For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and sixty published on December fourth, twenty twelve.
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Many of us are walking around with an imbalance in our forearms. You know, we tend to be stronger on the underside of our forearms because we're gripping things all day. So the muscles on the underside tend to be stronger than the muscles on the top part of our forearm, the expensers, which are responsible for kind of spreading out our fingers.
Oh, when you say top part of the forum, you mean the side of the back of your.
Hand, the back of yes, okay. And so because we have that in balance with the flectors being stronger than the extensors, that can lead to issues in the risk, elbow, and even shoulder. Carpa tunnel. A lot of people have carpa tunnel because of that in balance, and again, it's something that a lot of people just don't realize that
they have. It just develops. Again, We're gripping doorknobs, we're gripping chairs, We're gripping, gripping, gripping, and we really don't do anything to balance out that strength by providing a resistance to the extensors. I mean, how many times do you have a resistance when you are going from a closed fist to an open finger position? Hardly ever, so you don't really get a chance to work those extensor muscles as.
Much dealing with and overcoming golf injuries with Bob Forman. This is Golf Smarter.
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Here's your host, Fred Green.
Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only.
Bob, Hey, it's pleasure being back, and thank you.
I appreciate you spending some extra time talking about this because I wanted to go back for a minute about you were talking about the C curve and the S curve, the different postures that the golfers are suffering through. And I'm not sure if it was you who mentioned this or somebody else, but it was an epiphany for me, and that was my posture at address bending at the hips versus bending at the waist. And can you expand
on that? Because I found that when I'm if I have this right, the bending at my hips so a little bit, you know, about four or five inches below my waist, I'm in better position to get a good turn. It just seems to make a difference when I focused on keeping my posture starting you know, at my at my hip joints and bending there versus just bending over and hunching over the ball.
Yeah, I mean the hip hinge if they technically call it is. You know, it's definitely much better when you do hinge from the hip because that will allow you to have a much straighter spine. I mean spines, not straight, but you know what I'm talking about. When you look at somebody from the side, you want to see their back relatively flat as they're addressing the ball. When you bend over at the waist, what happens is you tend to get more into that rounded bode back posture, that
sea posture. So yeah, you know, between the two, you definitely want to focus on more of the hip flex inflection a hip hinge. And a lot of times people
have difficulty with that because their hamstrings are tight. And we talked about the tight hamstrings in the first part there a little bit, and when in some cases, I mean, the hamstrings are really tight, and in that case it's going to prevent you or it's going to hold you back really from efficiently hinging from the hip because the hamstring won't allow that hip bone to rotate as you are bending forward, so you tend to bend more at
the waste and get into that sea posture. So tightness in the hamstring is a big factor for allowing you to get into a good hitting position or a good address position over the ball.
And now I think this is a good lead in to talk about injuries, golf injuries and what causes them, what we need to do about them. And I hate asking multiple questions at once, but the things that I'd like to cover about golf injuries are how do we deal with them? Should we stop playing golf?
How long?
Or play through it? Be tough, be a guy, be a man, you know, I mean, like, what injuries are we talking about that you see most of the time for golfers. And I apologize for asking too many questions at once.
I don't like doing that. Well, I mean, you've definitely got to be a man to play through it. Back injuries tend to be number one, and there are multiple reasons why that's so. Just having muscle tightness in specific areas like the hamstrings, the muscles in the back of the thighs, or the hip flexers, the muscles in the front part of the hip, that alone can lead to muscle low back discomfort and low back pain. Forget about playing golf, just every day you know, living those particular
muscle deficiencies can enhance your incidence of low back discomfort. So, I mean, a simple way to test for hamstring tightness is just to stand up, place your feet together, keep your knees locked and nice and easy, bend forward at the hips, and reach down towards the floor with your fingers as far as you can go until you feel
that stretch in the back of the leg. Now, the goal there to pass that assessment that we do with golfers is they would need to be able to touch the floor with their fingertips, and if they can't, it means that their hamstrings are tight, and the further away from the floor they are, the tighter the ham strings, and the greater the risk of developing low back discomfort
and pain. Now you combine that with the action of swinging a golf club, you know, twisting the body and exploding in the down swing, and it's like a perfect storm. I mean, it's just you know, you're just waiting for that back to get blown out. So in that situation, you really want to make sure you focus on stretching those ham strings, and there are specific stretches to do so that you can enhance the flexibility of the ham strings, and then a lot of times that alleviates the back issues.
Another issue that I see a lot, or another cause for low back discomfort that I see quite a bit, and it actually stems from the mid back, the thoracic spine area. Now the thoracic spine. You know a lot of people think that they get their rotation in the golf swing from the lower back, and really the lower back is geared more for stability strength, and it's really the mid back area, right kind of where the ribcage is and stuff is really where rotations should come from.
And the higher up you go in that mid back area towards the neck, the more rotation you should be able to get. Now, there is an assessment that we do with golfers to test to see whether or not their mid back is tight, and many golfers fail that test and come out with having tightness in that area. And when you're tight in that mid back thoracic spine area, what's going to happen is as you start to turn the upper bodies start to rotate the body back in
the backswing and bringing the club back. If the mid back is tight, it's not going to allow you to really rotate as far as you'd like to in order to get a good shoulder turn and a good backswing. And so you get to a certain point and those tight muscles are saying, you know, we're not going to let you go, but you still want to go back further. So what has to happen is you have to recruit the lower back in the rotation, and the lower back
just doesn't like that. And so again you're swinging a golf club, you know, hundreds of times during the round of golf. And if you're in that situation where your mid back is tight and you're recruiting that lower back into the rotation, that's going to start putting some stress on the lower back, and over time you're going to
injure the lower back. So it's interesting how you know, tightness in the mid back and tightness down below the hip and the hamstrings and or the hip flexers can create low back injury and low back pain.
I'm kind of surprised we've never really talked about the mid back and what kind of injuries pains are we going to have with mid back issues.
Well, well, I mean, like I say, you know, the mid back is a big precursor in the mid mid back is a big precursor for the low back discomfort.
Is actually okay, so it's going to translate there, But I think it also translates if you know where you were saying, where the turn comes from, it's going to translate in your distance, your accuracy, your ball striking ability.
Right oh yeah, well yeah, you know again, you know, if the the if you don't have that ability to get the club back, you know, and the club he doesn't travel as far in the back swing, it's not going to be able to travel as far in the downswing, so you're basically robbing yourself of clubhead speed and that inevitably cuts back on your distance. It also can cause you to go into other types of swing faults that
can cause back discomfort. You know, the two most common swing faults, I should say the two top swing faults that lead up to back injury are reverse spine. And basically what that is is your upper body is leaning back towards the target as you bring the club back into the back swing, I mean i.
Auto back swing. You're now your back your back is to the target, and you're leaning in that towards that direction.
And you're leaning back towards the target. Yeah, ideally when you get over the ball, all right, For our right handed golfer, let's say your right hand is going to be lower on the club than your left hand, so that automatically gets your right shoulder a little bit lower and your spine angling away from your target. All right, that's your secondary spine angle left to right. Your primary spine angle is your front to back right, So your spine angle angling away from the target. Now, when you
bring the club back into the backswing. Ideally, you want to keep that spine angle angling away from the target because that's going to set you up at the top of the backswing in a good position so that you can initiate the downswing and the proper hitting sequence. And that's starting with the hips, then the body, then the arms, then the club. A lot of golfers, unfortunately, will go into reverse spine, where as they bring the club back, the spine angle now goes from facing away from the
target to leaning back towards the target. All right, So can you picture that in your mind? So what happens is, number One, you're in a bad hitting position to initiate the down swing and the proper hitting sequence. So your arms tend to take over the down swing versus your hips, So you tend to become an upper body swinger and you swing with the arms. You when you swing with the arms, you tend to come over the top, and you tend to cast the club out early in the
down swing. So because you come over the top, you're going to have a slice, because you're going to cut the ball, and because you're throwing the club out too soon in a down swing, you tend to increase the loft of the club, and you tend to have more trajectory upwards, so you lose distance and so you're not a happy camper. But the other thing is is that that reverse spine puts a lot of pressure on the lower back as you come back down into the down swing.
It's actually the number one swing fault for low back discomfort. Interesting, the other swing fault that leads to back injury and back discomfort is called early extension. And what early extension is and that deals with the hips. Now, when you're standing over the ball and your arms are down hanging down towards the ball, you have a pretty good space there that you've developed from bending at the hips, you know,
the hiphinge. And as you bring the club back and then you start your downswing, what happens in early extension is that your hips will start moving towards the ball and actually kind of closing down on that nice space
that you had before you started the backswing. And so as the hips move forward as the arms are coming down through the ball, they're basically getting cramped in there and you don't have as much room, so you tend to block and push the ball out to the right, and so a lot of golfers, you know, a lot of the smarter golfers will say, okay, well I got to throw more wrists into my shot, and they start
hitting the duck hooks. So characteristics of early extent scenario either tend to push the shout out to the right all the time or you start hitting these duck hooks. But the act of that hip moving towards the ball again starts to put pressure on the lower back and that's usually the second biggest swing fault that leads up to low back issues. Now, early extension, there's a strong correlation between tightness and the hamstrings, and there you go.
There's you know the low back yeah end, or tightness in the calves end, or weak glutes your buttocks as far as Gump would say. And weak glutes are also a factor just by themselves for low back discomfort because they tend to be they should be the strongest muscles in the body. I mean, those are your power muscles in your golf swing, and they also will impact you know, your ability, or I should say, we'll have an influence
on your back when you're standing. So weak loots, tight hamstrings, you know, just like I said, factors for for back issues, and then you combine it with some of these poor swing faults, and you know that's that's why Well, back injuries number one.
And what about number two? And now we've been very focused on the back, I was curious to also talk about elbows, shoulders, knees, Yeah, what other what other barts? Swing faults are going to create problems there?
Well, elbows, let's let's talk about tendonitis in the elbows. A lot of gods have pendinitis, and you know you'll see them out there with the straps on their forearms to try to spread out the uh, you know, the stress to the from the impact and the ball to to the greater area in the forearm. But in a lot of cases, the tendinitis develops because of lack of range of motion in the shoulder and especially external shoulder rotation. And there's a way you can measure that and determine
how much range of motion a golfer has. And ideally, you know, we want to try to get the golfer to about one hundred and ten degrees. I mean, when you think about somebody doing the boy scout signal, you know, with their arm out to the side and then the elbow bent at ninety degrees.
Okay, I'm doing it.
If you start in that position and then from there you just rotate back your hand in your forearm, that's external rotation in the shoulder.
Oh okay, how far should I be able to go before it starts hurting?
Well, you're going to start at ninety degrees, and you should be able to go back at least another twenty degrees okay to have sufficient external shoulder rotation. Now, some golfers have difficulty getting just the ninety degrees. That's a big issue anywhere between a ninety and one hundred and ten. We want to start to work on some range of
motion exercises to increase that arrangement. Because what happens when you're swinging the golf club on the trail side, which would be the right side for a right handed golfer. As you're bringing the golf club back, you're going to externally rotate that right shoulder in order to get the club back. If you have limited range of motion there, what's going to happen is you tend to either limit your back swing or you tend to throw the elbow out and have that flying elbow, or you'll change your
swing plane. You'll start on kind of a rotational swing and then go vertical with the swing plane, or you go into reverse spine. So see one thing. A lot of times one thing leads to another.
Yeah, I'm just gonna say that it sounds like everything's interconnected here, that this begets this, begets this.
Yeah. And if it's on the target side, so left side for a right handed golfer, as you're coming down to the all through impact, you want to be able to kind of extend out towards the target. But if you lack range emotion in that target shoulder, that left shoulder for oriented golfer, what's going to happen is you'll see the characteristics is the elbow will kind of hug the body as you go around on the follow through as opposed to being able to extend out towards the target.
So you basically kind of shorten the arc of the follow through swing. And like I say, in either case, and that's called the chicken wing by the way, swing fault. And in either case, you know you're putting a lot of stress on the elbow and that tends to lead to inflammation tendonitis in the elbow. So again it's kind of interesting where you know, one part of the body will influence a different part of the body. Yeah, so I mean exercises to help increase range emotion in the
shoulder joint are definitely warranted in that regards. Again, you know, with a little time and a little consistency, you'd be surprised what a difference that can.
Make interesting lower lower body, lower half, knees.
Ankles, knees ankles, you know.
Are those golfer the golfers complain about stuff like that, not as much.
You know, it depends again, a lot of it is is kind of mechanics in that regards. If you see that a golfer, well, let's take the lead leg, you know, on a golfer, the target leg again, a left knee for a right handed golfer. You know, if you have an injury to the left side of the body, for a right handed golfer, it tends to be a lot worse than the right side because that's where all your weight ends up. And obviously for a lefty golfer would be on your right side. And a lot of times
what you'll see with with the knees. Is that if a golfer has excessive movement in the down swing where they tend to slide the hips excessively.
And that's very common, right, there's so much, so many people that I notice, and I'm guilty myself of just left to right hip movement.
Yeah, you tend to see it quite a bit. And again there's there's various reasons why that occurs. But if it's excessive in the down swing, excuse me. A lot of times you'll see kind of that knee, that left knee kind of buckle out a little bit, if you can kind of picture that so so on a.
Right handed golfer on the back swing. And this is something that we've talked about a lot with like Tony Manzoni, at least I learned it from him. So many golfers they'll on their back swing, they lift their left heel on their back swing, and then their left knee points too hard. Well, it doesn't pointing towards the ball. It should be pointing towards the ball, right, it should be out that No, it like cuts across their body.
Yeah, yep. And then on the downswing what happens is the knee the hips will start to shift laterally and the knee actually starts pointing out towards the target, So it's almost like your legs in a sideways V shape, and it tends to put a lot of pressure on the knee joint I mean, and that that slide move I mean the swing flats called a slide where basically, you know, your left side of the body for a
rained golfer is moving too much laterally. It puts a lot of pressure on it can put a lot of pressure on the knee and a lot of times, you know, golfers do that because either they have lack of range
of motion in their internal hip rotators. So as they're coming down through the ball and they're starting to that lateral movement, there should be a slight lateral movement in the hips, and then you want to start to rotate the hips, but they can't rotate because their internal hip rotators on that side are tight and in some cases extremely tight, so that's not allowing that freedom of movement
in the hip. So as the golfer is bringing a club down, they start the lateral movement, but then they can't stop it, so they keep moving laterally, so that tends to lead to that slide move and a lot of times that tends to lead to that knee just kind of pointing out towards the target. And again, you know, you do that over and over and over again, and you start putting a lot of pressure on that knee, especially if you know the ligaments on both sides of
the knee. Uh, and it just takes a toll after a while.
Do you ever see issues that? And again, a very common occurrence on the backswing when you have that left knee for a right handed golfer, the left knee cutting across the body, pointing, you know, behind you versus pointing in front of you, the right knee tends to lock. Yeah,
And that's a very common mistake that I'm learning. Actually, when I don't lock my knee, when I make sure that I keep someflection, Is that the right word in my in my knee, that I tend to hit the ball straight or I tend not to hook the ball as much?
Yes, yes, Because when you lock that back knee, that that trail knee, you tend to over rotate your hips, to be honest.
With it, Oh, okay.
And that can lead to a whole host of things. You know, if you tend to over rotate, it's going to take you longer to come back with the hips. I mean, you know, we're talking a whole different subject here, but so that that can impact you know, your your consistency and your golf swing definitely for sure. I Mean another big injury area.
Is the wrists, right, That's where I was headed next.
Well, you know, and a lot of that is more because you know, you want to be a hero and you hit your shot out of the woods and you didn't realize there was a root there or something like that. I mean, so that you know, that takes an impact.
And when you you know, when you really think about slamming a club into the ground, I mean even when you're out in a fair way, I mean that that sends a joel up through the club into the wrists and the forearms and elbow and stuff, and that can also take a toll on wrists and elbows and shoulders well.
And to get a divot, you're supposed to get that clubhead down into the ground so the smash, smash the ball into the ground and.
Get that divot exactly. But the other thing is that a lot of us. Many of us are walking around with an imbalance in our forearms. You know, we tend to be stronger on the underside of our forearms because, you know, the flexers, because we're gripping things all day, So the muscles on the underside tend to be stronger than the muscles on the top part of our forearm, the expensers, which are responsible for kind of spreading out our fingers.
Well, when you say top part of the forearm, you mean the side of the back of your hand, the back of yes, so your forearm versus okay.
Yeah, okay. And so because we have that in balance with the flexors being stronger than the extensors, that can lead to issues in the wrist, elbow, and even shoulder. You know, carpal tunnel. A lot a lot of people have carpal tunnel because of that imbalance. And again it's something that a lot of people just don't realize that
they have. It just develops because of the fact. You know, again we're gripping door knobs, we're gripping chairs, we're gripping, gripping, gripping, and we really don't do anything to balance out that strength by providing a resistance to the extensors. I mean, how many times do you have a resistance when you are going from a closed fist to an open finger position. Hardly ever, so you don't really get a chance to
work those extensor muscles as much. So then you take a sport like golf, which kind of gets your your wrists and you know into kind of a what's called an action abduction, you know, multiple plane type movement as you're swinging the golf club and you have this imbalance in your forearm that just leads up to increase risk for injuries in the risk and the al bow and shoulders. So what you need to do is you need to balance that out. And I'm a big proponent any way
of forearm strength and the golf swing. I think that really helps in terms of being able to hit better shots and to as we talked about in the first segment, get more power and distance into your golf swing. But you really got to get some balance into the forearm.
And there's a real great exercise you can do a simple little exercise to help the ex It's called a rubber band expensive exercise, and all as you do is you just take a rubber band and wrap it around your first you put your fingers together with your thumb, and you take the rubber band and you wrap it around the first knuckle, and then you just open and close your fingers against the rubber band. And you can do that.
You know they're reaching and reaching my drawer hand pulling out a rubber band.
Okay, So so put your fingers together with your thumb and then wrap the rubber band or around the first knuckle, okay, with the knuckle closest to the fingernails, and then just basically open and close, open, close, open, close, And if you do that about twenty twenty five times, you'll start to feel the burn, especially in the the the top
of your forearm, yeah, the backside of your hand. But that's a great exercise to really isolate those expensers so that you can get balance into the forearm, so that you can reduce the risk of injury in the wrist, elbow and shoulders.
Does it matter how I hold my hand wrist arm? I mean, should I be hand down, elbow bent anything like that or just no? Oh good, because you know I'm I'm getting tired, I'm ready for a nap. This is a lot of work for.
Me both sides.
Oh god, you're really pushing me now, buddy.
Balance remember balance?
Yeah right, okay, but you do that.
Twenty twenty five times a couple of times during the day, and then when that gets easy to do, you get a thicker rubber band and so that you have more resistance and then you use that. Yeah.
No, this is good. I'm definitely feeling it. I'm definitely feeling it.
Okay.
So you've told us all about all these different issues that we have and what causes these issues and how to change it so we don't recreate these issues or continue with these issues. But I'm in pain right now. Okay, I just got off the golf course. My lower back is killing me, and I you know, what.
What do you.
Prescribe for us to what's the best thing to do when we get these eggs and pains?
Well, if the umilienside. Ideally when you get off bak golf, of course, if you can ice the area down, you know, for about fifteen minutes or so, you get an ice pack and put a thin cloth between you and the ice pack. You don't want to you know, you don't want to have frostbite on the skin. And leave it on there, like you said, for about fifteen minutes or so. That's going to help reduce or prevent excessive inflammation in the area.
And do we target the ice pack just where we feel the pain or if or you know, if it's low back, should I be targeting on my hamstrings?
A right? No? No, in the low back area.
Okay, where you where the pain is.
Yeah, okay, for about fifteen minutes. Good. And then you know, if you're not allergic to like an advil, just take a of advil anti inflammatory and that will help again keep the inflammation down because the more the inflammation, the more inflammation you get, the longer the healing processes have to take. So that's why you know, if you're active and you've got to pain, you want to ice it
right after the activity. And now if the injury is kind of prolonged, you know it's more than say three or four days, you want to start going with moist heat, not dry heat. Moist heat because dry heat basically will just heat the surface of the skin, and especially for the low back area and a lot of the other areas of the body. You know, the pain is kind
of deep into the body or into the joint. So the dry heat really doesn't do all that much, So you want to get the moist heat because the moist heat will penetrate.
And do we rotate the heat nice yep, yep, you could.
You know, especially after the first few days, you would definitely want to go with the ice to keep the inflammation down and then you can start going with the you know, the ice at the end of the day. You know, because during the day you're going to be moving around and so you're going to kind of place some stress to the area. So if you go with some ice initially and then later on moist heat would
be good. If you don't want to do both. If it's been three or four days, I would go with the moist heat.
So when you talk about moist versus dry heat, I just want to make sure that I understand what you're talking about. Dry heat, in my mind, is a heating pad that you plug in. Moist heat would be one of those pillows you wrap around those I'm just gonna call it a pillow you wrap around your neck. You put them in the microwave for a minute and a half. Is that Is that more of a moist heat?
Yeah? I mean, and what I like to do is just take a towel. Okay, it wet, the towel, ring it out, put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and then, uh, you know, put a plastic bag on the floor so that you don't get the floor wet, put the towel on it, and then uh, you know, gently lay on the towel or apply it to the area the shoulder, the elbow, the knee.
Uh.
But it's got to be tolerable hot, and you got to, Yeah, you gotta experiment with your microwave because I mean, in some cases two minutes may be you know, you may be too long. So yeah, so I know the microwave who we have here at the house, you know, two minutes is good. Yeah, but you got to experiment with your microwave.
Yeah, we're at a minute fifty.
But then you know it's it'll probably start to cool off in about eight to ten minutes. So do it a second time and you'd be surprised, you know what I tell people that, especially again when you've got this discomfort that's lasted for a few days or weeks. Once you go to the moist tea It's amazing what a difference it can make.
Boy, we saved the best moment for last. Yeah, you're the best tip of all. And also on the anti inflammatory, make sure that it doesn't mess with your stomach because because some of those some of those pills will give you stomach issues. So make sure that you're eating and you.
You know, yeah, I mean, if you're not sure, you'll definitely talk to your physician. Yeah. Yeah, But the and the inn exlammatory is basically you know, obediate you know, the first to the first day or as soon as you injure it, you want to take it again to reach.
And it's not a blood level thing that you want to take every four hours all the time or every six hours.
Well, I mean you can, but like I say, you're three and four days of days out, you kind of want to stop taking those.
Things, right, and you talk to your doctor. Yeah awesome, Hey Bob, thank you you finally answered all my questions at least for this time around.
Enjoy it.
Yeah, I'm sure you're going to be back and the uh and again and we have talked about more subjects since up, but this has really been helpful again for everybody. If they want to see what Bob has to say in his writings his blog, go to golf Fit Carolina and it's only one f golf Fit Carolina or golf it Carolina dot com. And if you have any specific questions for Bob, if you're not in the area, you're in, which part you're in, Which part of Carolina.
You're I'm in the Greensboro area.
Okay, yeah, high Point, North Carolina. Is that what? That's what I've written here? There you go. So if you're not in that area and you'd like to communicate with Bob, please send me an email, click on a Hey Fred button and let me know that you want to ask questions and I will get you guys together. That would be fine. Bob, thanks so much for joining us and giving all this great advice and insight. We really appreciate it.
My pleasure,