Golf Stabilizing Exercises for Hips and Lower Back

Dr. Neil King: Hi! I am Dr. Neil King, Founder of King Chiropractic. Today, what we are working on is how to develop ultimate golf conditioning. This next group of exercise is going to be terrific. What it does is, is it s going to stabilize your lumbar spine and your hips, that your low back and your hips and it's going to also teach you to have good stability in you upper body, so you don t get really sloppy with your swing. What we are really trying to do, if you figure it out so far is, we are trying to develop a core of conditioning here, where you feel as if you are very powerful, standing over the ball and very symmetrical and relaxed. This is a difficult exercise, probably the hardest exercise we will do today. So, I have to mention one safety issue. Put yourself in a room where there is nothing around you that you can fall into. You might need to start out with baby steps on this one because believe me as many times as I have done it, I still have some difficulties with it. Here you go; you want to use a long club, maybe like a three or a four iron, put it out in front of you with your hand on top, your foot in line with that club. Then what you are going to do is, you are going to pick your knee up and your arm up and slowly rotate down and around, just like that, up and slowly rotate, down -- let me do one more and around. That s it; you do that exercise about ten times. So what we did is, from the side, same position, same posture, up, knee up, arm up, rotate. You can see how difficult it is, rotate, that s the one just like that.

So, what you are doing is you are putting weight on that club as you are kicking your leg back and rotating. That s the exercise, that s going to give you stability through your hips and also rotation in your shoulders. One exercise I am going to give you today for shoulder rotation that s going to help you immensely. You are going to stand with your feet, shoulder with apart; this is a little new one to this exercise that most people don t appreciate. Most of our golf swing should be done with our knees rotated and away on the inside of our feet. So, what I try to do is, when I do exercises like this I try to be sure I am focusing on that. So, I am going to have your feet like this; I want you to pinch your knees together, hold the club out front and then what you are going to do is, you are going turn as you keep your head straight, one, two to the middle, one, two to the middle, one, two to the middle. I want you to notice something. What do you do when you go to a lot of golf courses? You see a lot of guys doing lots of this, lots of that. That is not this exercise; we are starting to fine-tune your swing now. I don t want any sloppiness. I want you to have your feet on the inside; I want you to be here; I want you to be stable, abdominals toned, one, two, here; one, two, here; notice my head is stationary, from the side pinched, upfront, one, two to the middle, one, two to the middle. We are going to do that exercise ten times each way and that s going to free up those shoulders. Now, we are starting to work on strengthening; so we already worked on stabilization through the low back and mobility; we are working on the shoulder turn; next video clip, we are going to be working on increasing strength to your lower body and stabilization as well. Thank you.