Why Golfers Need Pilates

It is possible to strengthen specific movement muscles to improve the power of your swing.  Improving the stabilizing, balance, and postural muscles that control accuracy, ensure stamina, and reduce injury requires more than weight training or stretching alone.  That’s where Pilates fits in.

Pilates and Pilates-based exercises address the entire body—from improving mental concentration, breathing, and fluid/integrated movement control to improving flexibility, balance, and explosive power generation.  Most important, core strengthening promotes spinal stability, which improves movement patterns and reduces golf related injuries.

Golf is an athletic endeavor that is physically demanding and strenuous, requiring agility, balance, concentration, endurance, explosive power, flexibility, and strength.  It can be started when one is young or mature and played by seniors well in their 80s.  Without proper conditioning, you will not play at an optimal level and possibly set yourself up for injury resulting from loads placed on the body during a round of golf or on the practice tee.

Proper swinging and range of motion require flexibility, strength, and speed generated from a host of muscles that are often tight and weak.  The entire movement pattern of the golf swing requires a coordinated and smooth pattern.  All of this occurs while great stresses are exerted on the spine, legs, and wrists.  Swinging in a controlled fashion happens in less than two seconds as the body rotates from one twisted extreme to another.

The main focus of this conditioning program for golf is flexibility and strengthening exercises that target the entire range of golf specific muscles and joints.  Flexibility will improve range of motion and reduce injuries; strengthening key muscles will allow them to perform with more power and avoid early fatigue.

Experts agree that the most important aspect of golf fitness is spinal stability and maintaining proper posture from address to follow through.  This is achieved by working on core exercises. Pilates has focused on core exercises for over 80 years.  A strong core will allow you to maintain your posture through the entire swing and can create greater power and more consistency.  In addition, core strength reduces, or in many cases completely eliminates, the most common golf related complaint – lower back injury resulting in lower back pain.

Pilates in general and golf Pilates in specific will target swing faults by improving balance, strength, …[etc].

You will find this program extremely rewarding for both your golf game and your overall health and wellbeing.  This Pilates based program does not require special equipment and can be done anywhere and at any time, thus allowing you to incorporate it into your daily life.

In the chart below you will find listed the most common areas of the body that need flexibility and strengthening.  The program explained in this book will give you the tools to address these areas with both traditional Pilates movements and others that are considered Pilates-based—all designed and presented in a manner to be “golf specific.

 

Common SWING FAULTS: Which are yours?

OVERVIEW
Although swing faults are the responsibility of the PGA Professional, Pilates instructors should be familiar with the terminology. There are 13 common swing faults. It is important to understand the bio-mechanical issues that cause them. Your golfer clients will reference them as, “I am coming over the top on my shots.” It is their expectation that you know the lingo and can relate it to their body alignment issues.

VIEWS
There are two views when talking about swing faults: Down the Line (looking down the target line) and the Frontal View.

The Down the Line faults are: Over the Top, Poor Address Postures, Losing your Spine Angle, Early Extension, Trapped Right Elbow, and Takeaway Drift.

The Frontal View faults are: Backswing Sway, Reverse Pivot, Reverse Spine Angle, Chicken Winging, Lower Body Slide, Arm Height (leading arm), and Casting.

1 - OVER THE TOP
Also known as a transition throw because it occurs in the transition from the top or end of the backswing and the initiation of the downswing. The arms or upper torso (distal activation) start the downswing and are thrown away from the body instead of the core (proximal activation) starting the downswing. This is one of the most frequent faults and is a primary cause of the dreaded slice: the ball flies to the right and often ends up in trouble or even lost.

2 - POOR POSTURE
Poor posture is any posture other than neutral spine angle in the golfer. Just as in Pilates, if you are not set up correctly to perform an exercise, there is no chance of correcting in midstream. If the Address posture is off, the swing will be off. We usually see hyperlordotic or hyperkyphotic postures in the absence of neutral at address.

Remember also that the address position is a more static position. Once the swing begins with the takeaway move we are entering the dynamic phase of the swing and posture.

3 - LOSING YOUR SPINE ANGLE
This is a loss of posture during the swing in the dynamic phase of the swing. This is due to the fact that the golfer must sustain a consistent spine angle from setup/address to impact. This swing fault is easily observed because the golfer actually stands up during the swing rather than staying down on the shot. The golfer will say “I came out of it” when they make an excuse for this fault. It has also been called the “elevator man or woman” and the elevator is going up.

4 - EARLY EXTENSION
This is also very common among all golfers. It is related to loss of dynamic posture or the standing/lifting out of correct golf posture during the downswing and finish or follow through. The lower body fails to rotate through to impact and instead pushes forward. Thus, the body has moved forward and pulled up in the downswing to impact position. This may be due to a lack of calf flexibility and/or glute and abdominal strength. This will cause them to recruit the hamstrings and low back thus causing great stress in the lumbar spine. This fault is one of the worst moves for the low back and is probably the primary reason that low back pain ranks first in golfer complaints.

5 - TRAPPED RIGHT ELBOW
This fault is related to early extension. The right elbow is stuck behind the body on the downswing because the body has moved forward and the hips have failed to rotate. The player has less room to make solid contact from this position because there is very little space for the arms to pass to the impact position. Again, the culprit is usually a lack of core strength and/or a lack of flexibility in the shoulders.

6 - TAKEAWAY DRIFT
Also known as a flat takeaway because it occurs during the takeaway from address. The player pulls the club around the body and too far inside the target line.

7 - BACKSWING SWAY
This is a lateral shift on the takeaway/backswing and causes loss of stability in the right leg. The golfer cannot properly load to the right side and coil the upper body to produce the “X” factor or elastic energy production. The pelvis and knee should maintain alignment with the right foot in the loaded position of the backswing. If this alignment breaks down, you see the sway as the pelvis moves laterally to the right.

8 - REVERSE PIVOT
It starts as a reverse spine angle with a shift of the body weight to the left leg in the backswing and adds a weight shift to the right leg/side during the downswing. This is the opposite of correct mechanics and weight shifting in the properly executed swing.

9 - REVERSE SPINE ANGLE
Sometimes, the backswing sway may lead to a fault known as reverse spine angle. This is where the spine angle tilts toward the target line or left side at the top of the backswing. The proper spine angle is angled to the right side, with the body staying behind the ball in the backswing.

10 - CHICKEN WINGING
This is a breakdown of the left arm position during downswing, impact and follow-through. The left arm collapses into the fault.

11 - LOWER BODY SLIDE
This is a lateral shift occurring during the downswing, impact and finish or follow-through. It is similar to the sway because the pelvis, knee and foot alignment is lost. The left leg fails to straighten in the swing and the knee appears to buckle.

12 - ARM HEIGHT
This is usually associated with shoulder restrictions. Arms may collapse in towards the body so that the leading arm (for right-handers this is the left arm) is not fully extended. This means that the left shoulder lacks flexibility or that the right arm (trailing arm) cannot rotate externally.

13 - CASTING
This is a breakdown of the wrist angle on the downswing, sometimes termed an early release of the club. It is often the result of two other faults; early extension and/or over the top.