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Please welcome Dr. Ryan Belmore PT, DPT, CSCS to the Precision team. We are very excited that he will be joining us on September 4, 2018! Dr. Belmore is an avid runner and golfer. He has completed the Titleist Performance Institute’s Level 1 certification course and is TPI certifiedto help improve his clients' golf swings by improving how their body moves. This is Dr. Belmore's first blog post, and he will be contributing regularly going forward. We wanted our community to get to know him even before he starts. Enjoy!
-Dr. Kate Mihevc Edwards PT, DPT, OCS/CEO and founder
Have you ever been in a professional golf lesson, or tried to replicate a swing position from a magazine, and you just can’t seem to get it? Time and time again, do you see what you are supposed to do and how you should position your body, but you just can’t seem to make it happen? Throughout my years of playing golf, I have had plenty of swing instructors try to make me attain positions that were incredibly difficult for me. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn’t seem to get into the desired swing movement.
At the Titleist Performance Institute, the Body-Swing Connection is the central focus of intervention. What if I told you that without seeing you swing a golf club, I could predict what your swing path and ball flight will look like? You could walk into my office, we could run a few simple tests and then I could predict why you are likely to miss the ball right into a slice or duck hook into the creek on hole 5 every single time. One of the important factors in your golf swing is hip mobility.
But, wait, Ryan. How does the hip impact my swing? I’m standing still, aren’t I? You are! But you are pivoting and rotating around your hips throughout your swing. Let’s say you are a right-handed golfer. At the top of your backswing, you are rotated heavily into your right hip (internal rotation) and heavily out of your left hip (external rotation). Let’s imagine, for a moment, that you are lacking internal rotation of your right hip, as many of us do. This will not allow you to rotate your lower body into the top of your backswing. This can trigger a multitude of problems that may cause you to arch your back, change your arm positioning, crank on your shoulders or bend your knees. You can imagine that this will change your swing plane and rob you of power.
Here’s a simple way to determine if you may be having some hip limitations that are contributing to poor performance on the course.
Stand on your right foot and put all of your weight through this leg while letting the left toe just rest on the ground next to right foot.
Place your hands on your hips and try to rotate your hips as far as possible in both directions, slowly. You should be able to rotate 60 degrees in BOTH directions with ease and while keeping your right foot flat on the ground.
Repeat while standing on your left leg.
How did you do? Were you able to achieve 60 degrees of rotation in each direction? If so, that’s great! You may still have limitations present in different body regions, however. If you didn’t do so well on this test, it could be due to a multitude of factors, which we will discover during your appointment – and then we will decide how we will attack these limitations.
It has been shown that hip mobility limitations that present with this simple test can influence a variety of swing factors and could make it nearly impossible for you to attain your “perfect swing.”
Want to discover how your unique body is influencing your swing and how we can correct it? Contact us now to set up your evaluation in September!
Talk to you soon,
Ryan
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