The Best Exercises for Increased Hip Mobility in Golfers
Hip mobility is important.
The hips are the bridge between the lower body and trunk.
They help move the pelvis, which is directly connected to the spine.
Basically, it's all connected, and if your hips aren't moving like they should be, we could run into issues up and down the chain.
The Hips and Your Golf Swing!
In order to coil and load the golf swing, we need the trail hip to move into large amounts of internal rotation - while stabilizing!
In order to uncoil the golf swing and create power, we need to be able to externally rotate our lead hip and dissociate our pelvis from our upper body.
To stop our golf swing, our front hip moves into large amounts of internal rotation - while stabilizing!
If limited we could see greater loads being placed north or south of the hips, and this uneven distribution of force could create longevity issues.
Moral of the story, let's make sure our hips are moving and grooving as needed.
Below are three exercises you should be using to strengthen and mobilize your hips...
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EXERCISE #1 - RFE Split Squats
Were you expecting some fancy, convoluted bodyweight exercise?
Nope.
The best way to grow hip mobility is through lower body strength exercises like these.
Further, during your golf swing your hips are actively functioning as stabilizers - which is why I underlined "stabilizing" twice in the preceding section.
It's not enough to complete some bodyweight exercises like quadruped hip circles and 90-90s.
These are fine exercises and we use them all the time at SCRATCH, but you can't stop there. You need to move your hips UNDER LOAD.
Specifically, by elevating the rear foot we place our back hip into greater amounts of extension. We also can achieve an internal rotation bias on that front hip and we are strengthening the muscles of the quads and glutes through a larger range of motion.
All of which, offer major benefits!
Here's a regressed version of the same exercise if you are new to training or limited by your hip mobility...
YouTube Video - Barbell Split Squats
EXERCISE #2 - Goblet Lateral Lunges
Use a light dumbbell to help pull your body downward into a greater range of motion.
Try to limit how much you push off the trailing leg.
Good luck!
EXERCISE #3 - RDL (and the many variations of it)
The RDL exercise is a favorite of mine for many reasons including the fact that it simultaneously STRENGTHENS our hips while MOVING them through a large range of motion.
In order to improve our usable mobility, this is the exact recipe we need to follow!
Move. Strengthen.
All three of these exercises do just that!
CONCLUSION
Hip mobility is important for us golfers and our performance on the course, there is no denying that.
It's also critical for longevity and avoiding injuries in the sport
Further, I've found many golfers out there are currently LACKING adequate hip mobility.
Lastly, the best way to grow our hip mobility is to simultaneously LOAD and MOVE our hips through various exercises like those shown above!
Carter Schmitz
Founder: SCRATCHGolfTraining.com
