Perhaps in no other sport does balance play such as crucial role as in golf. Golf requires a high degree of accuracy and precise movement to succeed. Balance and postural sway is determined the golfer’s posture, which in turn, is affected by the integrity of the core and muscle balance. This article provides some basic information on balance and balance training that a golfer will find valuable in helping him or her shave valuable points off their game.

What is balance and balance training?

In this article, the term “balance” actually has two meanings. The first definition of balance is comparable to that of stability or the ability to control your body’s center of mass. The other definition of balance is the concept of “muscle balance”.

These two concepts are actually dependent on one another – that is, it is impossible to achieve a high degree of stability with muscle imbalances and vice versa. Therefore, balance training in this article refers specifically to restoring muscle balance, as stability will naturally follow.

What are muscle imbalances?

Muscle imbalances occur when a muscle on one side of a joint or body part (called the agonist muscle) becomes excessively short and tight and the muscle on the opposite side (called the antagonist) becomes lengthened and weak.

Muscle imbalances may be caused by factors such as excessive sitting in a slouched position, an old injury and even left/right hand dominance.

How do muscle imbalances affect posture?

Muscle imbalances cause predictable deviations in a golfer’s posture. Posture is a term to refer to the vertical alignment of the various “blocks” making up the human body – that is the head, shoulders and pelvis.

A very common example of the relationship between posture and muscle imbalances is a golfer with unevenness of the shoulders. An unevenness of the shoulders is usually associated with an unevenness of the hips, essentially making the leg on the low side “longer” and the leg on the high side “shorter”.

In this situation the lateral stabilizing muscle called the glute medius (side butt) will be weak and lengthened on the high side and its functional antagonist, the adductors (inner thigh) muscles will be tight and strong.

What is postural sway?

Postural sway is an indicator of body alignment due to posture and how well the body’s center gravity of the body is balanced. An excellent way of checking your postural sway is to stand with each foot on a standard bathroom scale. If the weights differ by more than 5 lbs it is considered significant.

How do muscle imbalances affect posture and postural sway?

Postural sway demonstrates a deviation of the center of gravity from normal. Consider the example of the golfer with unevenness in the hips. Because he is unable to keep the hip down due to a weakness of the glute medius, it becomes necessary to shift the body weight over the high hip.

This compensation causes a C-shaped curve in the spine, bowing toward the high shoulder side and affecting postural sway such that the center of gravity shifts toward the weaker hip. As a result, a golfer with this condition may find it difficult to stand and balance on the high hip side with the shoulders level.

How does postural sway affect my golf swing?

The power of a golf swing is generated from a horizontal weight transfer. Just as a baseball pitcher uses a striding movement from his back foot to his front to generate power, a golfer does much the same during the swing. During the takeaway the golfer’s center of gravity shifts toward the back foot, and during the down stroke it transfers toward the front foot.

Golfers with postural sway will not only lose power in their stroke because of the compensatory weight transfer, but will also find it difficult to control the accuracy of the shot. Stability is lost and it is like trying to “shoot a cannon from a canoe”.

Muscle imbalances will inevitably result in injury

Muscle imbalances disrupt the natural biomechanics of the joint or joints they surround. Stabilizing muscles (called stabilizers) maintain ideal posture and optimal biomechanics by ensuring congruence of the joint surfaces; but when the stabilizers weaken from injury, poor posture or long periods of sitting, other muscles attempt to substitute or compensate for this weakness.

These compensatory muscles are called mobilizers since they are responsible for causing movement and offer little in the way of stabilizing the body. Mobilizing muscles cannot perform the role of both stabilizing and mobilizing, and as a result change the normal movement of the joint or body part.

These compensations and substitutions result in a wasting of muscle energy and power and abnormal joint wear, eventually leading to injury. Common areas of compensation, injury and pain for golfers are the low back and shoulders.

Strengthening the core muscles is key to restoring muscle balance

The “core” is much more than just the abdominal muscles; it is a complex of 29 muscles that act together to stabilize the lower back, pelvis and hip (called the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex or LPHC). The muscles of prime importance are the transversus abdominis and the multifidus (deepest abdominal and back muscle respectively).

The core muscles control and stabilize the region of the body where the center of gravity is located and where all human movement, including the golf swing begins. The core acts as the primary anchor for almost every muscle in the body to “pull off” and as the bridge for conducting forces between the upper and lower body. The powerful leg muscles attach to the LPHC directly via the hip, while the muscles of the arms and shoulders attach indirectly via the spine and trunk.

Strengthening the core muscles helps “reset” muscle balance far from the core itself however it is important to combine a core strengthening routine with an effective stretching program for chronically tight mobilizing muscles too.

Stretch the tight muscles, work the weak ones

Be leery of any golf fitness professional offering a conditioning program promising big results, yet who has not performed a thorough postural analysis, gait analysis or some other form of functional testing. These tests provide telltale clues to the origin of muscle imbalances.

Tight muscles are usually overactive and strong, and lengthened muscles are usually underactive and weak. “Overactive” and “underactive” are terms that refer to the amount of motor nerve activity a muscle receives from the brain.

Typically, the muscles that tighten and become overly active are the hip flexors (groin muscles), low back, hamstrings, upper trapezius and levator scapula and the neck extensors. Muscles that are typically weak and underactive are the abdominal muscles – especially the transversus abdominis, glutes (butt), lower trapezius, serratus anterior and the deep stabilizing muscles of the neck and spine (coli and multifidus respectively).

Consistently stretching a muscle will help to reduce the overactivity, plus will physically stretch the muscle fibers that have shortened. Strengthening the weak stabilizing muscles will increase nerve activity and cause the fibers to shorten somewhat.

In closing, this article has focused on the identification of muscle imbalances, their influence on postural sway and the resulting effect on the golfer’s ability to play consistently with power and accuracy. Correcting muscle imbalances is very complex, as the human body is a master at compensation and adaptation; but with instruction from an experienced golf fitness professional, the task becomes much easier. Remember it is better to treat the “root cause” of your hook or slice and lower back pain than “whitewash” it over with continual golf lessons and frequent club upgrades; both of which tend to enforce muscle compensations even further.