Golf Smarter number four hundred and forty nine.
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We are a society of sitters. I think the average for the American adult is around eight to ten hours a day. So what happens in that situation is you place muscles in a shortened state, hamstrings being one of them. So there's your low back issue. And then you also put muscles in an elongated state. They're stretched out, and when you elongate a muscle, you weaken a muscle overtime. And one of the muscles that does elongate when you sit are your quad, your step muscles in the front
part of your thigh. Now those are important muscles for stability of the knee joint. So when you get weak quads, that tends to impact the knee.
How to cope with common golf injuries featuring Bob Foreman. This is Golf Smarter welcome back to the Golf Smarter podcast. Bob.
Well, I appreciate the invite.
Well that's just great. You've got the invite. Now make it worthwhile.
Always make it worthwhile.
Yeah, absolutely so. All right, it's summertime, it's it's camp time. So everyone sing along with me. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes. Golf injuries.
That takes me back to my kid's childhood.
Exactly, yeah, exactly so. But golf injuries, it's head to toe and it's it's all of us. And I want to know some ways we can learn how to what the injuries are. What if we're feeling something wrong, what is that? And what are the things we can do to improve those things? And that's why Golfit Carolina is back on the podcast.
Well, yeah, gosh, I mean, you know, it's unfortunately, it keeps a lot of people from playing as much golf as they'd like to, and in some cases it's kind
of forcing some golfers to hang up the clubs. I mean, injury related to golf or golf related injury is kind of a hot topic, you know, given even given the the litany of injuries that you hear all these tour players have and their swings are good, and that's one of the you know, the factors that lead up to amateur injury is the fact that our mechanics aren't as good in addition, in addition to the fact that you know, overuse uh always tends to play a role with injury.
But you know, it's very prevalent amongst all level golfers. It doesn't matter if you're a male or a female, if you're a junior or a senior.
Uh.
You know, it's there and it's a part of the game, and it's something that you know, if you know how to prevent it, you know you can, you know, you can kind of keep those injuries at bay if you kind of take the proper steps to keep yourself healthy.
Oh that's good to know. Yeah, it's amazing because even on the first day of the PGA Championship, guys were just like walking off the chorus right dropping like flies.
I mean, you know, you got a koocher didn't even show up because of back spasms, and you got tigers on going back issue and.
The biggest story of the entire tournament, it's like, is he gonna play? Is he not going to play? Should he? Should he play? Should he not play? Yeah?
You wonder gush. You know. I remember reading and somebody telling me too that once you have a low back injury, you are considered cured if you don't have any pain for two years.
And your thought on.
That, well, I think, you know, I think there's there's a lot to that, because I mean, there's there's there's a lot of mechanisms in the back area, but it is prone to injury. And then when you combine it with the explosiveness and the torque of the golf swing, uh, you know, and then you add to that, as we talked about, especially with amateur golfers, the fact that the
mechanics aren't always as ideal as they should be. In addition to the fact that probably ninety five percent of us I may even go as far as saying one hundred percent of us have the anatomical deficiencies in the form of muscle tightness and muscle weakness, and all those add up, you know, and make a perfect storm for injuries. So yeah, you know, it's once you have low back, it's it kind of hangs around for a while and you've got to really kind of.
Treat it gingerly, so you buy or don't buy the two year theory.
Uh, well, two years is kind of a long time.
I just think that anybody who's going to get away from golf for two years is gone.
Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah no. But again I think you know, there's ways that there are things that you can do to quicken or or hasten the recovery and prevent the back injury from coming back. Definitely.
Wow wow. So is back the most prevalent injury or lower back or what part of the back?
Yeah? For back by far, by far the number one in golf. And again that's to everybody, professionals, amateurs, men, women. Uh, and there's there's good reason for it. I mean, you know, again, it's an explosive type activity. It's a one sided activity,
so it's repetitive in nature. You know, as they mentioned, many of us have muscle deficiencies and imbalances that you know, forget about golf would lead up to back injury by itself, and then again when you add that that turning and twisting an explosive you know, swing, it just adds to the incidents and the risk levels.
You know, when you and I spoke earlier, and you've been on the show a couple of times. Actually, if people want to go back and listen, it's episodes three forty seven, three fifty nine, and three sixty. We talked a lot about and I was always trying to focus on my lower back issues and I'm happy to say that they are not bothering me that much. And there's two things that I can track back. And I don't know if either of them are why. I'm probably gonna add a third. But if why, it's better or I'm
it's just a coincidence. But I can track a couple of things. First of all, my golf swing. I learned how to quiet my lower body. I don't have the sway that I used to have when I'm swinging the golf club. That could be one of them. Secondly, is I've become a side sleeper versus a back sleep, a stomach sleeper. That could be another one. Yeah, good, thank you.
A third, I was doing a lot of yoga. I don't do it that much, if at all, anymore, because I found that there were a couple positions that really hurt my lower back.
Yeah.
And then actually the last one, which I think maybe the biggest contributing factor to my back being better is I swim a lot.
Now, well that's a good one too. Yeah, swimming's great for low back discomfort.
Well, I just what I love about swimming is that there it's a high resistance and no impact. And yeah, people say, oh, it's so boring. It's like, yeah, I love that part of it. When else in my life do I get to be bored for twenty minutes to a half hour, you know, and get one of.
Those ear plugs and so you can play music while you're swimming.
No. I love to have my mind go nuts. I mean, because you know, like I watch runners, and even a runner who's like out on the street, not unnecessarily in a treadmill, they have to pay attention to where they're going. You know, you really have to pay attention when you're running. When you're swimming in a pool, I go, I just
do laps. But when I'm swimming, I just go to the edge and then I turn around and go next to the And that's all I have to think about, is where am I and I really get into this meditative deep state where my mind and the longer I'm in the pool, the farther my mind goes and I kind of enjoy that. But from my back, for the strength of my back and overall conditioning on my core, I think that that has been a major factor.
Yeah, swimming is definitely one of the better exercises for individuals that do have you know, chronic lower back discomfort. And then when you mentioned the yoga, you know, flexibility also plays a big part in injury prevention, and especially as it relates to the lower back, and you had
mentioned about you did a lot of yoga. You know, there's definitely a window of flexibility that you want to kind of monitor because if you're tight, that increases the risk in many cases for injury not just in the back, but in other parts of the body. But then again, if you're too flex and you don't have the lex you know, the the the joint stability, that can also lead to injuries in the in the body as well.
So there's definitely a window. Not too many people are hyper flexible, but you know, and those are usually like dancers and stuff like that. But again, if you take yoga and you do that a lot, you know, you could get into that category.
Well I am I am always have been very flexible, even more than my children. Yeah, I've always been. I've even had a couple of messuses call me Gumby.
Really you're a rarity.
But I do get you know, like the tight hamstrings, and I think that that also is a is another back problem contributors tight ham strings right.
Oh yeah, gosh, tight hamstrings are probably one of the biggest factors that lead up to a low back injury. And the ham strings, I mean are in the you know, the back of the thigh. And a lot of people kind of look puzzled when I mentioned that in some of the workshops, you know, because they're like, well, those are down you know, in the legs, but my back
bothers me. What's the relationship? And what happens when the ham strings are tight is the hamstrings attached to the hip bone and over a number of years they'll they'll the tightness will pull that hip bone and rotate it backwards sort of, you know, towards the tightness. So what happens is the low back muscles which are attached or fanned out across the top of the hip bone and then all kind of converge into the lower spine. The
lumbar curve and the lower spine. When the hip bone rotates down and back, it takes those low back muscles and it stretches them out and it leaves them in a taunt position. So early signs and symptoms of that occurring are if you sit for a long period of time and you get up and your back's a little tight, that could be a sign. If you play golf or you work in the yard and the next day or two your back's a little tight, that could be a sign.
The more serious consequence is what happens when that hip bone rotates and those back muscles get taught. It also takes that normal curve in your lower back than normal
lumbar curve, and it actually straightens it out a little bit. Now, you don't want to deviate from that natural curve because if you deviate, if you straighten the curve out, or if you increase the curve, you start to put more pressure on the disks, you know, those jelly doughnuts that are in between the bones and the spine, And over a period of time, that wears the disc south faster, and you get the space between the two bones starts to decrease and that can put pressure on the nerve
that comes out between the two bones, you know, and that can cause issues like the you know the sciatica of the typical sciatica with the pain radiating down one or both legs, numbness in the foot, you know, numbness in the foot or weakness in the leg, or you could also get you know that that disc to rupture or to slip and it actually bulges out into that space where the nerve is and that puts pressure on the nerve and that causes the same type of discomfort.
So yeah, so tight hamstrings are number one probably one of the bigger factors in muscle and balance that lead up to back discomfort.
Let's talk about other parts of the body you know that the golfers are having issues with. Do you see more people complaining about like their shoulders or their elbows and wrists?
Yes, elbows probably, second shoulders probably, you know, depend upon who you read, third or fourth wrists are in their wrists are a lot from more impact type injury, you know, hitting the root or yeah, digging into the turf that tends to cause more wrist injury.
Yeah, I noticed that, Like if I, if I like try to really dig it out in the bunker or something. It's like, oh, that's my wrist.
Yeah, you know. And then the computer too. You know, the fact that since the computer ages come around, I mean, obviously you see a lot of more wrist injuries because of the fact that a lot of people are using the mouse, and you know, that kind of leads to an imbalance in the in the forearm structure. You know, we tend to have imbalances in our forearms anyway, because the flexer muscles on the underside of the forearm tend to be stronger than the muscles on the top part
of the forearm because we're always gripping things. You know, you're constantly gripping things. You don't really do too much to strengthen the muscles on the top part of the forearm, and that's extending the fingers out. So we're stronger with gripping, we're not as strong as we are extending. So that imbalance leads to things like carpal tunnel and it can also lead to things problems in the elbows and in
the shoulders. So then when you get into a sport like golf, now where again you're gripping the golf club and you're putting the wrists through you know, all types of range of motion, both extension, inflection, and then also what's called adduction and adduction which is kind of like a sideways flection of the hand, which is probably more
prominent in the golf swing than theflection and extension. But then again, you know, if you have that imbalance in the forearm, that just increases the probability that you're going to have some issues in the wrist, elbows, shoulder.
I should have gone in this order, since this program we focus on the mental game so much. We start at the top of the head. I should have gone to the neck next before I got to the shoulders. But do you see a lot of neck injuries and issues with golfers.
Yeah, not too many, really, not too many neck injuries. Now, shoulders are pretty prevalent. Like I say, elbows tend to be probably the second biggest injury in amateur golfers, and a lot of that is due to the fact that a lot of golfers don't have the range of motion in the respective side shoulder, especially what's called external rotation of the shoulder. And you can kind of test yourself out to see whether or not you have adequate external
shoulder rotation. If you were to raise your arm up so that upper arm is parallel to the floor, and then well even your whole arm is parallel to the floor, but your elbows bet and ninety degrees and then try to rotate the hand up like you're gonna make the boy scout or girl scout sign, and keep going and see how far you can go. If you can get past ninety degrees, then your chances are your external shoulder
rotation is pretty good. If you are having trouble getting to ninety degrees, then you're going to be probably one of those individuals that's going to develop some sort of elbow problem. Because in the golf swing, as we bring the club back, you know, when we'll use a right handed golfer, the right hand is going to rotate and the right shoulder is going to externally rotate. And if you don't have that range of motion in the shoulder, what happens is you put a strain on the elbow.
So again, over time, the repetitiveness of the activity, you know, it starts to wear out the you know, the tendons and put pressure on the tendons, and golfer's elbow is basically classified as an inflammation of the tendon on the inside part of the elbow where you tend to see a lot of issues, you know, so a lot of golfers will go out and buy one of those forearmed bands and wrap it around their forearm to take the pressure off the muscle, which tends to relieve some of
the pressure, but you know, it tends to mask the injury, and you definitely want to take steps to correct the injury and don't rely on that band because it won't get any better if you do.
That's interesting, and there are a lot of products on the market that make claims to helping relieve pain reduce injury. Do you have favorites or is it all bunk?
Well, I mean it's good, you know, if you're in discomfort and you want to get out there and play, I mean it's good to to use like in this case, you know, those forearm wrist or the I'm sorry, the forearm bands, because again it will kind of put take pressure away from the muscle as you're kind of bringing the club back, and that's usually where most people will feel the discomfort when they've got that what's called epic
und delitis. You don't want to depend on it for too long because you know, you're kind of taken away from the job of the muscle and so the muscle can actually kind of weaken. So in between your rounds of golf, you want to make sure well. First of all, you want to make sure that your ice the area for about fifteen to twenty minutes after you play golf, so that you prevent any inflammation, further inflammation of the area, because it's the inflammation that causes the discomfort, and the
more inflammation you have, the longer the rehab period. And you never put ice directly on the skin, makes there's a little thin layer of cloth in between you and
the ice. And then in between, you know, you can do some mild stretching for the wrist and the forearm to help heal the process, and you can also do some mild strengthening exercises, and you know, I won't go into all of them, but you probably want to contact somebody who is knowledgeable about that, a physical therapist or even a golf fitness instructor, a certified golf fitness instructor who can kind of show you some simple exercises with light weight to do to help strengthen the muscles in
the forearms so that you can alleviate and prevent the problem from coming back.
What about various supplements and liquids and roll ons that are saying, you know, you know that there's a product golf fuel, right and urgent joint support, and there's roll on to relieve pain. Is that just are we should be you know, is this just ibuprofen or are there supplements that are supposed to help joints? And who knows if supplements work? And what about any of these roll ones that are supposed to relieve the pain. Is it something that's just being marketed with a golf name on it.
Well, I'll tell you, fred, I really haven't run across anything a supplement wise that seems to be on the market for very long. And you know, to me that that's kind of the the you know, the signal that Okay, you know, I've read a few articles about this thing. There seems to be some consistency as to the you know, the product and the fact that it's effective. You know, these things kind of come and go, and not no one of them seems to hang around for very long.
So you know, personally, I wouldn't use any of that stuff. The anti inflammatories, you know, the the bills and stuff like that. If you're not allergic to that stuff is good to take to help you know, relieve again the inflammation. As I mentioned, anytime you have an injury, definitely the first twenty four to forty eight hours you want to go with ice because again the idea there is to try to reduce the inflammation because that prolongs the rehab process.
Then once the inflammation has stopped, you know, usually after a couple of days, two or three days, you can go to moist heat and you know, like a wet towel, wet hot, tael tolerable hot. You know, want to burn yourself because the moist heat will penetrate into the joint, especially going back to the low back. I mean, you've got quite a thickness of muscle there and to where you know, to use these kind of bombs, you know that you know, they tend to pride themselves on the
fact that it brings least to the area. They pretty much just kind of warm up the superficial layer under the skin. They don't really penetrate deep into the muscle layer. Moist teat. It's free, and it's probably the best thing
that you can do. You just got to be consistent with it for three or four or five days, you know, putting it on there once it cools off after about eight and seven eight minutes, to do it again, you know, for about seventy eight minutes, and you be surprised what a difference moist heat can make in terms of helping the recovery process.
Well, I can tell you that you said two words that I think the golf smarter audience gets perked up every time they hear it free and best, So moist heat is going to be high on the list for everyone at this point.
Yeah, I mean, what I do? You know what I do? You know, I get a little lower back tweak every once in a while. I'll just take a towel, wet it, you know, dunking and water, wring it out, throw it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and again microwaves will vary, so you may want to start with a minute and a half. You don't want to burn yourself, you know. You take it out, you put a piece of plastic on the floor so that you don't get
your carpet wet. You put the wet towel on the carpet and then you gingerly lay yourself down onto the uh you know, the warm, very warm towel.
Uh.
And I tell you it's it's it feels great and uh you know, after a few days, it does a good job at relieving the little spasm.
One of the things that you said that I'm curious for you to expand on it. You said, when you have an injury. My question is when do we know it's an injury or if we're just sore.
Well, yeah, I mean that's a good question. A storness, I mean usually I think you can you can kind of feel. It's more of a feel, you know, like when you do something in the next day you feel a little bit, you feel a little tight, and you feel a little stiff, And I think that's more kind of a soreness classification. When the injury when you get up and you can't move a body part, I mean, I think that's that's more of kind of an injury related to classification.
No, No, that's that's just aging. When I get up in the morning, I'm not injured, I'm just getting older.
Well, if it doesn't get better as you start to move around, then you can probably classify it more as an injury. Okay, but yeah, I can relate to that too. But yeah, I mean either case, you know, the you know, the the the advils always work well to kind of
alleviate some of that. But you know, anytime you do you get into something new, a new activity, you should expect a little bit of soreness the next day or two, uh, you know, and as you continue to participate in that activity, that soreness should go away.
Excellent, all right, let's move down the body, get back on track here, and and so we've now done upper body, you know, let's get to the lower body and go to the knees. The golfers, uh have knee problems.
Yeah, really, they're probably in the top five as well terms of injury and stuff. And you'll tend to see probably more injury on the lead leg than you do the target leg because that's usually where all the weight ends up in the in the golf swing.
So for a right handed golfer, that would be the left leg.
Right Okay, yes, yes, the left leg. You know, and again it depends on the mechanics of this of the golfer. If their mechanics are kind of off, you know, if you do have some of that sway and especially some of the slide, which is an excessive lateral movement of the hips in the downswing and again towards the target. I mean, I've seen some golfers where their knees are
almost ninety degrees laterally bent. I mean, it's just you got to wonder, at some point, you know, when are they going to start to feel this in their knee, because again, you know, it's those things you know, where everything in life is chronic, and it's usually you know, if you if you maintain this, the these poor mechanics, you know, something's going to give at some point. The other thing is is again going back to the anatomical deficiencies. I mean, we are a society of sitters, and we
tend to sit. I think the average for the adult American adult is around to ten hours a day. So what happens in that situation is you place muscles in a shortened state, hamstrings being one of them. So there's your low back issue, and then you also put muscles in in an elongated state, they're stretched out, and when you want to elongate a muscle, you weaken a muscle over time. And one of the muscles that tends to elongate or does elongate when you sit are your quadrcep
muscles in the front part of your thigh. Now, those are important muscles for stability of the knee joint. So when you get weak quads, that tends to impact the knee. The other thing that I find in a lot of golfers is that a lot of golfers will have a weak gluteous medius, which is part of the glut group. You know, your butt muscles, And the gluteous medius is
a hip stabilizer. It's on the side part of the hip and it's responsible for holding the hip bone still so that when the other muscles that are attached to the hip bone move, they have a solid foundation to move against. So when the gluty's media is the hip stabilizer is weak, the hip bone will move when the individuals move in the legs, so the injury potential goes up a little bit. Plus it will allow the thigh bone to kind of internally rotate a little bit, and
that tends to put pressure on the knee itself. The knee cap won't ride up and down the groove as nicely as it should, and that can lead to need
discomfort as well. So, you know, one of the things that I always check for in golfers is you know the strength of their gluties medius and it's a fairly easy assessment to do, but it's an important assessment because if they are weak, then you definitely want to do some strengthening exercises to strengthen at gluteus media so that you and prevent those knee problems from happening.
And that's different than the so as muscle, right.
Yeah, the so as is part of the ilioso as is part of the hip flexers, which is kind of more it's mainly in the front part of the hip. That's one of those muscles that, if tight, can lead to back injuries. And that's one of the muscle groups that tends to be tighter in women. And what happens is instead of the hip bone rotating down and back, the tight hip flexer will pull the hip bone forward
and down. And what that does is it increases the arch or the yeah, the arch in the lower back and you kind of get that sway back posture with the butt sticking out, and that does the same thing and puts more pressure on the discs and at least the disc problems rupture discs, lip discs s ia attica.
And that's why a lot of young female golfers, I mean, gosh, there's a lot of them that are in the high school college ranks that have back issues, and a lot of them because they're in that s posture, that sway back posture because of tight hip flexors.
Fascinating, fascinating. Do you see a lot of feet injuries from golfers? Is this because of walking or is it just other injuries they get involved with golfers.
Well, with the feet, you know, a lot of it is One of the things that people don't really kind of check or have checked is their gait. You know, the way they walk, and there is a there is a normal pattern of walking. It's called pronation. You land on the outside part of your heel and then you kind of roll a little bit to the inside part of your toes so that you kind of push off kind of your big toe. You know, there are a
lot of people who tend to overpronate. So what happens is they tend to roll the ankle in a little bit too much, and that can lead to some issues in the ankle. It actually can lead to a lot of issues all the way up the chain, you know, from the ankle to the knee, to the hip, to the back, to the shoulders and so on. Some people tend to stay more on the outer part of their foot and they're called supinators, and that does the same thing.
It tends to put more pressure on the outside part of the ankle, the outside part of the knee and the hip and stuff like that. So most of the foot injuries you know, you see tend to relate to gate when people, especially are walking the golf course. So that's why it's important that you get, you know, fitted properly for shoes. And I remember Callaway a few years back, they were coming out with a line, you know, like
like running shoes. You know that if you did overpronate, if you did roll your ankle in too too much, they are going to have a shoe that gave you a little bit more inside support to prevent you from rolling in. And I don't know whatever happened to that line.
I guess the easiest way to check your pronation is take an old pair of running shoes or just you know, tennis shoes type of thing, jim shoes, and look at the bottoms of them, right, and you can tell where they're wearing tear is Yeah, do you get more people who more injuries from people who are carrying their bags than just like driving in a cart or pushing a push cart.
But still definitely, definitely. And you know why people tend to have more problems carrying back because they tend to carry the bag on the same side all the time. Well, at least back a few years back. Now with the you know the straps that they have where you.
Can pretty much wear it like a backpack.
Yeah, yeah, so that'serated a lot of discomfort. But you know, anytime you're you're toting around ten to fifteen pounds on your back, I mean that always tends to you know, and you're not accustomed to that. I mean that tends to wear the body down a little bit. And you know, when you're tired, tired as a precursor to injury because you know, the body is just not working as efficiently as it should. So you know that can lead to injury from you know, a golf swing because your body's tired.
It could lead to you know, stepping in a hole or something and twisting your ankle or a sprinkler head or something like that. So fatigue is, you know, also one of those factors that you you kind of want to make sure that you stay in shape so that you can push that threshold of fatigue back, especially if you do carry your clubs.
Great. Well, listen, I know you have to get going because you're going to be doing more interviews like this, right, You're on other other programs. Congratulations, Let's get an update of what you're doing these days and how to get in touch with you.
Well, still doing the golf fitness assessment and training mainly in the Greensboro, North Carolina area and down in Myrtle Beach. I have a website that people can go to. It's got a bunch of educational articles on all the stuff we talked about more and they can go to golffit Carolina dot com and it's just one F and one T, so it's g O L F I T Carolina dot com. I've got a book that kind of details the more
common anatomical deficiencies golfers have. You know, from working with hundreds of golfers over the years, you definitely see commonalities in terms of which deficiencies tend to be more prevalent. So I kind of wrote a book about that. So what those are, how to do self assessments to determine whether or not you're deficient in those areas. They're really not that hard to do. How those deficiencies impact the
golf swing and or injury potential. And then there are also over forty exercises and drills, golf specific exercises and drills that are in the book that help you correct those deficiencies if you should have them, or just good exercises to do to help your golf game in general. So if people want to get a hold of me, they can get a hold of me at Bob at golffit Carolina dot com. And again one F and one T.
And what is the name of the book.
The book's name is The Functional Golf Fitness Training, and it's on Amazon and you can get printed copies at the book patch.
The Functional give me the title again, Functional.
Golf, Functional Golf Fitness Training.
Fitness Training. Okay, it's in my notes and it's gonna be in the website. Awesome. Hey Bob, it was great talking to you again. Thanks so much for your time and for this education.
Thank Fred, my pleasure anytime.