Preventing Hip Pain
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Injury Prevention Golf Series - This video lesson will show you how to achieve neutral joint alignment and avoid hip problems during your golf swing. Tips on preventing over rotation of your hip and preventing hip injuries while golfing.
A huge part of the RotarySwing golf swing methodology is to provide the optiomal biomechanical and scientific positions for acheiving the perfect golf swing. This video will illustrate exactly how to prevent hip injuries and maintain a healthy golf swing for years to come.
Swings have changed through the years and using your legs as a power source in your golf swing. Sometimes, golfers get too much lower body motion which causes hip problems.
If we find our neutral joint alignment, which means that our knee, hips and ankle are all lined up, you can see that certain golf swing movements can drastically strain your body. A key indicator that you are putting pressure on your hip is that you consistently raise yoru right heel off the ground during the golf swing. Another indicator to this problem is if you have too much secondary axis tilt. If either of these problems ar happening, here are the keys to moving the safesty way during the golf swing.
1. When you start your golf swing, think about PULLING your hips to the right side. When you start to pull your weight from the right to the left side of your body, your body automatically keeps your body in neurtral joint alignment and this is the key to preventing hip problems during the golf swing.
2. The golf training drill we recommend is to take your neutral swing position and drag your left leg on the grass, with your weight on your right leg, about 10 to 15 times.
3. Once you have gotten the feeling of dragging your left leg back, you need to plan your left foot and practice shifting or pulling your weight forward into the planted left leg. After about 20 repetitions, you should see that your golf swing momentum is controlled will prevent you from moving past neutral joint aligment.
Practice this golf drill regularly for a few weeks and you will have the key to avoiding hip pain in your golf swing. Plus, you will build a solid movement path for improved accuracy and distance.
In today's video, we're going to be discussing a very serious topic in the golf industry. That's lead hip pain. I'm going to show you why you could possibly be running into hip pain or why you could be putting your hip into a dangerous position, number one. Number two, in the second half of the video, I'm going to show you a great drill that's going to help you move more dynamically back over to your left side the safest way possible. Let's go ahead and get started now.
Golf Swing Hip Pain
Okay, everyone, so in part one of this video, we're going to go ahead and define why or how this could potentially be putting your hip into a dangerous position. Here's what I want you to think of, is that the hips are making a very dynamic move in the golf swing. They are shifting and they're rotating. It's when we start to have way more of one of those things in the golf swing that start to put the hip in a dangerous position. If you're getting too much lateral shift or you're getting too much rotation of the hips, you're going to have some problems or you could potentially be putting the hip into a dangerous spot.
Now, I want you to look at golf as a whole, like golf instruction and how it's evolved over the last 50 to 60 years or even since the beginning of time. You look at the Hogan era and then you look at the Nicholas era. There's a lot of big free flowing body parts in these golf swings, lots of big movements. Where you look at the modern day golf swing, it's very compact. It's very put together. Not to say that any of those guys were doing anything wrong, but what I want you to think of now is what are most of the guys that were going through the Jack Nicholas era of golf, what are they battling with now? Well, you'll see a lot of those guys having had hip replacements or battling with hip pain now.
Well, if you look at why that's happening, this is what we're going to define. That big move back in the day was a big drive off the right side, really fire the right side of the body. That's a really important power source in the golf swing. I agree with that. The legs are a big, big power source, but it's how we use them. If I were to continue to drive off of my trail side here, you're going to notice that my hip gets out past what we call neutral joint alignment. Now, neutral joint alignment's just a fancy way for us to say if you were to take all the skin and fat off of me and I was to stand here and find the center of my hip socket, which is right around two finger widths inside of that pointy pelvic bone in the front of your body, or usually you can use this belt loop too on the front of your body as well, but if I were to stand here, all the skin and fat off me and I were to drop a string right down through the center of my hip socket, what you're going to notice is is that my knee, my hip, and my ankle are all lined up. That means I'm considered in neutral joint alignment.
Now what I want you to notice is if I push off of my right side, you can now see that my hip socket is way out past where it's supposed to be. Now what can this do? Well, this can start to put a lot of stress on the outside part of the hip girdle. You can start to run into labrum tears, which are no fun at all. This is why a lot of people start to suffer lots of hip pain. It can actually start to move some of this stuff down to the knee as well. We'll get into that in next week's video. A lot of the problems that come from your golf swing are caused from the trail side pushing too hard. If you're pushing, if you've noticed on camera that your heel is way up off the ground at impact or if you've noticed that your hip is way out past neutral and you've got a lot of secondary axis tilt where my spine is leaned way back, then you're going to want to pay very close attention to the second part of this video because I'm going to teach you how to move safely back into the lead side with one extremely simple drill that will make sure that you're safe every single time you pick up the club.
Okay, so now that we've identified what the problem is or why we're battling with some of that hip pain, let's go ahead and lay out a really good detailed game plan about how we're going to move perfectly in the golf swing so that you move the safest way possible and the most efficient way possible. The golf swing is much like any other hitting or throwing sport. We're making a very athletic style move. What I want you to think of is think of a baseball pitcher first. If I were to pitch the ball back at you at home, you were home plate, and I were to go into my wind up, I would lower into my trail leg here and you would see that my lead leg here would start to externally rotate. Now, that's not the correct anatomic term, but we would externally rotate our lead leg. We would plant our foot. We would rotate our hips. Then we would throw the ball. That same sort of move is actually happening in the golf swing. When I go ahead and I start my golf swing, I'm going to load up to my right side here. I'm going to feel as though I'm making that same sort of external rotation to pull my hips over to the left side.
Now, why is it important to pull? Well, we're going to go back to that safety mechanism that we talked about before. If I extend my arm out here, my body's not going to let it extend any further than that. It's just the way of us being able to protect ourselves. If I were to start to pull from my left side, I'm going to use these leg muscles to help pull myself over. It's not going to allow me to pull myself out past neutral. We identify that in the first part of the video, is that being out past neutral joint alignment's going to start to put that stress and that pressure. If you were to start to pull yourself over there, now I'm in to neutral joint alignment and I can start to rotate. I can start to post up and I won't ever feel that stress or that pressure ever again.
Now, here's a drill I want you to try out. If you're like okay, how do I actually even make that happen in the golf swing, well, here's what I want you to do. I want you to stand up, proper stance here. We set up about two inches outside of neutral joint alignment on both sides. All I want you to do is drag your left foot towards your right a couple times. Drag it on the ground towards yourself. You can see that I'm ripping up the grass a little bit here. Do it about three or four or five times. As you're doing that, I want you to feel the muscles that are engaging to move that leg over to the right side. You start to feel a little bit more in the inner portion of your thigh here. Then what I want you to do is rather than dragging the foot in, I want you to plant it in the ground and I want you to use those same muscles to pull yourself over to the left side. You can see here, I've loaded in my right side. I'm going to pull myself over to my left. Now I'm perfectly in neutral joint alignment. I've pulled myself into the hitting area. Now I'm ready to start posting up and releasing the club. This is a great way for you to be able to move dynamically in your down swing and also move as safely as possible.
Try it out. If you've been battling with some hip pain or if you've noticed on camera that your right foot's coming way up off the ground, or if you notice that your hip's getting way out past neutral joint alignment, then you want to make sure that you're focusing on using the left side of your body to pull yourself into the lead side so you never battle hip pain again.
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