Whether the pain is in your elbows hips or shoulders, the solution is often in your upper back.
The average golfer will swing their club about 94 times over the course of 18 holes, and some 26.6 million golfers took to the links in 2023. All of those swings tend to add up to a lot of injuries.
“When you swing a golf club, you’re asking your body to generate a lot of force,” said Gene Shirokobrod, a physical therapist in Maryland who has created a program designed to reduce golf injuries and improve performance. “Most people’s daily activities don’t require that kind of aggressive, rotational force” that the game requires, he said.
Even among young players, those sudden movements can cause back pain — the most common golf injury — or elbow pain and shoulder pain. Considering that the average age for a U.S. golfer is 44 (and that most play more as they age), it’s important to get ahead of injuries before they happen, since they can be harder to recover from when you’re older.
The key is to expand your spine’s range of motion, which will prevent future pain — and may even improve your swing.
Why you hurt
For most people, daily life doesn’t require moving your spine through its full range of motion. As a result, that range becomes limited over time. Then, when you suddenly push your spine and hips to their limits during a golf swing, it’s a recipe for injury.
If you have limited mobility in either your upper (or thoracic) spine or your hips, your body will try to create the force it needs in other ways — often stressing other parts of the body. The low back is particularly susceptible, even if you don’t play golf, because it’s less mobile and it sits between the swiveling upper back and hips, said Dr. Shirokobrod.