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An efficient backswing requires your physical body to do certain things. You can make this move without these various physical components in place but the result will likely be less than optimal. Backswing faults (bio-mechanical inefficiencies) include loss of posture/spine angle, sway, reverse pivot, and reverse weight shift. Addressing a few of these key areas of concern can go a long ways in making your golf game more enjoyable.

In the backswing pivot you will need a combination of muscle length and muscle strength or what we term mobility and stability in certain areas. I have decided to focus on two areas that need mobility for a good pivot-the hips and the mid-back. Your right leg will need to stay stable as your pelvis rotates around the hip joint (If you are a right-handed golfer). That right hip has to rotate inwardly in relation to the pelvis and the left hip has to rotate outwardly. I have found that a fair number of golfers lack adequate range of motion in the hips to avoid the above swing faults in their quest for a “long” swing.

I have included 2 stretches (mobility exercises) to help assist you in gaining the proper hip motion. The first one can be done in standing for the left hip and the second lying on your back for the right hip. With both hip motions restored you are more likely to achieve the 45 degrees of “hip turn” that creates the optimal zone 1 pivot. Your mid-back rotates along with your hips during the pivot. You will need mobility into right rotation through your mid-back. If your posture is rounded, this will be more difficult.

Overall posture through your spine is crucial in gaining the 90 degrees of ideal shoulder turn. Try slumping over right now while you are reading this (if you are not already), place your arms across your chest, and turn your upper body to the right to see what it feels like. Then straighten up by lifting your breast bone toward the ceiling and slightly pulling your shoulder blades together and down. Now try to rotate to the right and feel the difference in the amount of motion and restriction you feel compared to the slumped version. You should feel greater ease and greater motion. Now the challenge is managing that in standing while you are addressing the ball!

Here are a couple of ways to improve right mid-back rotation mobility. Avoid pushing these if you experience any pain. The body is such that on either side of these “mobility areas” you need stability/strength. In other words, the knees, the lower back/pelvis, and the shoulder blades need to be strong and hold relatively stable as you move into the backswing. To improve your pivot try these exercises or consider being physically assessed to find out about your specific limitations by a Titleist Performance Institute Certified Golf Fitness Instructor.

Most golfers will experience some form of lower back pain over the course of time. The nature of the golf swing is inherently unhealthy for the human spine. Forward flexion (bending forward) combined with rotation (twisting) creates torsional stresses throughout the spine including the discs, the joints between each vertebra, the ligaments connecting the vertebra to each other and the surrounding musculature. Through proper awareness (given by golf fitness articles and other reliable sources), coordination, warm-up and training, however, a number of factors can be influenced to give the best chance of keeping your lower back pain-free.

To keep the back as safe as possible, a couple of things have to come together. One, you need to be able to find “neutral spine”. Assume a standard “5-iron posture”. Arch your lower back, then flatten your lower back (I tell patients/clients to “tuck their tail” if they had one aka “pelvic tilt”) and then migrate back to a point about half way in between those two extremes. A recipe for lower back issues and an inefficient swing is to set up in one of two faulty address postures. The “S” posture has too much “sway” or arch in the lower back and the “C” posture has too much “slump” throughout the spine.

When the spine is in neutral those anatomical structures mentioned above have the least amount of baseline tension on them. The other thing neutral spine does is create a more efficient platform to transfer power from the muscles of the lower body through the core, into the midback/thorax and finally into the club via the arms. So, it is crucial to find that position which is going to give you the most power and the least probability of injuring your precious low back. To find neutral, it takes some coordination and awareness of how to move your pelvis back and forth. To maintain that neutral posture through the majority of the golf swing takes “core” strength as well as hip, hamstring, and calf flexibility.

Proper pre-round warm-up is essential to slowly getting your back loosened and ready. Just like a cold rubber band needs a little heat prior to being able to fully stretch, so do the muscles of the lower back. Movement based dynamic warm-up exercises versus prolonged static stretching are important to prepare the back for the rigors of 4 or more hours on the golf course. Dynamic stretching where you hold stretches about the time it takes to exhale and repeating those 5 to 10 times is a good start.

The core is made up of the abdominals, the glutes, and the lower back muscles. These muscles absolutely need to be in good condition to minimize lower back injury. Rather than just doing crunches and oblique crunches for the abdominals, I like to find a resistance (resistive bands, cables, medicine ball, etc) to move against with the upper body while the lower body stays stationary – preferably while in your golf stance. The glutes strengthen well with exercises such as squats, lunges, deadlifts and bridges. I use a physioball as well as the previously mentioned glute exercises to strengthen the lower back muscles. A good strength training program would incorporate these types of exercises 2-3 times per week.

Flexibility is key in the joints above and below the lower back. So, the mid-back and the hips (both mainly into rotation) as well as the hamstrings, hip flexors and calves are crucial to create a healthy environment for the lower back to exist. General and more golf-specific stretching programs (like those offered at Bend, Oregon) and tips found on reliable golf fitness articles should be performed daily to combat the stiffness our tissues suffer from each passing day. To help avoid seeing me in the clinic for low back rehabilitation, strike a balance between strengthening, stretching, and going through an adequate pre-round warm-up routine. Your back and your pocketbook will thank you.

Golf specific fitness is not just for tour players anymore. Any golfer can tune their body to improve performance by following a golf specific training program. Obviously the average recreational golfer does not have the time or money that a tour player has to invest in a high-tech home gym or spend hours a day working out, but a little work using tips from golf fitness articles or other reliable resources will go a long way.

Have you seen some of the tour players lately? There are definitely more slim and trim PGA and LPGA players out there than 20 years ago. Just look at Tiger Woods, Camilo Villegas, Annika Sorenstam and Natalie Gulbis. These golfers take their fitness routines seriously and they have the success to show it makes a difference.

With the advent of numerous technological advances in golf equipment one might think that the average handicap over the last 15-20 years would have dropped sharply. The fact is there has been minimal if any change in the average American golfer’s handicap. The clubs do not swing themselves; new technology still requires a human body. The most important piece of equipment you own is your body and to maximize your golf performance potential, you ought to strongly consider training it for golf specific movements.

A golf fitness program should have a number of different variables, which create a comprehensive plan to improve your overall golf performance. When I say improve I mean your improved ability to safely make a powerful swing that is biomechanically sound, that will avoid potential injury and give you maximal distance with each club. A sound basic golf fitness program will incorporate exercises to improve flexibility, strength and balance.

Flexibility
Are you flexible? Or more technically, do you have appropriate muscle length in multiple planar movements that make up the golf swing? If you are not working at it, you might be surprised at how little flexibility you actually have. The classic singular planar static stretches (20+ seconds long held in one position) are not the primary flexibility exercises golfers should necessarily use when trying to improve their golf specific flexibility. The golf swing moves in multiple planes all at the same time with the transverse (rotational) plane dominating throughout. Golfers should therefore work to improve transverse plane mobility with exercises.

The stiffness of our tissues is increasing with our age, so our flexibility is diminishing with each passing year. We are, however, able to maintain or even reverse our decreasing flexibility with consistent and proper stretching techniques.

What I see most often when working with injured patients and clients wishing to avoid injury are muscle length impairments and imbalances in the hip and spine musculature. Often the imbalance in length can be attributed to imbalances in strength of their antagonists (the muscles that oppose their action). So in order to normalize length, you must also normalize strength. Too much of one and not enough of the other is a recipe for potential injury.

To make a great turn on the ball we need to get separation between our upper and lower body. If controlled, the separation will create power similar to how a spring creates energy when wound and let go. There is maximal coil in the back swing when the rotation of the hips is somewhat limited and the upper body is allowed to rotate further (shoulder turn). This is facilitated by flexibility in the thoracic spine and shoulders. There is maximal uncoil as the hips turn toward the ball and there is some lag time before the upper body follows.

A general rule is that the shoulders should turn twice as far as the hips. So if the hips turn 45 degrees, ideally the shoulders should turn 90 degrees, which puts your mid-back facing the target. In order to make an ideal turn there needs to be transverse plane rotation. This occurs in the hips, in the spine/ribs, in the shoulders and the neck. Therefore, gaining motion or flexibility in these areas is important to create an environment for a healthy turn on the ball. It is important to know which area(s) you may need specific work to improve.

The golf swing does not just occur in the transverse plane, however. It also is on a forward bending axis that requires length in the hamstrings (back of the thigh) from address through impact and then length in the hip flexors (front of the hip) at the finish in order to avoid multiple swing faults and compensations, which may eventually lead to injury.

Strength
Again we need balance between the length and the strength of our tissues. If you have a great turn as described previously but do not possess good hip or trunk rotational strength, you will have difficulty creating a powerful uncoil as well as even staying stable over your feet. With a decrease in hip/trunk stability you will also see an increase in the amount of sway, slide, and other various lower body compensations that ultimately bring your club off plane and therefore do not give you optimal ball striking ability.

“Core strength” is obviously a buzzword in the fitness and rehabilitation industries and has made its way into the mainstream. It is nice to see fitness and rehabilitation professionals using more core stability exercises as a basis for strengthening various other body parts. If we are not strong at the core, we cannot be as strong away from the core. Core stability helps give us the ability to transfer power in the transition zone of the golf swing-from coil to uncoil. It will also give us protection from injuring the low back, the most common golf injury I see clinically.

The core is made up of a number of different muscle groups. Most importantly the core is made up of the three layers of abdominals and the lumbar paraspinal muscles but also includes the lateral hips, the gluts, and the pelvic floor. When specifically strength training the core for golf, it is best to try to mimic the swing as much as possible. In other words use rotational movements when able such as oblique crunches on a physioball, rotational lunges and cable system diagonal patterns.

A golf specific strength-training program should also include exercises for the shoulder and hip rotators. There is a pattern here; rotational strength is critically important to improve power off the tee and provide protection from injury including but not limited to rotator cuff tendonitis, tennis/golfer’s elbow, lower back pain and hip bursitis.

Balance
In order to be able to stand over the golf ball and progress through the golf swing, where weight is initially balanced then transfers right partially and then back to the left almost fully finishing with 90-95% of your weight on the left leg, a considerable amount of balance must be achieved. I see a lot of recreational golfers unable to finish the golf swing mostly because they cannot stand confidently on that left leg (for right handed players). If the body knows that it cannot basically stand on one leg for any length of time, it will avoid it. And without the smooth weight shift transitions, the bio-mechanics of a good swing cannot be achieved, therefore creating compensations that lead to swing faults, mishits and possibly injury.

To enhance your ability to transfer weight onto your finishing leg, practice at home just standing on that leg. Progress this by standing on that leg while the rest of your body rotates to the finish position and even more so by standing on an uneven surface like a pillow or couch cushion. Functionally, when you are practicing on the range or even playing a round, try to hold your finish position for at least five seconds or until the ball returns to turf. This can make a huge difference in your ability to confidently finish your swing, which then enhances your consistency and power.

In order to enjoy this game of golf a little more, I believe we could all use more golf specific fitness found on reliable sources like articles and others. It does take commitment and compliance to fully reach your physical golf peak. Even a little work will boost your overall fitness and will help your golf performance. It does help to have someone trained in the biomechanics of the golf swing and in strength and conditioning to guide you through a safe and successful program (like that in Bend, Oregon). Here’s to a happy and healthy year of golf in Central Oregon.