return. You are just treating the symptom of the problem with the back pain.
If you do a surgery to “fix the back” and you do not get a good understanding of what you are doing in your life that is creating the problem, you will have the issue again and you will have the surgery again.
We find with golfers that come to our office, will get back pain opposite of the hip that does not move very well. They may or may not have hip pain. You have to know to look there as a possible reason that is causing their back pain to exist.
Or you have “tightness in your hip” that you think is due to tight muscles only. You get a massage or just do strengthening to help it, but it does not always work… The tightness is a common symptom of the hip not moving very well. And guess what, most people stretch it the wrong way.
You are told to do the figure 4 stretch. Or if your hamstrings are tight too, stretching those too. But they do not work. All your stretches take the hip into a more flexed (bent forward) position. You get a massage, but that does NOT work, and the tightness returns. You roll it out and the tightness returns. You are frustrated but the hip tightness is not something that usually stops you until you get the back pain.
Once your pain affects you playing golf, that is when you seek any kind of help that you can so you can get back to playing again… We know. We see this all the time.
So, what do you do? Why does this happen?
We have sitting jobs, so our back and hips are always flexed or bent forward. Then we go and play golf and guess what, you are bend over as well at the hips and then you are getting the power in a flexed and rotated position for the hips…
If you do not stretch properly then your hips get tight (and the figure 4 stretch is not the correct stretch). When your hips get tight you start to get more of the rotation from your spine. The front standing leg is the hip that usually is the tightest (although not always the case) and the back pain will be opposite of the hip that is tight…
When we have a golfer with pain, we address the back pain first and always check the hips. The hips are usually tight into hip rotation (like the figure 4), hip extension, sometimes even hip flexion is limited. The hips are a big reason golfer’s get back pain!
The muscle tightness is NOT the problem. The joint not moving correctly is the problem. You usually need to take the joint in the opposite direction of what we think is correct. So not in a flexed position, you need to move the hip in some sort of hip extension position.
I know you ask, but how does that help with opening up the hips? By moving in one direction, the correct direction, it opens up all the other directions in the hip. We take baselines of all directions of the hip and back and functional baselines of movement that creates pain or compensation and when we find the correct direction to move the joint into, all the other directions improve…
We are told we are magicians. And if you want to talk more to find out if this is what is going on with you, we can sit down to explain this process better and why it works. If you live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, JUST CLICK HERE TO talk with ONE OF OUR SPECIALISTS!
If you do not open the hips up, you will go into the same patterns that created your back pain and you may go down the same path as tiger woods with multiple back surgeries. We have had clients tell us that when we finish with them and get the back on the golf course that they are hitting the ball farther.
They have friends tell them they want to have back pain so they can see us to help them hit the ball farther.. Well, you do not have to have pain to come and see us. We can check out your mechanics even if you are just having what you think is just “normal tightness.”
If you are interested in talking with one of our SPECIALIST at mPower Physical Therapy of Dallas, JUST CLICK HERE! You can avoid having surgery and being on medications and still getting out to play golf, the game you love to play!
What are you waiting for? Click on the link above to get you one step closer to being able to play the game you love pain free and may be even being able to hit the ball farther!!
