The golf swing is a fascinatingly complex movement in which every joint in the human body plays a part.
Not only is it complex but the margin for error is extremely small given the size of both the club head and the ball. Millimetres can be the difference between a good shot and a bad one as you’re probably only too aware.
A consistent, powerful swing is the key and this is a function of both a skilled movement and your body’s ability to perform that movement with what it has available.
It is the second part of that equation that we can help with.
Previous injury, stress, trauma and overuse, can cause muscles to become weak or inhibited. This leads to compensation that will usually be felt as tightness in the body as your central nervous system’s (CNS) primary goal is the stability of your joints.
If your CNS is not confident you can control a movement, it will seek to prevent it.
For example, trunk rotation is a critical part of the golf swing and where we usually start to look with the golfers we train.
If one or more of the muscles that produce trunk rotation has become inhibited, then your body will usually tighten other muscles to limit that motion. This is great for the stability of your joints, but not so great for your golf swing as you’ve now lost range of movement and as a result possibly power too.
In an effort to maintain that power your body will seek to compensate at another motion segment. You may move your hips further in the back swing, or perhaps you will attempt to increase the speed of the club head during your down swing.
In short if something’s not working, something else is working harder to compensate.
Over time these compensations will lead to further muscle tightness and can result in chronic pain as certain structures become overloaded.
We use Muscle Activation Techniques (MAT) and resistance training to begin to unravel these compensations by finding and strengthening the inhibited muscles that caused the problem in the first place.
This will give your golf swing more power, accuracy and consistency.
Watch New York Yankees baseball player Mark Teixeira talk about how MAT has helped him below.