How lack of Scapula control effects swing mechanics
IN: Health and Fitness | by Rob Neal | 26 Apr 2004
The first of the two sequences of images show a female golfer (aged 28 years) who has a swing pattern that is typical of many young golfers, but in particular, many female golfers.
In the first sequence, you can see how the hands continue to "travel" behind the head, despite the fact that the pelvis (hips) has virtually stopped rotating, and the upper torso does not continue to turn much (4 degrees) after image 3a. This type of movement can have a number of underlying causes but the physical issue that underpins it is lack of control of the shoulder blades. By lack of control we mean that the golfer is either unable to keep the shoulder blades close to the ribs as the upper torso turns, or she is unaware of what the shoulder blades are actually doing as the body moves.
This lack of awareness and control can have its origin as a lack of strength in the muscles that control the motion of the scapulae or is can be a lack of tone or activation of these muscles by the golfer. In either case, some physical training including postural awareness activities and strength training can ameliorate the issue. This physical training must be accompanied by practice, preferably with the aid of a biofeedback system that provides accurate information to the golfer about the relative positions of the arms, hands and upper torso.
After some appropriate exercises, including practice using the biofeedback of the Golf BioDynamics system the following data was collected. You will note that in this sequence, the hands do not "disappear" behind the head.
For the sceptics who might think that the swings below are just practice swings, the body rotations are very similar. The maximum pelvic rotation for the sequence below is 49 degrees and the upper torso rotation is 93 degrees compared with the sequence above in which the pelvis rotated 42 degrees and the upper torso reached 97 degrees. No loss in distance that the ball travelled and clubhead speed were found, despite the reduced hand displacement.
On the contrary, the rotational speeds of the body (pelvis and upper torso) were slightly higher than at the initial testing. We believe that the reason for the increased body speeds is that the golfer was in a position to accelerate the body as fast as she was able to, without the risk of getting the hands "trapped" or "stuck" behind her body. That is, she could rotate her hips and upper torso as hard as she liked and the hands were pulled down and into a good position at impact.
