We find a lot of golfers tend to have issues in the knee or in the low back not knowing that the real culprit is the hips. Often the knees or the low back will make up for a lack of mobility in the hips. The problem is this can lead to pain or injury knowing that the hips are a mobile joint while the knee and low back are stable joints. If we take stability away from one or the other we tend to cause issues.
The Hips, whats that all about?
The hips are one of the most mobile joints in the body, only second to the shoulder. Above you see the image with all the muscles listed. Those all are muscles that act on the hip (and there are some not even listed there). The hips have the ability to extend, flex, abduct, adduct, and rotate. We need healthy hips to keep everything else happy.
When it comes to golf, a lot of people just don't use the hips or don't know how. When you look at the stats. 64% of golfers extend their hips early during their swing. This is usually caused by a lack of strength or mobility in the hips, or a combo of the two. As you see in the image below, this gentleman can't stay down in his swing. Now he has no way to clear his hips during the downswing. Meaning he is more likely to have an out to in swing causing him to swing across the ball and in turn causing some bad rotation.
Now what are some simple things you can do to work on your hip mobility?
First we want to check to see if we have the ability to truly hinge at the hips. This means we are bending our body at the hips and not from the low back. This will also be a great stretch for you lats, low back, and hamstrings.
Next we want to help mobilize the spine and continue to work on the ability to tilt the pelvis.
Try those out and let us know if they gave some relief to your low back or if your hips already move a little better?
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