Fitness

WARM UP and STABILITY

WARM UP

A warm up reduces the risk of muscle strains and will help you to develop power right from the first tee.

Start off with a brisk walk for 5 minutes to heat the muscles you will use during play. Special attention must be paid to areas which have suffered injury in the past; these areas need to be loosened to prevent any further damage.

Follow up your stretches with a few practice swings using different clubs to help limber up. Go through the motions of swinging the club without actually hitting anything. Begin with gentle half swings and work up to full swings over the course of a few minutes.

STABILITY

Your golf swing demands a huge amount of rotation throughout the spine. Thus said, if you have a restriction to movement in one area, the rest of the spine must compensate for this lack of movement. When areas of the spine are under too much strain, overuse type injuries may result. It is imperative that all joints have optimal range of movement and that the muscles supporting them have enough strength to do so.

One tip is to keep your middle back loose, so that you can develop more wind up to power the club. By loosening your middle back, there will be less stress directed into your lower back.

Another tip is to strengthen your core muscles which will help stabilize and protect the joints. These core muscles being the small muscles lying close to the lumbar spine.

Your lumbar and pelvic muscles also help to power and control your swing path. Keeping them strong will give your swing stability and reduce stress on your lower back.

To strengthen the lumbar-pelvic muscles, tighten your pelvic floor muscles as though you were slowing the flow of your urine, and then draw your navel in towards your spine. Try to hold this contraction for ten breaths at a time.

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