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Prevent Golf Injuries

Prevent Golf Injuries This Spring

By Biagio Mazza

Are you thinking about getting out there and playing golf this spring and summer? As it gets a little warmer out, you may be feeling the urge to get back out on the golf course, and I totally get that. However, there are things that you can do to prevent risk of injury when it comes to golf.

Here are the three biggest mistakes that you can make that will put your body at risk for potential injury when it comes to returning to golf:

Problem #1: No Preparation

Meaning that you go from not much activity to going out and playing, and there's no transition in between to prep your body. And what I don't mean by that is a couple little swings back and forth when you walk out onto the golf course to get yourself going. That's not going to get anybody prepared to swing a club with the amount of rotation and the force it takes to move through a good golf swing.

Tip To Combat Problem #1: Deep/Resting Squat
So I'm going to give you one tip that you could work on from a preparatory standpoint to help work on your hips. What you could do is come down into what's called a deep squat, or a resting squat. In this position you should be able to have your legs apart, come down into a deep position, sit down in that deep position, and just hang out down there.

You can work towards time, you can build up starting anywhere from 30 seconds, because it's going to feel a little uncomfortable, if you're not used to doing that, all the way up to 30 minutes over the course of the day in aggregate, if you can work on building that time up.

That will really help to prep the hips for the amount of movement it's going to take to rotate through when you're going through a typical golf swing.

Problem #2: No Warmup

This is the one I think a lot of people know about. They show up, their tee time is in five minutes, they go out and they take one or two little stretches, they'll stretch their hamstrings out, move around, and expect that they're going to be fine when they go and swing a golf club. It doesn't work like that.

Tip To Combat Problem #2: Warm Up Strategically
So when you get out to the course, try and get there 10 to 30 minutes early, go through some light stretching, light warmup, hit a half a bucket of balls when you can, before you go out onto the course and actually start playing.



Problem #3: Going From 0 to 18
The third very common mistake that we see with returning to golf from the winter into the spring and summer, is that people will immediately go from not playing to playing 18 holes. So they're taking activity that they're not doing at all, and in many cases playing for four hours straight with little rest time in between. So they're going swinging in club, either taking a cart or working, and swinging in club is kind of a controlled violent act. Now, it shouldn't be wild, but it is a controlled violent act with as quickly as you swing the club through in many circumstances. That is putting your body at risk if you haven't prepared, you haven't warmed up, and then you go from zero activity to 18 holes at a time.


Tip To Combat Problem #3: Ease Into It

If you can, try and ease in to a couple of nine hole courses, or half days of golfing before you go into a full round.