Why Tiger Woods' Back Hurts in 2019
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Bonus Video: Right Hip Line Tiger Woods missed cut at the 2019 Open Championship was chalked up to old age. He complained that his back hurts and to that I say, of course it does! My back hurts demonstrating what Tiger's doing in slow motion, much less swinging at full speed! But, here's the rub. Tiger Woods back pain is being caused by one simple change he made in his golf swing starting back in 2010 and is preventable! If your back hurts when you play golf, check out this video. You'll see the most common causes of back pain and how to fix them. Cure Golf Back Pain Here's the video from 2010 where I predicted Tiger would injure his back with Sean Foley: How Tiger Injured His Back Why you don't setup on the balls of your feet: Why You Don't Setup On the Balls Of Your Feet
hey guys unfortunately Tiger Woods missed the cut at the 2019 British Open and he revealed a lot about the changes that are happening to his body and his time as he's gotten older and Tiger and I are the same age we're both 43 and we both have one other thing in common that is we've both had a lot of spine surgeries I've had four cervical spine surgeries in fact I'm fused at C12 and 3 but now why can I go out and hammer 200 yard seven irons all day pain-free no effort not feel fatigue and Tiger's struggling to make it through 18 holes in golf it's one reason and I'm going to talk about it today and I'm going to help you prevent this same back issue so that you can play pain-free powerful effortless golf for the rest of your career so what's going on with Tiger's swing well first let me back up just a little bit and talk about how Tiger's changes over time have had a huge impact on what he's doing back in 2010 I published a video on YouTube it's still up there I put a link down in the description if you want to take a look at it and I talked about how the changes that he was making with his new instructor that I felt were going to be detrimental to his swing now unfortunately I was right and so now you look at Tiger's game now and he's had all these back problems that he never had before that in his career and I'm going to explain to you why that is today it's two common reasons one I talk about a lot in that video about how the downswing motion that he changed to caused a lot of back it should create a tremendous amount of sheer force and stress on his spine but today I'm going to talk about a backswing motion that's actually causing his lumbar pain and how you if you have low back pain in your swing there's several reasons I'm going to put one up in the bonus video later at the end of this video and down in the description but I'm going to talk about something specific today that many golfers are doing and in fact many golfers are being taught this and it's causing tons of back pain and it's totally preventable with one simple change now in a moment I'm going to put my swing up up against Tiger's and you're going to see that they're shockingly similar the swing that rotary swing teaches and the swing that Tiger does for the most part when we talk about the core body movements are very very similar but there's one very subtle but very very important difference and it's the difference between playing pain -free golf and hurt having back pain every single time you step out on the course if you don't want back pain listen up because I'm going to make this really simple for you and you're going to feel and experience this right now in fact I'm going to show you and help you feel what Tiger's back is feeling like so one of the things I talk about a lot with rotary swing we talk about keeping the joints in neutral especially the spine we have a full panel of orthopedic and world -leading neurosurgeons on our medical panel have helped us look at the spine and the golf swing and how do we prevent back pain how do we protect the body so that it's moving safely and efficiently as best it can in the golf swing one of the things I've talked about a lot is primary balancing joints and you've heard me talk about this the most when it comes to setup many golfers are taught to set up on the balls of their feet now I've talked about the reasons why you shouldn't do this many times and I'll put a link down into the description for a video that you can reference for I'm not going to go in full depth about it but I want you to feel this for yourself very quickly so hop up while you're watching this video and I want you to put all of your weight on the left ball of your foot 100% assuming you're a right-handed golfer of course and I want you to now turn your hip to a full follow-through and I want you to tell me what you feel as you're doing this well you're going to feel that there's a lot of weight on the ball of your foot of course but you're going to start to notice that there's strain and tension on your left knee I'll do it face on so you can see the same thing so I'm going to put all my weight on the ball of my foot my heel is actually almost slightly up in the air and I'm just turning like I'm trying to get to a full follow-through this is very uncomfortable if you keep doing this back and forth and then I'm doing it slow much less doing it the speed that you do it in a golf swing it creates a tremendous amount of strain on your knee in fact this is one of the reasons in my opinion that Tiger had a lot of knee problems earlier in his career is he used to set up on the balls of his feet and then keep his weight on the ball of his foot you'd actually notice him jump up in the air and pivot his foot like this when he was hammering a driver while that does give you a lot of vertical ground force it's also torquing that knee is not necessary we set you up where your body is designed to bear a load over the center of your ankles and more importantly at impact that ankle is driving all of my force is driving through that foot down into the ground and that shifts my primary balancing joint from my knee to my hip socket guess what your hips designed to do look at all this rotation external rotation mobility internal rotation mobility this is all coming from my hip socket my knee I got about a degree and a half of rotation that's not very much so when you're on the ball of your foot your primary balancing joint shifts from your hip socket where it's designed to pivot to your knee that's not designed to pivot very much at all and so that's why you create a tremendous amount of stress on your knee now Tiger's doing the same thing to his low back and especially if you've had low back problems low back surgeries the last thing on earth that you'd ever want to do is move in a way that's going to put more stress on that lower the lumbar area now what is he doing that's causing that simple just keep standing up I want you to feel this because you're going to know exactly what Tiger's back feels like in two seconds so I want you to put your weight 50 50 maybe hang on the left side just a little bit this is one of the things that Tiger took from his old instructor that he's kept in his swing that he didn't do earlier in his career when he didn't have back problems and just now he hangs a little bit more on the left side as he goes back so I want you to do this say let's let's say you're going to be 60 on the left side 40 on the right and now just turn as far as you can without shifting any weight at all and tell me what you feel well without moving in my weight to one hip socket or the other I'm no longer going to shift on one hip socket it's designed to rotate I'm taking these out of my swing and I'm essentially making my primary balancing joint my pelvis and my sacrum my lumbar area so if I don't move my weight at all oh gosh I'm comfortable doing it slow much less fast and all of my pain and discomfort and tension is coming to my lumbar you should feel this as well if you hang on the left side a little bit more and try and turn not only will you lose mobility but you're going to feel a tremendous amount of sheer force and discomfort in your lumbar area now let's do the opposite what rotary swing teaches instead of staying perfectly centered and not letting your hip shift at all I'm going to let my weight shift to my right hip socket put my weight on my right hip jocks where this is my primary balancing joint and now hey look at that I don't in fact look there's mountains back there I have no pain no discomfort in fact now I feel all the load is on my right hip socket just by letting my weight transfer to the right instead of hanging on the left or staying centered I can make this huge shoulder turn with no problem whatsoever weight shift is a fundamental of any hitting or throwing sport and with rotary swing we want your weight to shift to the right so that your primary balancing joint moves to your hip socket that's designed to do this internal rotation if you stay centered and don't let your weight shift at all you're now taking all of that stress and you're putting it all in your low back it's not designed to do that your lumbar spine has very little rotation most of the rotation in the golf swing is going to happen in your thoracic your mid and upper back you need every single joint to be in neutral so these facet joints don't bind against each other because you only have about a degree and a half degree degree and a half of rotation on each vertebrae now as soon as you lock your lumbar in place and you no longer now you're relying on that for some rotation where there's very little movement there and you're thoracic without letting your weight shift to the right all of that load is being transferred straight into your lumbar if you don't want low back pain you must let your weight shift and again you can feel this for yourself you're going to take my word for it a little bit of shift to the right weights on the right I feel all the load in my glute my hip sock is designed to do this all day long and I feel nothing nothing in my lumbar spine that's the difference with rotary swing we look at the swing from the inside out literally the inside the inside not just the inside of you know your shoulders versus your arms we're literally looking at your spine the joints the ligaments the tendons all of the stuff that's going to make it so that you can swing powerfully safely and efficiently is the difference with rotary swing versus anything else that's why we have a medical panel so we have phd biomechanics on our medical panel to help us look at the swing to so that you can swing safely powerfully and efficiently now I wanted to put tiger swing up next to mine because I'm going to show you how subtle this difference is when you look at how rotary swing is teaching how to rotate the way that your body is designed to do it versus trying to do something that isn't healthy for your spine all right so I have taken tiger swing here and cut it out so that you can see uh next to me in the webinar I was just demonstrating these moves to rotary swing academy students how simple the golf swing really is and when you're learning it from a rotary swing tour perspective there's only four really key moves that you've got to do that I'm going to walk you through in a second but first I want to show you just how subtle and simple having a really bad back and a lot of back pain playing golf is and completely avoiding back pain and make sure that you pay close attention to this and make sure you got up and you felt the little movements that I was talking about just a moment ago because this is going to be a game changer if you have low back pain so I'm going to draw a vertical lineup from the center of my ankle that's a reference point that we use for neutral joint alignment and then I'm going to do the exact same with tigers what do you notice well very subtly there's maybe an inch gap maybe inch and a half give or take a little bit between my butt cheek and this line center of my ankle and tigers is actually on it or even slightly in front of it so maybe there's an inch and a half two inch gap here all this means is he's got more weight on the left side we had force plates under him you'd see that it'd be more weight on the left and of course this restricts the hip turn you can see here you can see a lot more tigers belt buck I'm wearing a black belt it's harder to tell but you can see more of my for a lack of a better way of putting it my glute sticking out over here whereas tigers you can't see he's just not turned as much so this line is all that's showing back pain versus no back pain because all I've done is allow my weight to shift to the right slightly shift my primary balancing joint to this right hip socket that allows my hips to rotate a little bit more freely and now the strain on my lower back is completely gone just by having this very subtle inch and a half difference now some of you are going to say hey wait a second if I shift my hips to the you know to the right aren't I sliding or swaying no does it look like I swayed here that I slid no of course not in fact if you want to get really specific about it let's look at the difference in angles of my right leg which is if this right leg was vertical you would see the big hip slide and 81 degrees is the angle of this right leg now let's do the same thing with tigers and move this over a little bit hey look at that they're practically identical so no I haven't swayed I haven't slid all I've done is allow my pelvis to shift naturally to the right rather than hanging on the left side maintained my axis tilt which is this line here tigers you can draw a line on his spine angles are virtually the same so no head movement no sway no slide it's just learning how to shift correctly in the backswing that will make the difference between you having back pain or not having back pain if you don't want to have back pain in your swing you must allow yourself to shift naturally just like I've demonstrated here and the difference is incredibly subtle it doesn't look like I've done anything crazy here and I'm going to show you in just a moment how the rest of the swing that rotary swing teaches is virtually identical to what tiger's doing let's step through a couple frames and take a look so we're going to go down the next frame so again this is me just demonstrating this in the webinar but of course my swing is I can't do anything different than what I'm demonstrating it's all the same stuff so now you're going to notice because tiger was hung more on that left side and we'll use that vertical line there just to again he's a little bit further closer into neutral joint alignment than I am because I made a little bit of shift to the right which means I got to make a little bit of shift to the left you can see that there's a little gap between my belt he's a little bit in front of with the belt otherwise the moves are virtually identical and then we'll go forward just a little bit more halfway down hey look at that virtually identical and then as we go forward into the post up move hey look at that this is all exactly the same as some of the best ball strikers in the world they all move the same way from the inside out now you can find variations in arm plane and you know shaft plane and club face angle and things like that but the body the body is what generates the power the body is what allows me to hit 300 yard drives and 200 yard seven irons and it's going to be what allows you to do the same thing you're going to learn how to move exactly like this when you are a member of rotary swing you only have to learn four critical moves but first let's get rid of this back pain let's I'm going to want you to take a look at this bonus video I'm going to post up in the description down below if you're watching this on YouTube where you're going to see a little i-card up in the corner and it's going to take you to a bonus video that's going to show you how to properly shift your weight just like tiger woods or any other pro on the planet although tiger is not shifting correctly so if you don't want back pain you need to shift like tiger used to but in this video it's going to talk about this right hip line and how critical it is to get your weight over there so you can make a full turn and take all of the strain off your lumbar if you don't want back pain do you trust your swing to anybody else you have to look at it from a biomechanical perspective the way that rotary swing does and tiger can avoid this back pain and you can avoid the same fate as tiger
Keith
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)
Robert
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)