BIOMECHANICS… ANYONE CONFUSED YET?

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding.
Proverbs, 4: 7

The hottest new phrase in golf instruction is BIOMECHANICS. Everywhere you turn a new golf instructor is touting their instruction as the only true biomechanical correct way to swing the golf club. This is all well and good but how many biomechanical correct ways can there be? Seriously…everybody has a chiropractor or someone certified in this or that…. so who are we to believe? Frankly I think we should believe all of them. I mean everyone’s golf swing in the world is going to be somewhat biomechanically different because no two people are built the same, have the same flexibility, etc. so they are bound to be 100% correct for SOMEBODY 🙂

So let’s take a look at some PGA tour pros….

Martin Kaymer

Lee Westwood

Tiger Woods

Zach Johnson

Charlie Wi

You get the picture…

So how many of these swings look IDENTICAL? I don’t think any of them look the same. Next question and this one is the hardest….who’s swing is biomechanically correct? Give up? The ALL are! That’s right the all are. In every swing each golfers hinge joints are hinging and their ball joints are swiveling. So anyone out there that is telling you that their way is the 100% safest for your body and the only biomechanically correct way to swing the golf club ask them to prove it. That’s right…PROVE IT!

Stop telling me that your way is the best and I will not get injured. Don’t tell me that your way will prevent me from needing a new hip in the future like Jack Nicklaus. I mean who is to say that Jack did not have Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI) syndrome or degenerative hip disease. Where is your research data? Do you have any test groups of golfers using your particular swing model for 5 or 10 years and the data tracking injuries? I doubt it. So how can one honestly say that their way is the biomechanical correct way? They can’t…period. And in my opinion until they can back up claims like this with actual data and studies then all golf instructors should consider backing away from such claims. Bottom line is that the golf swing is an athletic unnatural movement and no matter how you do it, if you continue to play then you will always run the risk of getting injured and that is the bottom line.

Listen; is there a perfect golf swing out there? Possibly but no one, at least I don’t believe anyone, is ever going to find it. Heck, if Tiger Woods hasn’t found it yet then I don’t think anyone ever will.  So then what are we to do? Should we ignore biomechanics all together? Absolutely not. But we should NOT say that there is only one biomechanical correct way to swing a golf club either.

What we need to do is to collaborate with one another and identify what the true biomechanical pieces are and then see how we can apply them to each of our individual swings.  If we approach golf instruction from this perspective then I believe people will finally for the first time begin to improve and maybe we can reverse the trend of people giving up the game.

So where do we start? Well let’s start by identifying what all of the above swings “biomechanically” have in common. They way I see it, from a high level to keep it easy, it’s the following:

• Shoulders and hips turn in the back swing
• Right arm hinges in the backswing
• Right arm unhinges in the downswing
• Shoulders and hips turn in the downswing
• Left arm hinges in the follow thru

Now, there is indeed more to go into with the above such as how to properly execute and time these movements but the overall goal here for this article is to keep things as simple as possible. So from a high level do you all out there see anything else? Feel free to leave a comment for open discussion. As I said the key to improving is indeed collaboration.

 God Bless!!