The Golfer’s Guide to Unlocking Spine Mobility on the Green
Becoming a successful golfer requires building small consistent practices into your movement to maintain full body mobility, especially as you age. Slowly over time or as a result of a sedentary lifestyle, your bones shrink in size and density and your muscles lose endurance, strength, and flexibility. If you love hitting the green, whether with friends or solo, it’s important to maintain coordination, stability, and balance.
A major key to keeping your body in good golfing shape is taking care of your spine. If you find yourself dealing with back aches and muscular imbalances, you may feel locked up, lacking access to your full range of motion. This can inhibit your full golf swing potential, but don’t worry- there are things you can do to stand tall and proud while driving the ball further.
Our pro golf trainers dive into exercises that will help you hit the ball closer to the cup while taking the weight off your back. Let’s go!
1. Reset Your Core
This first drill will help you release tension within your core on both a physical and mental level before reaching for your clubs.
Grab two objects around 1 or 2 pounds, such as small medicine balls, a pair of shoes, ankle weights, or books. It doesn’t matter what the object is- we're simply looking for sensory input for your central nervous system.
Lay on your belly with your forehead resting on your stacked hands. Place one object on your lower back and the other between your shoulder blades. You will then deeply inhale, visualizing your belly, lower back, and rib cage expanding into both the ground and the objects. The objects will help you gauge whether or not you can expand and contract the muscles in the core as you breathe through your nose.
Inhale on a count of 4 and exhale on a count of 8 to engage the full range of motion of the diaphragm and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps release tension. Practice this breathing exercise for about 2 minutes to reset the spine and axial skeleton.
2. Rock Your Body and Reconnect to the Ground
Rocking on all fours is a gentle way to open the hips and strengthen our connection to the ground. This movement effectively awakens and releases tension in every major joint in the body as well as improves our understanding of how to use the floor to create and move pressure throughout the body.
We suggest incorporating this movement first thing every morning to wake up the body.
Start on all fours with your toes tucked under. Flex at the ankles and drive the heels behind you, pressing the toes into the ground. Use your hands to push and rock back towards your Sitz bones while maintaining a long and neutral spine. Complete this for about a minute paying attention to the muscles that are engaged and the release of tension in the joints.
For a variation of this exercise, untuck your toes and bring your knees wider with your toes touching. Use your hands to rock back and propel yourself forward into a hip extension, all while maintaining a long and neutral spine.
Both of these techniques are incredibly effective, especially when you’re experiencing soreness throughout the body. Go ahead and give it a try!
3. Dynamically Open the Hips and T-Spine
You’ll begin this exercise to target the rotational mobility of your upper cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine. This will help strengthen and stretch both sides of the body, the core, hips, and t-spine. Practicing this movement will improve your ability to coil into your back swing and uncoil into a more powerful drive.
Start this exercise with your legs crisscrossed. You will then take the top leg and flip it down so that the inner thigh, knee, and ankle are on the floor in a shin box position. Plant your hand in line with the hip of the front leg so that your spine is long and straight. Take your other hand palm up beneath this hand.
You will then twist your torso to pull the shoulder down towards the knee, rocking back and forth until you’ve reached your maximum.
You then will exit this stretch by reaching towards the sky, opening the chest, and preventing either shoulder from popping forward.
Repeat this flow about five times before repeating on the other side.
4. Rotationally Isolate the T-Spine
Improving your T-spine rotation can dramatically increase the power of your swing. On all fours, sit back on your heels so that you are unable to compensate by shifting your hips. When done correctly, this drill will help you connect to your core.
Place your forearms on the floor with the skinny width of a yoga block between your elbows and knees to get an idea of the tension you need to create. Exhale and draw the elbows back to engage the core and open one arm, twisting open from the torso.
Hold this for a moment before swimming the arm back down to your starting position.
Repeat this on both sides for about a minute.
5. Separate the Hip and T-spine While Standing
This drill targets your balance and stabilization between the upper and lower halves of your body.
Begin with your feet staggered. Placing your heel against a wall behind you with the ball of your foot on the ground will enhance your glute activation.
Keeping your hips square and wrapping your tailbone under, rotate towards the front leg while opening your arm. Pause at the end range for three to five breaths. Focus on engaging your core in the same manner as the last exercise.
To take this exercise to the next level, move your back foot further up on the wall so you are balancing on one foot with support from the wall. This will help you maintain the connection between the lower body, core, and spine.
6. Load with a Half Kneel Windmill
Our final drill to unlock your spine will help you more effectively load the hips. This exercise can additionally open the chest and shoulders, especially for people who spend a lot of time hunched over a desk.
Get in a half kneeling position with your front knee aligned with your ankle and your back knee aligned with your hip. Keep the belt buckle line square and forward. Then, open the hip by moving the back foot in line with the front foot on the ground, toes tucked under.
Place your hand on the ground in line with that back knee by flexing at the hips. Here, you will inhale to open the other arm towards the sky and exhale to close off. Repeat five of these motions on each side.
In this exercise, you should feel your external hip rotators, hamstrings, core, and upper back contracting to keep you in this open position.
Learn More > The Key to Graceful Aging
Spring into Action with Get F.I.T.
Most of us experience back pain at some point as a result of overdoing physical activities, but we don’t have to stay stuck that way. With the proper techniques and training, you can begin moving more functionally and significantly decrease your risk of injury.
Safety is our top concern at Get F.I.T., which is why we prioritize movement that strengthens and mobilizes critical musculoskeletal components that often get ignored or underdeveloped. Whether you play golf or not, our professional trainers will customize a program for your unique body and fitness goals.
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