The thoracic segments of the spine were designed to be relatively mobile in there function when compared to the lumbar sections of the spine. With the alignment of the facet joints, the vertebrae of the thoracic spine allow for side to side bending and rotation. With an excess of anterior pressure on these joints (an increase of kyphosis from poor posture maybe?), the ability to rotate will be affected. Before training rotationally, it is important to promote thoracic extension to relieve any excessive forces that may be present.

In golf and other rotational sports, a majority of movement should be promoted in this area. There is always mention of a good ‘shoulder’ turn in golf. This turning of the shoulders is done by moving the thoracic segments of the spine. When these segments are not performing there necessary duties, the spine above (cervical) or below (lumbar) must make up the difference. Once this relationship is altered, compensation and pain can occur over time due to the unnecessary stresses that are being placed on the body.

Ouch!

A great way to test the amount of movement one has in the mid back is to start by lying on one side with knees bent. Keeping the knees together, roll the shoulder back to the ground trying to touch the shoulder blade to the floor. See Here. Check both sides and determine with side is restricted. Many components contribute to rotational restrictions, so it is key to identify what is the limiting factor (i.e. low back, rib cage, upper chest, etc.). Once you find the limited side and what is causing that limitation, go after the areas that are tight with any modality available.

To Test your mobility standing in golf posture (since this is the way we will be using this new range of motion), rotate the shoulders to one side, then the other, keeping the hips still as you move. Many factors contribute to this complex movement. These will be discussed in the coming weeks on how to help control separation in the golf swing.

Keep those hips still.

Check back again as we explore the cervical spine and move to controlling spinal movement.

Golfers of different gender and age usually have issues with mobility, stability, or both. We generally see that men tend to have more issues related to mobility, but adequate stability. On the flip side, women and junior golfers tend to have much better mobility, but less stability. Every individual’s body is unique and it is important to have specific physical issues, whether pertaining to mobility or stability, identified by a golf fitness professional through a comprehensive evaluation.

Once full joint range of motion and stability of all the body’s joints is established, it is then appropriate to implement power training into your golf fitness program. Half kneeling medicine ball slams is a great beginner-intermediate exercise to start out with. This exercise requires a medicine ball and a partner or wall to which you will be bouncing the medicine ball to. Here’s how they are performed:

Start by kneeling on your left knee with your right foot out in front of you. With the medicine ball in your hands, elongate your spine to become as tall as possible and tightly squeeze your left glute and abdominals. From here you are going to use both hands to bring the medicine ball diagonally over your right shoulder. While maintaining balance and a tall posture, bounce the ball across your body with the goal of slamming it to the ceiling or over your partner’s head. It is critical keep your core engaged in order to maintain balance and generate the most power. Perform 10-15 repetitions and switch knees and directions of the bounce. 

For any questions relating to mobility, stability, and/or power, please email me at jrivkin@fitgolf.com

Jason Rivkin, ATC, GPS, CGFI-FP1

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Golfers’ Low Back Pain – The Core Issue

Fixes and Prevention

By now I hope you are seeing a trend…that there are only a few problems responsible for most of the lower back injuries and swing faults golfers experience.  It is very simple.  Level the pelvis, free the hamstrings and hip rotation, improved stability in the hips, create a neutral spine and pelvis, and improve core strength.  Simple, right? Here is the process.

Level the pelvis. This is not so difficult to do. Get rid of unilateral lower cross syndrome. That is all there is to it. How? Most uneven pelvises are the result of muscle imbalances in the region.  Hip flexors are tight and inhibit glutes.  Quadratus lumborum is tight.  Lower abdominals are weak or inhibited by the quadratus lumborum tightness. It’s all reflexes.  There are direct neurological connections among these groups. When one muscle becomes tight it sends a signal to the opposite to shut down.  This signal actually causes weakness in the antagonistic muscle.  A perfect example is iliacus (hip flexor) and glutes (hip extensor). They are reflex inhibitors of one another.  To fix the lower cross syndrome, you need only to restore balanced activity to BOTH muscles of the pair.  Leveling the pelvis requires nothing more than this:  lengthen the hip flexor and quadratus lumborum, facilitate and strengthen the glutes. Take advantage of these reflexes to correct the problem. Restoring normal biomechanical forces on the pelvic bones will relieve the torsion. If done correctly, this process will take no more than a week or two.

These three exercises should help you improve the pelvic imbalance.

Free the hips by improving flexibility in the hip external rotators and by improving muscle activity in the hip internal rotators. This can be accomplished in several weeks to two months ,depending on how tight the hips are. How? Releasing, Stretching, strengthening, facilitating, balancing muscle tensions, then on to functional training. These exercises can help:

Create a neutral spine by balancing the tensions between the abdominals and the lower back, and between the hip flexors and extensors on both sides of the body. Most of us have a bilateral forward tilt of the pelvis. Stretch both hip flexors.  Stretch the lower back.  Strengthen the glutes and abs. Do this lying down, sitting up, standing, and then do this in golf posture. That is all there is to it.  These exercises might help:

Do these fixes all seem similar?  They should, because they are. The challenge for most of you is knowing what side to apply the fixes to and in what sequence. That is where a Body Balance for Performance team can help.  We are able to help you understand and fix this. [Fix what???] Frankly, any golf fitness professional who understands the biomechanics, neurology, anatomy, and the golf swing could easily help you get rid of back pain, and play the best golf of your life.

Try the exercises noted above to see what happens.  Bottom line is that if you do not improve in a week to ten days doing these on your own, you probably will need help from a golf fitness professional with the knowledge of the areas noted in the previous paragraph.  If you want to have us look at this email us pictures of you:  back view in standing, toe touch with the legs together and straight, and sitting with your right ankle on the left knee, and then the left ankle on the right knee. Once we see these we might be able to guide you to a solution.

if you have any questions, please feel free to email them to me at dostrow@fitgolf.com.

Here’s to your healthy back and good golf.

Dave

Over the years we’ve been asked, on many occasions, to offer a course on how to Get New Clients in the Door but we resisted. For many years our company was reluctant to give out proprietary information and methods on how to create new golf fitness clients to build a golf fitness business. We had ourselves believing that if we shared this valuable information we would just be creating our own competition; And we wanted the entire market to ourselves! Boy were we wrong – after many discussions with other golf fitness leaders, we all came to the conclusion that if we just worked together to educate the public, then the industry will grow larger than all of us can ever service… and that is exactly what is happening now. So if you feel that you just can’t get your golf fitness business going, you will need to know that the industry leaders are doing their part by offering you their own “proprietary” information. Now the challenge for you will be to see how closely you allow yourself to follow plans and ideas developed by someone other than YOU.

Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing the secrets to our trade in terms of developing a continuous client base that will help you build a solid golf fitness business. I encourage you to feel free to send comments and questions on subjects or ideas mentioned. Also feel free to comment on your own successes to bringing new golf fitness clients in your doors! We will be referring to our built-in resource of 19 years of experiences when answering all of your questions.

My challenge to you:

We have been offering this information to physical therapists, chiropractors and personal trainers. We have also offered this info to trained exercise professionals of all types and what I have found is that a small percentage of these folks will actually use these proven ideas while the larger portion of these people would rather sit back and allow the new business to find them. First decide if you want to create an image of difference between you and all the other “golf fitness guys” (and gals). The way to do this is to be THAT person that has the discipline to follow your chosen golf fitness marketing plan.

Your mission (if you so choose to accept this challenge) is to actually work on one or two of these upcoming successfully proven ideas and let us know how it works out for you. Be that smaller percentage that actually takes this information and runs with it. In other words…

JUST DO IT!

The Do’s to Building your Golf Fitness Business:

1. Build a Network of business friends whether you are getting your business off the ground or trying to grow your current client base, you will need help. As a matter of fact, you will be ASKING for help from these people, so the larger your network, the more help you will get. Always continue to build this network. Set a goal of adding 10 more business friends to your database every month.

Why is this important? Over the years, our research has shown that many business owners or directors, high level management and salespeople actually enjoy golf. And… if they don’t golf, chances are they know someone that does!

1. Build a database of golfer prospects. Anytime you meet a person that golfs (at any level; beginner to expert) you should attempt to get their contact information! At least their name and email address. This does not necessarily mean that this particular person will be your client, but it is very possible this person will know your next client. In the next few weeks, we will be talking about implementing our secret weapon program that we call the “Buddy System”. For this program to work you will need to generate the 2 databases we have just talked about: 1.) network of business friends and 2.) Golfer prospects.
2. Begin to find experts to follow in the golf fitness world. In my research over the last few years, I have found that googling for information to find new fitness clients appears to be quite simple – there are numerous articles to help you bring in new members to a gym or into a general personal fitness program of some sort, BUT almost NO articles showing you how to accumulate golfers as clients. Since this particular information is difficult to come by, once you find the true golf fitness marketing experts (the ones that really know how to attract the golfers) then latch on and try your best to tap into their library of information. Ask as many questions as possible and work to get all the details (even the seemingly insignificant little bits of information) and steps to any activity that may help you get the golfer as a client.

Until next time – Tune into Part 2 in my next blog article and remember the Challenge:

JUST DO IT!

Until Next Time,

Fran Rosario

BUY YOUR 10-MINUTE CUSHION NOW!

In order to create this healthy a relationship in the lumbar spine, we must address what its primary function. Do to the large weight bearing properties of the lumbar spine, it is wise to add assistance of the surrounding muscles to help in this heavy job. This ultimately comes down to pelvic control creating a sturdy base for the spine segments to sit upon. A few drills can be done to both test and strengthen the pelvis.

Begin with a move called the Pelvic Tilt Test derived from the TPI movement assessment. Kneeling on a pad or pillow, tilt the pelvis under the body as far as you can then tilt the other direction by arching the back. This move should be done with only the lower abdominals and glutes. There should be no upper body movement during the exercise. If movement occurs in the upper body, there is the potential for upper body stability issues. The end goal of this drill is to perform it in golf posture. (These will be address in a future post.)

Start Position for the Pelvic Tilt

The other way to check pelvic control is by a bridge with leg extension. Lying on your back with your knees bent, push your hips to the ceiling. Once the hips are elevated, kick one leg out holding that position for 10 seconds. Repeat the same on the opposite side. This again tests glute and abdominal control along with the endurance of these structures when put under stress. These two positions can be trained and tested in the same fashion to see how you are progressing. Functional exercise progressions are sometimes needed to make these movements more efficient. See here.

That’s a nice bridge!

Try them out to see where you stand. Be sure to check back to see how we test and train the next segment: the thoracic spine.

In a previous post “Stand Right So You Don’t Hit It Right” we discussed posture at address and how poor posture will lead to flawed swing movements and potential injury. We also gave you a simple drill to help educate your body to move into an ideal posture position. However, some golfers may find it challenging to get into this position. Asking what is necessary from the body to comfortably set-up into a neutral posture requires adequate flexibility, strength, and motor control. More times than not, amateur golfers’ first issue is flexibility, so today we will discuss a common villain, the hamstrings.

Hamstrings are the muscles behind the thighs which originate from the pelvis and attach below the knee.  Their main action is to flex the knee which allows you to bend your knee during walking and running. The hamstrings also control the degree to which your pelvis and spine can bend forward in the address position of your golf swing. If one is not able to touch their toes in the standing position, the chances of that person getting and maintaining the correct forward bend from the pelvis and spine diminish greatly. If the hamstrings are tight, the research proves that you will not be able to bend forward enough from the hips in your address posture position. This leads to a position that is bent too far from the knees, or more commonly, over-rounded in the spine. As mentioned in “Stand Right So You Don’t Hit It Right”, an overly rounded spine will limit your ability to fully rotate throughout the swing and will increase your chance of injury.

If you think tight hamstrings are affecting your posture position at address, try the following hamstring stretch which will allow you to achieve ideal posture at address and minimize swing flaws influenced by your current posture position. 

Find a corner of a wall in your home where you can lay down on your back.  Place your right foot up against the wall and your left leg flat on the floor. Make sure that your right knee is fully extended or “locked out” by squeezing your right thigh muscle and bend your right ankle down toward you so you feel a gentle stretch in your right calf. .  Choose a distance from the wall in which the stretch is challenging, yet tolerable. From here, squeeze your abdominals and make sure your low back is pressed against the floor. If you are properly positioned away from the wall, this will create a stretching sensation in the back of your knee, your upper and lower hamstring, and the calf muscles.  If the stretch feels intolerable, move farther away from the wall and reposition your leg.  When you have found the right distance from the wall, hold the stretch position for 3-5 minutes or until a complete release of the stretch feeling has been accomplished.  Switch legs and repeat the stretch.

 You can advance the stretch when ready by gradually moving closer to the wall and sliding your leg farther up the wall.  Perform this exercise at least 5 days per week. You should begin to notice a big difference in your ability to achieve a correct posture position at address and a more consistent golf swing.    

Jason Rivkin, GPS, CGFI-FP1

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Golfers’ Low Back Pain – The Core Issue

Swing Faults and Injuries – there is a relationship between swing faults and injuries, and poor biomechanics and swing faults. In this lesson we are going to look at how several common swing faults are related to injuries. We will also look at how abnormal biomechanics can create swing faults that create the pain.

Research indicates that a reverse spine angle is the number one swing fault that causes injury to the lower back.  When we look at the majority of golfers they have pelvic torsions, muscle imbalance, and limited thoracic rotation.  Generally there is mild to significant weakness in the glutes and abdominals.  If we think back to the lesson on biomechanics, we find that this is a recipe for disaster. The disaster is that when these biomechanical conditions exist they create abnormal motion in the swing. When you have weakness in the glutes, with or without limited hip rotation, you will sway to the back swing side. That sway moves the hips up on the backswing side and creates a tilt of the spine toward the target…this is a reverse spine angle.  From there you will begin a downswing, side bending, rotation, and flexion, under load from the opposite position of side bending, rotation, and extension…look out spine…you are going to be injured. If your golf swing has even slight reverse spine angle, you are prone to lower back injuries.

Lateral sway is movement of the pelvis to the back swing side of the golf swing. It is caused by hip rotation, gluteal weakness, tightness in the lateral aspect of the thigh, and/or anterior pelvic torsion. You do not have to have all of these physical problems, just one, and you will be at risk for lateral sway.  Lateral sway as we mentioned earlier is related to reverse spine angle.  The knee bone is connected to the leg bone….the leg bone is connected to the hip bone…the hip bone is connected to the pelvic bone…it’s all related and all works together.

Lateral slide is the down swing counterpart to lateral sway. It has the same physical causes as lateral sway: tight hip motion, weak glutes, etc. Lateral slide is related to hooks, and pulls, and a myriad of other swing faults.  Lateral slide puts huge forces on the back swing side of the lower back.  When the pelvis slides to the down swing side with flexion and rotation of the spine superimposed, there are huge forces put on the backswing side lower back. These forces cause disc and facet joint injuries.  These injuries will get worse and worse over time.

[insert picture slide front here]

C-posture and S-posture are opposite extremes of the same problem.  C-posture or forward bending of the spine puts huge forces on the lumbar discs. C-posture is related to loss of spine angle in the golf swing. S-Posture or backward bending of the spine puts great forces on the lumbar facet joints.  S-posture is related to reverse spine angle as well.  If you move into the rotation position of the back swing, and then move into S-posture or backward bending of the lumbar spine, you end up in reverse spine angle and you have back injury. Neutral spine is paramount to a healthy back and to biomechanically sound golf swings.

Unbalance Pelvis, when one side is in torsion, leads to reverse spine angles, lateral sways, and back injuries. As we reported earlier, unbalanced pelvis is caused in many cases, by tight hip flexors and lower back muscles and weak glutes and abdominals on one side of the body.

Are you beginning to see a trend?  All of these swing problems are related to one another, and all of these swing problems are related to poor biomechanics of the lower back, pelvis and hips.  Do you want to fix the hook or the slice? Do you want to hit the ball long and straight, consistently?  Do you want to play golf without injuries to the lower back? The key to accomplishing this is to get rid of the swing faults.  The way to get rid of swing faults is to correct the biomechanics of the lumbar spine, pelvis, and hip.  Proper training will do this.

If you have any questions, please email them to me at dostrow@fitgolf.com.

Here’s to your healthy back and good golf.

Dave

Do you think balance is important in this situation?

Once you get over the mental part of ‘how am I to get out of this situation?’, the body should respond naturally if your balance is performing well. Having an efficient balance system is critical in knowing how much the hips should bend when addressing the ball (i.e. do I stand closer to the ball?, should I give myself some space?). Balance also plays a role in the downswing by keeping your weight near your heels as you strike the ball.

To understand what factors into good balance, it is good to know what areas need to be addressed. There are three balance sensors in our bodies that detect various amounts of information that help keep you upright. The first is the vestibular system located in the inner ear that acts as a natural gyroscope, the second is found in the golgi tendon organs and muscle spindle reflexes that detect muscle/tendon length, and the last component is the vision systems to give visual feedback that keep our head above our feet.

The best way to train all three of these balance systems is to practice. I know it sounds simple, but is it the simple truth. The more time spent learning how to react to changing ground forces, the more improved and trained balance will be. By training balance, you will know what is supposed to happen when the ground changes because you have experienced it before.

The basic plan to train balance is to stand on one leg with your thigh parallel to the ground, squeezing the glute muscles on the standing leg, and staying tall in the shoulders and chest. Depending on age and other factors, this position should be held for no less than 20 seconds at a time. To make this drill more challenging, add time while balancing or grab a dumbbell in the hand of the balanced leg. Repeat this drill until you reach a total of 3 minutes a side. Always try to increase the interval time and total time spent balancing. Perform this drill to help improve balance and ball contact on any surface you encounter on the course.

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