Stress In Your Hip When Turning In Posture
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Direction Steps:
- Go to your wall station
- Get into your golf posture (use the steps you learned in your posture training)
- Place your hands on opposite shoulders
- Firm your whole body
- Give special attention to the angle of your spine from hips to head
- Change your focus to the line from spine point between shoulder blades to right armpit
- Change your focus to your right lower back muscle
- Use this back muscle to pull your right armpit area backwards AND upwards, sliding along the wall while holding your spine angle in place
Repeat the above steps using various upper body angles of bend at your hip joints and try turning to a full 90 degree turn in various angles of bend.
- Did you find an angle of hip bend that was the most comfortable in which to do the takeaway turn along the wall?
- Did you find some angles of hip bend that caused much stress, tension, or discomfort in your right hip joint?
The following information is not the most technical and does not use "correct" names for body parts, etc. But, hopefully you will get the main idea. I encourage you to research on the Internet, in books, or with your health practitioners for better understanding.
When you finish reading the information below, repeat the direction steps at the top and try bending at various hip angles that are the same angles as your lower leg angles at your ankles. You want to feel if trying to keep these angles of your lower legs the same as your spine angles will help you do your takeaway turn much easier.
When you are standing, your spine is almost in a straight line parallel with your thigh bone. Your hip joint allows the most comfortable rotation for turning motions when you are standing. Your hip joint is shaped better for standing support and muscles, tendons, and ligaments in this joint area develop for upright control and for back and forth leg movements.
When you bend at your hip joints in your golf posture your spine changes to being at various angles to your thigh bones. As this angle increases it becomes more difficult for you to make a full, 90 degree, upper body turn to your right side.
Your pelvis part of your hip joint is now turning in various angles of "up and down" on the top of your thigh bone instead of turning horizontally. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments at this area are being stretched differently to reflect this new angle of movement at your hip joint.
I discovered that the most comfortable turns in your golf posture occur when your spine angle relative to vertical is almost the same as the angle of your lower leg (knee to ankle). There will be discomfort because of the hip angle but it is less when the spine angle and lower leg angle are about the same relative to vertical.
The major problem with your spine being bent at a greater angle than your lower leg is that you have greater stress of your pelvis "pulling" upwards and backwards on your right thigh bone. The resulting action to relieve the discomfort is to allow your right leg to straighten upwards and backwards.
As soon as you do this you are out of your starting posture. You become unstable in your balance. You have to do much work to return to your original alignment during your return swing to swing precisely through the impact area.
Injuries can occur in your hip joints due to swing forces working on improper rotation activity of these joints. As well, these wrong movements can be a source of lower back changes during your swing which lead to lower back pain.
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