The Golf Swing: Reconciling Performance and Injury Mitigation

The golf swing is one of the most complex movements in all of sports. It involves strength, speed, flexibility, and timing components that all drastically effect the outcome — both in terms of performance and stress on your tissues.

Complexity also means a lot can go wrong. Lower back pain is the most common condition amongst golfers, however many other problems arise: elbow pain, rotator cuff injury, and even hip/knee/ankle conditions can occur.

Sourcing the problem in the swing can be a tall task. Simply looking at someone’s swing likely won’t be a precise enough way to analyze the dynamic movement well enough to draw meaningful conclusions. Many practitioners and coaches turn to slow motion video technology. While this helps, it can still be difficult as typically you can only view 1 or 2 planes of movement, and video does not provide any muscle firing data. To really analyze the golf swing, it has to be assessed in 3D space. The use of inertial measurement units (IMUs) and surface electromyography (sEMG) helps provide a clear picture of each component of the swing, and allows proper assessment of potential deviations that can lead to any of the aforementioned conditions.

Combining this data with studied norms from organizations like the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) makes diagnosing swing problems much easier. This has both rehabilitation and performance implications. Identifying weaknesses in the swing and designing corrective programs can certainly improve your game AND make your swing safer!

Performance and Safety vs. Performance OR Safety

I am TPI medical level 2 certified and work with golfers to both enhance their swing and avoid or correct painful swings. While my portable lab can capture 3D data and enable advanced analysis, solutions are not always as simple as adjusting one variable of your swing to make it safer and better. Most often, there are changes that can improve both performance and reduce stress. However, it is also not uncommon to have to juggle performance gains with safety/injury mitigation; sometimes increasing torque means more rotation, compression and extension on the spine (and thus stress). Alternatively, sometimes adjusting a swing to be less injury provoking means a dip in performance. This potential trade off is an important consideration in your ultimate regimen and goals.

If you are interested in having your swing analyzed for safety or performance, reach out!