5 easy exercises to prevent injury and golf like a pro: Tips to improve your stability, mobility, and change your game.
By Drew Coulson, MSc Physiotherapy
This article addresses what causes golf specific injuries, how to prevent them, and how to improve your game in the process. We’ll also deal with a few key concepts in injury, so that you understand the ‘why’ of what we’re doing.
Golf-Specific Injuries
Golfers get injured. In fact, reports suggest that between 16% and 41% of golfers experience injuries each year, with a lifetime risk ranging from 25% to 67%. The likelihood of injury increases with age, and estimates indicate that over 50% of golfers will develop chronic problems at some point. The most common areas of pain for golfers include the lower back, and the lead arm (elbow, shoulder, and wrist).
In professional golfers, overuse is the primary cause of injury, while for amateurs, it’s typically poor mechanics. A golfer's swing mechanics are often analyzed by looking at their kinematic sequence, which measures the efficiency of their swing. Simply put, this sequence outlines the order in which different body segments accelerate and decelerate throughout the swing. The best golfers generate speed and power by efficiently transferring energy from their feet to the club head, in this order: pelvis → rib cage → arms → club. When the sequence is out of sync, potential energy is wasted, and stress is placed on areas already vulnerable to injury.
The Five Gangs That Can Murder Your Swing
The breakdowns that lead to swing problems can be traced back to five key areas, which we call the "five gangs":
Core Control – This refers to the ability to control the pelvis, which is crucial for transferring power from the ground to the trunk.
Lower Body Dissociation – The ability to move the pelvis independently of the rib cage, requiring upper body stability and lower body mobility.
Upper Body Dissociation – This is the reverse: it requires upper body mobility and lower body stability.
Maintaining Posture/Raising the Arms – The ability to keep a solid golf posture while rotating and raising the arms into the backswing.
Setting/Releasing the Club – This requires wrist mobility and control to generate power while keeping the club on plane.
These skills are interconnected, meaning deficiencies in one area often lead to compensations in others, which can quickly snowball. While many of these issues are related to skill, they can also be influenced by limitations in mobility and stability.
Where do injuries come into play?
There are three main predictors of future injury: previous injury, asymmetry, and altered motor control. Previous injuries often lead to both asymmetry and altered motor control, making it clear what’s most important to address. When we get injured, our brain develops short-term strategies to protect the affected area. These strategies are helpful initially, but they can stick around long after they’re no longer needed. While effective in the moment, they’re not sustainable and can cause pain and dysfunction in other parts of the body over time.
At Shift, our goal is to address an ankle sprain before it turns into a lower back issue. By focusing on previous injuries, we help retrain the brain to distribute the load more evenly throughout the body, just like it did before the injury. In golf, improving how the body shares and transfers load means more power and greater yardage.
Addressing Limitations
The most effective way to address these limitations is through a Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) full-body screen. In fact, 18 of the last 20 championships were won by players who had received advice from TPI practitioners, and 25 of the top 30 players in the world are currently advised by TPI members. At Shift, we use TPI to assess the body-swing connection between a player’s biomechanics and their swing characteristics. For example, is your swing "over the top" because you lack hip rotation, or do you have the mobility but haven’t figured out how to use it effectively? Based on your assessment, we can design a personalized home exercise program to address the specific "gangs" that are hurting your swing. The TPI app will make everything easy to follow with reference videos right at your fingertips.
Until then, here are five essential warm-up exercises that target some of the most common limitations found in a golfer’s swing:
Golf Warm Up
This warm up should take about 10 minutes, spending approximately 2 minutes on each exercise. It is designed as the top 5 exercises to help prevent injury and optimize your biomechanics to improve your game. If you have pain with these exercises, please reduce tension and get assessed by our team.
Load hip and rotate upper body
Trains: Dissociation - Rotational mobility.
Stand in a 7 iron posture, holding your club at the head and grip. Rotate towards your trail leg, putting your weight on the trail foot and pointing your lead shoulder towards your trail foot. Repeat 10-12 reps. Switch direction.
Prayer hand rotations
Trains: ability to plane the club.
WIth your hands in prayer position and elbows at 90 degrees, rotate your hands towards and away from your body. 10-12 reps in each direction.
Knee circles
Trains: knee and ankle mobility.
Stand with feet and knees together. Draw circles with your knees, bringing them over your toes in clockwise and counterclockwise directions. 10-12 reps in each direction.
Hip Hinge
Trains: hip mobility and glute and hamstring loading.
Stand with feet hip width apart, and hold club on thighs with elbows straight. Soften knees, anteriorly tilt your pelvis (stick glutes out) and send your pelvis backwards keeping the club
flush to your back and chest up. Press knees out slightly, squeeze glutes to come back up. 3x10.
Golf Club Cogs - Pelvis
Trains: X-factor pelvis and thorax dissociation - Rotational mobility.
Stand in mini squat/ready position, with golf club in front of you. Rotate your pelvis as far as possible to the left, then the right, without moving your thorax.
Quality over quantity. Spend 3-4 seconds in end range in one direction, then move to the other direction.