What a September for sport! The Rugby world cup has started, we had the finals at the US open just play out but personally I am very excited about the Ryder and Solheim Cup starting later this month.
So with that in mind I wanted to share a common complaint that presents to me in clinic that golfers tend to suffer from.
Neck pain can manifest itself because of a variety of problems and I wanted to share with you one on the main reasons why I tend to see my clients suffer with pain in this area.
Golf is a very rotational sport so it demands that our joints and tissues can access this rotation. For our joints to rotate well, its position will ultimately dictate the degree and success of this rotation.
A good example of poor joint mechanics is the desk related posture we commonly see. The accumulated time spent in this neck position tends to bias more compression through the tiny facet joints on the back of the spine. Due to the weight of our head we would no longer have a head sitting stacked on top of our rib cage so the weight of our head becomes heavier for the neck to absorb the forces which ultimately creates a reaction where these forces don’t get dissipated through the whole spine and isolates the force to the lower neck.
So it gets slightly more complex with the golfers neck when we take the picture of Rory Mcllroy above at the top of his back swing. What we can clearly see is that the neck has to be able to rotate a fair amount but this motion couples with extension and some side bending.
This 3D joint motion is so important for joint health but when our joints start to bias one of these joint positions it will lead to more demand on the other two motions. So if we go back to our example of the desk neck where the neck is living in an extended position (think looking up to the ceiling) this will take away our rotational capacity and if we again look at Rory’s neck it has to go into extension at the top of the back swing.
So a neck that is already living in an extended position will probably not like being forced into more extension.
The end result is more force, pressure and tissue tension accumulating into your neck and that is when symptoms will start to manifest themselves.
Pop over to my youtube channel where I have done a video explaining this example and some exercise strategies that I have used in clinic that can be useful once we have performed some manual techniques such as myofascial cupping and acupuncture to the neck and ribcage to get the joints and tissues moving more freely.
So if you are suffering with neck pain at the moment please get in touch so we can free up some motion in your body to get you playing again with less pain and discomfort.
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