Entry 24.19

Let’s do a recap of what I discussed last week. First, I discussed what I do when you all leave campus. I get some more time-consuming projects completed and get to dive into my studies on a more concentrated level. I have semester long topics that I research and study and I gave you the heads up that Bernstein’s Principle will be covered at some point. Then in the actual topic of the week, I discussed the hip and pelvis. Make sure you use clear, correct verbiage when you teach so you don’t confuse your players. I know I am guilty of it, but I am doing my best to be correct that issue, especially when it comes to the hips and pelvis. I know most of you didn’t think you would ever study anatomy when you went into golf but having a basic understanding of muscle groups and the skeletal structure are important, even if its just for you to understand your own movement patterns. Then I went over whether a player needs 60 degrees of internal hip rotation in order to create power and not injure his or her lower back. Again, it is important to know what exactly you are assessing so you don’t communicate misinformation. Then we discussed Davis’ law and how soft tissue will restructure itself along lines of stress. Your body actually changes how it functions to help you perform a task more efficiently. Then we discussed my approach to using TPI routines to help you retain what is making you great and why messing with the structure your body has built can be harmful to your motion, body, and the results you want. Unless there is a massive disparity, or you already have pain. But sometimes you are having pain because you are trying to work outside the ranges your body has adapted to and going back to your normal ranges can fix the problem quickly. This doesn’t mean I won’t help you change your body composition if that is what you want. I am here to help you reach your goals. That may just mean the results you want will take much longer to appear. After Tiger’s 4-win 1997 season including setting The Masters scoring record, he and Butch discussed a few changes to his body and his motion. Butch suggested tackling them little by little but Tiger wanted to do it all right now. Butch warned Tiger that he was going to play poorly but Tiger had made his decision. What did Tiger’s 1998 season look like? He had 1 win. Butch said it would take time, and it did. 1999? Tiger won 8 times. Was it worth it? I’d say yes. Tiger had his eye on the long game. But you may not be looking to play golf at the next level after school but want to make the A bus now. We will just have to cover your goals and make the decision to fulfill that goal. But let’s move on to the next point.

Now, I had to go through point 2 before I could speak about my third topic: internally rotating the trail hip to load the glute. Again, this seems to be a common thread woven into a lot of modern golf instruction. But is this actually true? The answer is both yes and no or the all annoying “it depends”. What does it depend on? Well, the last conversation should have answered the question for you: The player in front of you and adaptations their body has made to help them create force. To understand why, let’s take a look at one of, if not the muscle group that I talk about the most: the glutes. Those of you who attended Advanced Camp this summer know I spent a lot of time talking about how your current environment aka school, requires you to use your glutes for one reason, to sit on them which is absolutely terrible for you. Those of you who have done TPI Level 1 and get the “shake and bake” when trying to tilt your pelvis have gotten a better explanation of the issue. I may not get there today but if you want it, please ask. I’ll be happy to climb up on that soapbox again.

There are three muscles that make up the glutes. The one we are all familiar with, the gluteus maximus and two smaller ones, the gluteus medius and the gluteus minimus. The gluteus medius and minimus abduct the hip and prevent it from adducting. Abduct mean to move away from the midline and adduct means to move towards it. So, if you stand on one foot, then raise the other foot out to the side, you are using the gluteus medius and minimus. Actually, let’s stand up, feet hip width apart, toes pointed straight ahead and do this exercise. First, do it once just focused on lifting your trail leg in your golf swing straight out to the side. Next, do it again and pay attention to the direction your toes begin to point. Did they stay pointed straight ahead or did they start to flare out? This should give you some clue as to how your foot should be oriented when you swing. Why? Well, because of the gluteus maximus. What actions does this muscle create? First, it creates hip extension in both open and closed kinetic chains (open means your foot or knee is off the ground and closed is the opposite). It also creates upper body extension when the hips are fixated. The other two actions are it posteriorly tilts the pelvis (think your belt line is the top of a bucket of water. To stand the bucket up straight, your pelvis posteriorly tilts or tilts to the rear) and it externally rotates the femur. So, if during the exercise I had you do your toes started pointing out, your gluteus maximus was responsible.

Why is this important? Because the golf swing is a glute dominant, posterior chain driven movement pattern. The glutes are an external rotator and for a movement to be a glute dominant move, we need good extension and good external to neutral rotation. When we rotate efficiently, we rotate the pelvis around a fixed femur and that means we are in external rotation, not internal. When we rotate really well, we stay in our glutes for a very long time and end up creating tons of tension in the back hip during the motion. This is only possible for some people if the hip is in an open pack position prior to the movement. Unless you know, ‘what’ and ‘why’ should be your two questions right now. Open pack means there is space for movement created inside the joint. To create an open pack position in the hip you need to move the femur head anteriorly, externally rotate the femur, abduct the femur and have some amount of flexion in it. That is the ‘what’. The ‘why’ is because pressure moves to space to occupy it and neutralize. We release all the pressure pre-movement so we can ramp it up during the movement. For example, you can’t flex a muscle that is already flexed. It must be relaxed or stretched. Now remember I only said that some people need to be in an open pack position. Others need to be internally rotated in the hip at the top. Well, what’s the difference? Being in a closed pack position means the gluteus maximus is stretched and the ligaments that keep the head of the femur in the hip socket are twisted. So, everything is tight and loaded. The slack has been taken out of the system. It basically becomes so solid that it is a launching pad for you to move off of. So, for these players, the pressure is already there, and they release it. But the same principle applies, pressure moves to space to create a neutral environment. Remember Davis’ law? It tells you that your trail hip may tighten up over time so you will have less internal rotation and more external if that is how you have solved the movement problem. Some players start in more external rotation and stay there while others move from internal to external. Being externally rotated in your trail hip longer means less early trunk rotation (ETR). What does ETR cause? Ever been stuck in your golf swing? Where your torso rotates before your arms have a chance to start back down on the arc? I think we can all admit that we have.

So, what can we do prevent ETR? We need to have a better trail foot anchor. I don’t mean put all your weight on your trail foot, I mean move the trail side less. Three drills from least invasive to most. First, just rotate your trail foot and knee out. This will encourage more trail hip external rotation. If that doesn’t work, pull your trail foot six inches away from your normal stance line and point it away from the target parallel to the target line to really quiet the trail hip. If that isn’t enough, do the Bowler Drill. The trail foot is no longer the anchor, the entire trail leg is even though it is moving. It does so through reciprocal movement, in this case, the legs scissoring. Moving like this prevents the body from repeatedly squashing the L5-S1 intervertebral disc which is where most lower back pain in golfers stems from. It’s not a lack of internal hip rotation issue; it’s a movement pattern issue. Now I am not saying that if you internally rotate your trail hip in the backswing you are going to hurt your back. Your body has adapted to move that way. But not every body has. This is the real significance of the TPI Level 1 assessments. It tells me how you currently move so I can see what your superpowers are and prevent your from hurting yourself by trying to shove you into a model swing.

The lesson here is what works for one person is not going to work for everyone. Remember, humans are messy! I know that there are players that I have coached to do what I told another player was the wrong thing to do. This is because while we all have similar structures, our bodies have adapted in vastly diverse ways to accomplish the same goal. I can’t coach every player the same if I want every player to reach their potential while keeping them injury or pain free. Be a nerd about the things you are passionate about. Don’t just know the basics. Plunge in headfirst and learn as much as you can. It may seem like I know a bunch about the hips and pelvis, but I haven’t begun to dive into the nervous or somatosensory systems as they relate to these topics so there is much more for me to learn. Don’t just come up with problems, find some solutions! Even if you never plan on teaching, as a golf professional someone is going to ask you for help with their swing, and ‘getting stuck’ is one of the major issues plaguing amateur players. Hopefully, when you are asked (because its going to happen) you can think back to this entry and the three drills I provided. Ok, I’m done rambling. Enjoy your break, travel safe, and I’ll see you soon!