Understanding Golf-Specific Functional Flexibility

“Flexibility can be brought to high levels by anybody and at any time in one’s life.”

Thomas Kurz, author of Stretching Scientifically

My goal in this section is to help you gain an understanding of how flexibility influences the functional range of motion required during a golf swing.

You can have great flexibility, and yet lack great functional flexibility for golf.

Here’s why. 

I directly test the flexibility of all the golfers that I work with in my golf-fitness training business.  Many times I have had clients demonstrate to me that they had more than a normal amount of flexibility in their joints to perform a fault-free swing.  However, when you put a golf club in their hands and have them swing away at normal swing speed, they are unable to achieve their ideal swing.  Now keep in mind that a great number of my clients are very low handicap golfers, so their level of skill is not in question.

They simply have great flexibility and not so great functional range of motion.

How can this be?

Because there are two types of flexibility:  active flexibility and passive flexibility.

Passive Flexibility

Let me give you an example.

When you think of a typical stretching program designed to increase a golfer’s flexibility, you probably picture performing stretches where you move into a position until tension or a stretch is felt in a specific muscle.  You hold it there for a specific amount of time, and then you release the tension to either repeat the stretch or move on to another muscle.

It’s like bending forward to touch your toes or performing the splits.

This type of stretching only addresses your passive flexibility, not your active flexibility.

Now all this is not necessarily bad.  We definitely need passive flexibility.  Over time passive flexibility exercises can elongate and strengthen the soft-tissues that make up the muscles and surrounding connective tissues.  Passive flexibility also provides what is called a flexibility reserve that protects us from injury when muscles are suddenly stretched beyond their normal limits.  Unfortunately, active flexibility remains essentially unaffected, and functional range of motion during the golf swing is unchanged.  In other words, performance stays the same.

Active Flexibility

Flexibility is not just limited by the length of the soft-tissues of the muscle and its surrounding connective tissues.  It is also controlled by the nervous system.

The length of a muscle and the tension produced in the muscle is also controlled by a combination of stretch reflexes and inverse stretch reflexes.

The stretch reflexes tend to increase muscle tension which reduces active flexibility and restricts functional range of motion.  The inverse stretch reflexes tend to reduce muscle muscle tension to assist in contolling muscle length and tension which allows for greater active flexibility and functional range of motion.

It is the control of these neuromuscular processes through a properly designed flexibility program of dynamic stretches and exercises involving active muscular contractions that will optimize your active flexibility.  These changes in active flexibility can be optimized in as little as 8 weeks of proper training making it the fastest and most effective way to take you to higher levels of functional range of motion and performance on the golf course.

Other Factors Which Influence Functional Range of Motion

1.      Exercise and Training History

Athletes tend to develop flexibility characteristics inherant in their sport.  For instance cyclists tend to have very tight hip muscles because they are seated and bent forward for most of their training.  That means that if you live a very sedentary lifestyle or have specific job requirements (such as prolonged sitting), you may need to address specific areas of reduced flexibility in the design of your training program.

2.      Age

Flexibility will decrease with age UNLESS you undergo a training program to prevent such changes.

3.      Gender

Females tend to be more flexible than males.  This may be due to a simple higher pain threshold than that of men.

4.      Temperature

You tend to be more flexible at higher muscle temperatures.  For instance, you will be more flexible after a warm-up.

5.      Type of Joint

Flexibility is specific to each type of joint.  Just because you are flexible at one joint does not mean you will be equally flexible at all joints.