<Video Transcript> It’s Eric Wallace, physiotherapist here at Motus Rx physical therapy. And we help golfers build bogey free backs so that they can crush the ball off the tee and play pain free. And today I want to talk about one simple reason why a lot of us are struggling with back issues because, of or during, or after golf. And I’m going to keep it really simple and really straightforward. This is one simple reason and one simple drill that we’ll usually start people with to address this issue.
So simply put, golf is a transfer of energy from the ground through your legs, through your torso, through your arms, to the club, to the ball. Let’s keep it simple for this moment in time, and try to simplify the golf swing. And what happens a lot of times is people do not have good transfer of energy from their legs to their arms, because they don’t have a very good connection here.
So because of a lack of engagement, or a lack of an activation, or just a lack of control through this zone, the transfer does not get efficiently from here to here. And usually in the golf swing, the low back is where a lot of that stress is going to fall. And we don’t necessarily always like that with rotation, everything else that comes with it.
So what happens, a lot of us set up in our golf swing and we’re either one of two variations, we tend to stick our tail out and arch our low back, or we tend to keep our back a little flatter and curve our upper back. Either way, we do not have a very good connection of our core between our legs and our upper body through here. Both ways, we can rely on our back or upper back and we don’t have to use this very much.
So we start our swing a little bit disconnected, and then as we take off, we never really get this involved much. And again, the stress is going to default to back here. So that’s one reason. If you add multiple swings and multiple days of playing and maybe some other body issues going on, one reason why a lot of individuals will get back pain and will start to run out of steam and energy, and it’s just not very fun. So one simple thing that you can start to think about is how do we start this area connected? I like to have people take a club or a doll, get the contact points with the head, mid back and tailbone, and then just start getting yourself set up where you imagine you’re setting up in your golf posture, but you’re keeping those contact points on the club.
And what that’s going to do is it’s going to keep you a little bit more connected by forcing you to have this slightly more engaged. I’m not asking you to all of a sudden develop a six pack and really bear down to engage the core, but this will help you keep a little bit more connected. And if you want to take it a step farther, you can slightly try to curve the lower back into the doll, to just force that engagement a little bit more through here. That way, as you take off with the swing, you’re starting engaged and you’re not letting that… As that energy comes from the legs to the upper body, you’re not letting that core disconnect, and therefore the stress can transfer through the front of the core, and in some of this zone instead of always back here.
 And that’s how we like it with the golf swing. So you can swing as many times as you want, day in and day out, and not have the low back start to give you grief, which causes a lot of energy suck and just not being very enjoyable for the golf game in general. If you have any issues with low back pain or you have more questions about this, feel free to leave comments below. We’re here for you, we’re happy to help. We deal with golfers with back pain that, that are frustrated and angry and we help them get back to the course and doing what they want, whenever they want. So leave some comments below and I appreciate you watching today and getting something from this information, hopefully.