BUILDING A YOUNG GOLFER FROM THE GROUND UP - Blog

[Guest Prosoft Admin]

It’s really cool what eyes trained in FUNCTION can pick up during sports movements.  At least one of the real underlying questions every young athtlete and parent or coach should be asking is…

       â€œWHY DO I MOVE THE WAY I DO WHEN I – - – - – - – ?”

I’ve talked about this before but it remains a HUGE KEY to understand in athletics.  Am I performing my sport skill because PHYSICALLY that’s my body’s default path?  That’s where I need to go.  I’m sort of, in a way, forced to go that way because of…you plug in the reason. – GO AHEAD – you know some of them by now:  motion, flexibility, coordination, balance, strength, endurance, power, agility…etc, because that quality is lacking somewhere and the rest of me is just finding the best way to “get ‘er done”. 

The other reason can be that actual SKILL is lacking. 

On the show Wednesday I shared an example of this very same issue.

My son, Kyle, and I went golfing recently with one of his friends and his dad.  Kyle’s friend, we’ll call him Phil, was a really skilled high school golfer.  In fact, he loved golf so much that he was looking forward to making it an actual career in golf course design or maintenance.  Phil had a pretty swing and hit the ball well, but I noticed right away that he swayed a lot in the FRONTAL PLANE (side to side) and seemed to lack the typical TRANSVERSE PLANE (turning or twisting) pelvic turn action that is part of the infamous  â€œX Factor” in a golf swing.  I asked Phil if there were any things he was working on with his golf pro…he replied it was his hip slide.  They were working on drills to reduce that hip sway.  Hmmmm.  Very interesting I thought.

There’s really two causes I first pondered for Phil’s excess sway. ( Notice that for me as a Physical Therapist/Sports Performance Coach my defaults are typically the biomechanical physical limitations first.  For a coach, it often seems to be skill that is assumed the issue.)  One is that he lacks the Right Hip Internal Rotation [think of that as your pelvis turning Right, making a crease at the front of your Right hip].  As a golfer takes the club back to the right, the shoulders are turning right, and the pelvis wants to turn right also.  It NEEDS to.  What if there isn’t enough motion there.  Well…that’s when some bodies will just go into more hip sway to the right instead.  They’ve got to “load” somehow and if the pelvic turn gets stuck then a slide often happens instead.

Another “big rock” as we often call those go-to or typcial patterns we see was a lack of proper Right ankle mostability (motion + stability).   Inward collapse of the heel (eversion) is helps keep the foot stable during the take-away.  In a Right handed golfer  the right  hip turn is what  â€˜loads” or prepares the correct hip muscles to contribute to the powerful downswing.  If during the takeaway, a young golfer can’t keep the inner heel on the ground then sliding too far right is one swing fault we may see.

REMEMBER….the key is deciding whether Phil’s issue is a PHYSICAL limitation or a SKILL limitation.   

I checked Phil after we played (didn’t want to mess with his head while we were playing) and found he actually had awesome hip motion and stability/control.  But upon checking his feet it became apparent he lacked proper foot/ankle function to swing the club properly.

With the right kind of exercises at the right joints/muscle groups I’ll bet Phil can have exponentially better sessions with his Golf Pro teacher.   I would submit to you that drills will be MOST EFFECTIVE when applied to a body that has minimal limitations holding it back.  Once Phil’s ankle/foot exhibit better “mostability” he’ll be able to take full advantage of all the wisdom and experience his Golf Pro has to offer.  Until then I doubt either will be quite fully satified!

What sports skill moves are you or your athletes struggling with? 

Are you trying to DRILL out the problem? 

Do you know if it’s really a skill issue or possibly a physical biomechanical limitation in the body? 

WHETHER IT’S HANDLING INJURIES THAT JUST WON’T RESOLVE

OR

DESIGNING A SPORTS TRAINING PROGRAM,

PEAK PERFORMANCE IS YOUR TRUSTED SOURCE

 

FOR

GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF THINGS SO YOU CAN GET BACK TO THE TOP!