Golfers: Here’s a stretch where you can nail 2 birdies with one stone

If you’re a golfer, no one has to state the obvious…rotation in the hips and spine is extremely important to keep your body in the right position in order to have an effective swing.

What you might not always connect is that the nagging low back pain you get on the back nine may be due to having a lack of mobility in these same areas.

Think about it…the golf swing is over in less than 1-1.5 seconds.

If your hips don’t rotate, you’ll compensate by trying to rotate into your low back (newsflash…the lumbar spine only allows for 2 degrees of rotation at any one segment).

You can imagine that slamming those poor spinal joints (called facet joints) will not lead to a happy spine.

If your mid-back (thoracic spine) doesn’t rotate, your shoulder girdle and lower neck will suffer because they’ll be forced to move at areas that should be relatively stable.

Therefore, the look and path of your swing is largely dependent on where you can actually move and where you can stabilize.

We’ll tackle stability in other posts…just know that while they are interdependent, mobility is usually the issue you’ll want to address first.

So what are some ways to improve mobility in these two areas?

There are several different ways to access mobility in these areas, but one of my favorite stretches is called the mermaid.

The starting position of the mermaid stretch in and of itself is a stretch for the hips.

One hip is placed in internal rotation (yup…you really need this for the back swing on the trail leg and for the follow through/finish position on the lead leg) and the other in external rotation.

At the spine, you’re able to work on both side bending and rotation.

These two spinal motions are what we physical therapists refer to as a coupled motion, and when you can improve one of them, it improves the other.

Let’s think about it…do we ever see both side bending and rotation in the golf swing?

The mermaid stretch also allows for rotation in both a little spine flexion (spine bends forward) and spine extension (spine bends backward) which also occur at different phases of the swing.

If you have a healthy spine or clearance from your physician or health care professional to perform these kinds of exercises (note that some types of total hip replacement patients and those with low bone density should avoid all or parts of this exercise), give it a try and see if you feel like you can rotate a little easier afterwards.

If you’d like more videos, fit tips, and exercises specifically for golfers, access our FREE PainProof Golf Portal here.