A stiff back is never good for your Golf Swing

If your thoracic spine, the middle of your back, is too tight, you're going to be very restricted in our golf swing and you're not going to hit great shots. Today, we're going to unlock that lack of flexibility to improve how your body moves, to reduce that stiffness in your lower back, and improve all of your golf swings when you make it to the course. First, we need to work on base level flexibility.

So, we've got two stretches to get into the middle of your back and free things up. Number one is the raised prayer hold. The club can actually really help here.

It brings you into a better position for the shoulder blades, and that's what we're trying to do. We don't want to be too rounded like we are sat at a desk, sat in a car too long. Everything gets tight.

What we're trying to do is open up so that you can have that range of motion to work in both directions. For this one, you can do it on the floor, but it's much more accessible to do it on a raised platform. This is a bench.

You can use a chair of any kind. You're going to take a hold of the golf club with your palms up. That's why we have a good reference with the club.

That's why it makes a big difference. So, from here, we get the elbows onto the surface. You're going to bring that club back, and you're going to sit back into your heels.

What we're trying to do here is again, move the spine, open up the shoulders, and you might feel a crack or two. That generally is a good thing, okay? We're trying to get our head through this window.

We're trying to free up the shoulders, and you will immediately feel this in the thoracic spine, in the middle of your back. Keep sitting back. A key to any flexibility hold or stretch is to control your breath work, all right?

You will release tension if you can breathe more, if you can just take time to allow your body to adapt, to work into this position, and basically unlock that tension. So, go a little deeper, hold into that position, feel how your spine is just probably holding a little tension. Try and work through that.

If you want to reset, come up, release, take a moment, and then go back in. That often will help people find the position and find that level of flexibility necessary for the golf swing because, as we talked about, if you are locked up in the thoracic spine, the ability to move your shoulders and the spine itself through a full range of motion, creating a good golf swing, is going to be seriously restricted. And if we don't attack and improve these very simple things, however you train your body is going to be limited in effectiveness in terms of how good you want your golf swing to perform.

So, the first part of our flexibility focused on flexion and extension, basically straight up and down for the spine. Now, we look at rotation, huge for golfers, and this one, you're going to want to spend some time here. It's going to unlock everything all in one movement.

This is the lying separation, super simple, but you will see drastic improvements over time if you are consistent. So, lie flat back, I'm going to take the leg over the lead side of the body. Now, hold the back of that leg, bring the other arm up, and this is where the breathing becomes really important again because we need to then open up, increase in that rotation all the way through the body.

You'll feel this from the lumbar, the lower spine, all the way up into the thoracic. And if you breathe, you'll get that extra range of motion. Ideally, we want to be reaching the ground as we are in this position, spending more time, and creating that rotation, that movement around the spine that all golfers need.

This is perfect to do before or and after a round. It's going to help you with the range of motion, release tension, and just improve how you move in everything that you do. And also, if you play a lot of golf, this really feels good.

Allows you to just relax down the body, use your breathing, and create a better rotational pattern so that with your improved flexibility, your golf swing becomes more accessible and more consistent. There are three layers to unlocking your golf swing. Number one is flexibility.

That's what we've been working on already. That is literally the range of motion a muscle can go through. Number two is mobility.

That's what's upcoming. That's how you can control and develop those patterns in your training so that your body moves the way that you want it to. And number three is the skill of the golf swing.

That's actually being able to take that mobility and deliver it where you need it the most. So, as we look at these movements, what we're looking at is that thoracic range, okay? So, if we're too rounded down, if we're restricted through that area, it's going to be very hard to actually load and turn in your golf swing.

And we're talking about being at a desk, driving, all of the things that we do day-to-day will restrict you there. That's why we need to unlock so badly because when we can open up the shoulders, build in that posture, then rotation and mobility becomes so much easier. So, instead of being tight around the shoulders, all locked up over the ball, what we want to do is set that neutral spine, feel the movements we're about to work on in the swing, and then practice the skill aspect.

And that is where you need to work on your drills, you need to work on block volume, and you need to make more golf swings so you can hit it the way that you want to. Into our mobility focus, and we're looking at how you rotate through the thoracic spine whilst retaining posture. You need that flexibility element first, because if you don't have the actual capacity to reach these positions, controlling them will not matter.

However, you've got those now, so now we go into rotational separators. We're going to get a hold of our golf club about shoulder-width apart and in your golf posture. Now, get comfortable, feel the ground, set your spinal position, and hold the club at arm's length.

Now, we're going to rotate into the backswing. The key focus here is number one, thoracic rotation. So, if you can open up that for thoracic spine, you're going to be able to work through this rotational pattern.

Number two is keeping the arms as far away from your body as possible. As we talked about, so many golfers collapse, lose that width, and that is where you lose the strike and the power. So, we want to be away from the body, return to center, and then load into the other side.

Okay, make sure you get that hip rotation, that torque against the ground, as well as the rotation through the thoracic. Because if we lose this, the upper body isn't actually rotating, it's just moving independently of the lower body. If we can be arm's length, we load that lower body against the ground, and then stretch and turn, we're increasing our capacity to turn our rib cage, to turn around the spine, and stay active through the core.

Same on both sides of the body, load, stretch, keep that turn, keep the width in the arms, and improve your golf swing mechanics through mobility and control. If you're enjoying this video, you probably want to improve your golf swing and your golf fitness. So, hit this video here to see how you can track, improve, and measure your golf fitness compared to mine.

Okay, finally, we start to work on our sequencing. Because if we can exaggerate the feel during this mobility session, you can then take it forward into your golf swing. And this is directly working on your mobility, because we're really trying to feel everything to its full extent.

You want to feel it, and then put it into your golf swing. So, this is the golf posture power rotation. And we're going to put the club across our chest.

We'll take our golf posture, and now we wind into our backswing. We're not thinking about a result, we're not thinking about ball striking, so we want you to go to the biggest turn possible. You can lift that lead foot just like the best players do when they're trying to hit it as far as possible.

So, we can turn, get tall, fully rotate, we've got loads of torque in that trail leg, and it's down, rotate, and push about on the other side. Okay, again, we're really trying to exaggerate the feeling of the golf swing. We're not just trying to replicate our own, we're trying to take it to the fullest extent possible.

So, stay dynamic, feel the ground, we go up, around, down and through. Get the exact feeling going of how you change height, of how you use the ground, and how here we maximize that thoracic turn and extension. Okay, we don't want to be over here, we don't want to be in that sway position, we want to lift and rotate, down, and rip through.

And again, if you can do this on both sides of the body, that is when you're really going to see the benefit because your body's going to be able to work in both directions, allowing more speed in your golf swing. So, it will feel weird going to the other side because you've practiced so many times in your dominant swing pattern. So, load, turn, down and through.

Feel the footwork, feel how you load, turn, and go. Improve the pattern over time, then it not only becomes mobility work, you're also then getting skill work because you're trying to match that pattern up to your dominant side, bringing about a symmetry in your body, and increasing your skill set, so when you're working on your game, you've got more to use. You'll see huge progress if you do this mobility session just once a week.

That's 10 minutes. If you do it twice a week, you're going to see double the amount of benefit, and obviously from there, you can build it into real routine, real habits, and continue to work and progress your mobility, the are going to go way into the future. That is why it's worth taking the time.

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