Hello and welcome to The Golf Physio! With the site well underway, I am grateful and excited to create a community that combines movement-based analysis with the game of golf to encourage all ages that improving your golf game is possible. As we all know, golf is a complex sport that requires a specific skill set. Not only is the game one of the more mentally challenging sports of our age, but it can also take a toll physically on our bodies. Trained as a doctor of physical therapy (DPT), I have also received my Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialty (CSCS) and Titleist Performance Institute’s (TPI) Level 1 and Level 2 Medical Certifications. With this extensive training and experience working with golfers, I want to bring my knowledge and expertise to you.
Combining my knowledge as a physical therapist and my passion for the sport of golf, I offer you my expertise in both fields to create an ideal environment for your golf game. Whether you are in pain or not, it is important to pinpoint your current movement patterns that may lead to dysfunction in your golf swing down the road. Even losing 5, 10, 15 yards on your drive may be due to a problem in your movement patterns. Let me help you. Mark Twain once said, “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” While I cannot guarantee your next 18-round won’t be blurred with profanities, I can give you advice and treatments to help keep you pain-free and enjoying the game you love.
The main goal and function of this platform is to bring together golfers of all ages, skill levels, and overall functional mobility to one place where they can gather information to suit their needs for their golf game. If you were to google golf fitness or golf conditioning, you might find a course here or a few articles there. Surprisingly, there is little to no content on this subject matter despite the seemingly exorbitant amount of information regarding how to swing properly or how to hit a proper bunker shot. The problem is, not everyone has the capability to swing like Jordan Spieth or Rory McIlroy. We were all made differently and have different limitations that cause us to swing in a specific way. Granted, there might be a drill or two that leads us to change some things, but I adopt the TPI philosophy as my own when it comes to the golf swing. To put it simply, we believe there is no one way to swing a golf club. We believe there is an infinite number of ways to swing a golf club. However, for each individual person, there is only one efficient way to swing and that is based on what you can physically do.
Think about your golf swing. Imagine there is something you want to change or correct. What do you do? For most golfers, they analyze the swings of professional golfers, maybe go to a golf coach and try to emulate a Tiger Woods or Dustin Johnson. All of that would be great, but your body might not be physically capable of swinging the club as they can. Just as we all have a unique fingerprint, we all have a unique golf swing that nobody can perfectly replicate. You are doing yourself a disservice by forcibly placing your body in a position it cannot get into which leads to golf swing deficiencies and worse, pain. And pain is never normal. Pain is a signal that your brain has received saying something is going awry down here, please help! I have worked with multiple golfers who say their back is sore or tired after a round of 18. Is that normal? Of course not! And that is where I come in to help.
Over the coming days, months, and years, my aim is to bring you a plethora of information regarding golf fitness, wellness, conditioning, and physical therapy. My objective is to help you prevent an injury before it occurs through exercises, drills, and general advice and to help those who are already injured find out the reasons why the injury occurred in the first place and to get you back on track. Exercise is the key to great success in every other sport, so why not golf is my question? However, the right exercise for you may not be the right exercise for your spouse or your friend. Individualized exercise programming is the only way to determine what exercises are right for you to give you the best results and help you get back to your most efficient swing possible.
The human body is fascinating to me, one of the main reasons I became a physical therapist. With all the intricate details combining to work together, our bodies were designed to move. The more we move, the better we feel. A saying I use often that I heard from a fellow physical therapist is, “First, move well. Then, move often.” Problems arise when we try to move into an area of dysfunction, which can eventually lead to an injury. That is where a physical therapist, like myself, can help. As the movement experts of the medical field, physical therapists can find the driving dysfunction causing pain or less efficiency in your golf game.
As I stated previously, the goal of this site is to bring you the best research and information on exercises, general fitness, and injury prevention to keep you on the course and out of the doctor’s office. To do that, I need your help. Please shoot me an email, leave comments on Instagram or Facebook to let me know what you want to know more about. I embrace feedback and the more I get, the better. Please subscribe to make sure you stay up to date on all the latest posts coming from The Golf Physio. Finally, be sure to tell your friends and family!
Finally, let me end by saying how excited I am to bring you all this information in a friendly and informative way. My goal is to help you as much as possible and to be your expert source for all things golf. Maybe even make The Golf Physio your homepage. Together, we can make this game more enjoyable and even help you gain some bragging rights for your friends.