For those of us who live north of the Mason Dixon line, we have to wait for the snow to melt before we grab the links and hit the greens. Lucky for us this year, spring came early! Avid and amateur golfers alike are always looking to try new ways to lower their score. Here are four ways chiropractic care could help achieve a healthier handicap.
1. Better balance
When I see someone in my office, one of the spinal screening tests that I can perform is a bilateral weight distribution. Instead of stepping on one scale, I use two scales (one for each foot) and see how your weight is distributed from side to side. People with spinal subluxation (misalignment that increases stress on your delicate nerve system) will normally have a weight distribution greater than 5 pounds from one side compared to another. The worst I have ever seen has been over a 50 pound difference. If you are a golfer, you understand that proper weight distribution is essential for an effective golf swing. By receiving chiropractic adjustments to restore spinal alignment, I can help to bring your weight back into balance, which can lead to a more efficient swing, which hopefully leads to fewer strokes on the course.
2. Decreased muscle tension
Another test that I run in the office is a paraspinal sEMG (surface electromyography), which is a way to measure muscle activity around the spine. Again, people with spinal subluxations consistently show increased and imbalanced spinal musculature. My grandfather taught me in Golf 101 to RELAX. Increased muscle tension leads to poor coordination of your swing, which can lead to slices, hooks, or simply just duffed tee shots. Again, chiropractic adjustments help to reduce that muscle tension that you may or may not even be aware of and I can show you with the technology in our office!
3. Increased range of motion
Part of a spinal subluxation includes a decrease in motion between spinal bones. Range of motion decreases significantly as the number of spinal subluxations increase. This is especially important to understand for the strength of your swing. The force of your swing is generated from the pivoting of your legs, hips, and low back and follows with your shoulders, arms, and wrists. This requires an incremental and fluid motion from lower to upper body. A healthy, subluxation free spine is like a freshly picked twig that produces a lot of whip and torque when it is swung. Compared to a spine with subluxation, which is like a dead branch. The dead branch can still produce a force, but not nearly the amount compared to the young twig. In fact, if there is repetitive torque placed on a subluxated spine, over time it can lead to serious degeneration and injury. A chiropractic adjustment is a fast, gently, and specific force used to restore motion and alignment to a subluxated spinal bone. Ultimately, getting regular chiropractic adjustments can keep you swinging longer and stronger.
4. Improved coordination
Muscle memory and coordination are essential for an effective golf swing. Without giving you an entire neurology lesson, let me briefly describe how your spine and brain are connected. Whenever we engage in a dynamic movement (i.e. your golf swing), the brain must send messages down nerves to all the muscles that need to engage in order to produce the desired motion. However, our body is so dynamic and adaptive that messages from all the spinal joints and muscles are constantly sending messages back to the brain, which the brain uses to increase the efficiency of your movement. If you have a spinal subluxation, this will send distorted and incomplete information back to the brain, which will in turn lead to poor messages sent out by your brain, which leads to poor coordination. Obviously the more fine tuned your swing becomes, the better the golfer you will become. Chiropractic adjustments help to maximize the messages between your brain and body by removing spinal subluxations and improving your coordination.
Tiger Woods is still an amazing golfer despite his recent moral judgements and he said, "Being a Chiropractic patient has really helped me immensely...lifting weights and seeing a Chiropractor on a regular basis has made me a better golfer. I've been going to Chiropractors for as long as I can remember. It's as important to my training as practicing my swing."
Although I cannot guarantee you a green jacket, I can say that I have many people who improve their golf game through regular chiropractic adjustments.
Abundant drives,
Dr. Dan
Dr. Dan Turo is the owner and chiropractor of Turo Family Chiropractic located in the North Hills of Pittsburgh, PA. Find more information at his website. Follow him on facebook and twitter.
