I have a feeling there may be a lot of golfers out there. And I suspect just a few of them (read: most) are interested in improving theirs swing. And another small subset (read: large) are addicted to everything to do with golf. And that these people may just be interested to get a complete assessment of their swing, of the way they move without a golf club in their hand, and of the correlation between the limitations in the way they move and the problems they are having with their swing. And hopefully they will also be keen to do the few corrective exercises that will help them to improve their movement and their swing. I would think that those who don’t play as much as they want to because their back gets sore from a round of golf would be particularly keen on this.

I recently did a Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) assessment on a golfer friend of mine down in Massachusetts who gets up at 430 am every day to fit 9 holes in before work. Despite that incredible dedication to this game (addict?), he has struggled with low back pain of late, and his game has also been suffering somewhat. Take a look at what we found out from his assessment:
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I for one complained about the lack of snow in November. I’ll admit it.  And while I am super happy to be able to ski now, I can’t say I look forward to the driving and walking related issues that snow brings.

For many, shoveling is the big frustration.  It’s hard work if you have a big driveway.  I’m not sure if this is a surprise to anyone, but emergency rooms fill up after big snow falls.  Okay, I’m sure that doesn’t surprise anyone.  Many of the visits are from falling injuries – slippery sidewalks, ski or snowboard tumbles, and of course toboggan injuries.  But did you know there is also an increase in cardiac incidents? Read more…

This week’s post is a follow on to last week’s post with some basic information about low-back pain, covering some slightly different topics and getting into a bit more detail.

The post will primarily address whether and how much we should bend, extend and rotate our backs.

Dr. McGill has lectured and written extensively on why flexion is bad for our backs, and yet what exercise does your physical therapist give you to address your low back pain? Crunches! Somehow in the last 20 years it has become a universal truth that situps are bad but crunches are good. Take a look at these two photos. Read more…

I had the pleasure of spending two days at a Dr. Stuart McGill seminar about “Building the Ultimate Back”. Dr. McGill is a spine biomechanist at the University of Waterloo, an internationally renowned speaker about low back dysfunction, an equally renowned clinician, and the author of Low back Disorders and Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance.

Because Dr. McGill covered so much amazing information, and because back function is such an important topic, I have split this into three articles. This first article provides what I view as the 4 basic points he addressed.

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