The other big thing I'll mention on is some swing characteristics that can cause injury.
The first big one is early extension, which is practically where the hips
get closer towards the ball prior to impact. From here, it puts our
body in a position where our back is arching, it's side bending, and
also we're rotating at the same time, which puts the back tissues, particularly
on the trail side, in a lot of stress. That is one position
I like to see controlled. The second position I see quite a lot of
is the over the top move, so where people look like they're cutting wood
versus the lead hips starting to rotate first. And another big injury area I
see in the golf swing is the dreaded chicken wing. What happens in the
chicken wing Instead of that lead arms starting to straighten and extend, it starts
to flex. As our arms starts to bend, the muscles in our elbows
have to control the club face even harder, which over time can lead into
stress and particular tennis elbowt HI. This is Pam Johnson from Tallahassee, Florida,
and I play at Southwood Golf Club. This is Golf Smarter number nine
hundred and eighteen, Why you Shouldn't carry your golf bag and other preventable golf
injuries with Billy Troy. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories, tips and
insights from great golf minds to help you lower your score and raise your golf
IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast,
Billy. Thank you, Fred. I really appreciate you having me on
mate. I'm looking forward to talk about all things golf, fitness and physical
therapy. Yeah, and I love getting the fact that you're What part of
Australia are you in? Yeah, currently based in Brisbane in the north of
Australia, so it's getting into our warmer season here and lots of golf happening,
mate, So very happy to be here. How did you become a
golf physio physical therapist is what your title is? Yeah, that's my title,
so I guess as a young kid, I played a lot of golf,
a lot of rugby league, one of our main sports here in Australia,
and as I got older, I started to back the rugby league down.
I got sea getting bashed up by the guys and me and started to
play a bit more golf, and I guess after I finished my physical therapy
degree, I blended the two passions together and here I am now about five
years later. Excellent, excellent. So you gave me a list of topics
that you'd like to discuss, which I truly appreciate, Thank you very much.
And the first one you have here are back pain myths. Now,
I've had back pain most of my adult life and it's going on decades and
decades now of back pain. But I do at least twenty minutes stretching every
single morning, especially the mornings that you know that I'm going to play golf.
I also luckily enough to have hot dub, so before I even start
stretching, I get warmed up in the tub, warm the body up.
But you're seeing there's myths about back pain and golf. Let's address that first
for sure. And well done on your warmut procedures. Mate. You probably
beat seventy percent of my clients by doing stretching, so that's that's a great
start. I've always loved you good, so that's a great place to start.
And I guess with golf, forty give or take of injuries are back
pain related. So there's a number of myths around that, so I'll just
debunk a few of those now. And I guess the first thing I see
or hear quite a lot is my back is out of alignment. So for
this, I've seen hundreds of golfers with back pain, and I've probably seen
one or two that are truly out of alignment per se. And when people
refer to alignment, they're talking about the bone and deformity of the bone,
and it's very rare that's the case unless you have some form of scoliosis,
which is where they basically bone will deviate in a certain direction. So that's
one very common myth. A second common myth is that the disc is out
of place or the disc popped out in the back, and the disc is
essentially a soft tissue that sits between the bones. And again with that,
the disc can't physically move out of place. It can, it can protrude
and affect the nerves, but it can't physically come out of place. And
then another one I commonly hear is I need to pop my back back in.
So chiropractice typically have manipulation techniques, and people think they're actually putting the
joints back into place, whereas actually it's just the joint we're releasing air in.
So there's some there's some quick ones to touch on. Fred. Yeah,
I know someone very close to me has had a herniated disk and had
to have surgery twice in the last year. And yeah, when your disc
doesn't pop out, if you if you're just popped out, you wouldn't be
just complaining about it, you'd be screaming about it, right, Yeah,
one hundred percent. And the way the body is may we've got a lot
of these structures at that sit around the discs. You've got obviously the bones
surrounding it. You've got a lot of ligaments and soft tissues, so the
disc can't move out. Like you said, her niation is basically where the
disc will protrude slightly and potentially touch on the nerve there, but it's it's
not physically possible. So again, some of those quick myths just basically touch
on a lot of the language that's commonly misused. But golfers do get back
pain, yes, sir, So, like I touched on briefly, about
forty to sixty percent, it's a big range, but that's basically what a
lot of studies tell us and one in four golfers will have back pain after
their rounds. So let's say in your group of four, it's likely that
one of you are having back after the round. So it's a huge number,
and I guess one of my big drivers is to try and decrease that
so the golfers can play as long and as healthy as they like. Yeah,
and what do you find to be the cause for the back pain?
Is it? Is it sitting in the golf cart? Is it walking?
Is it the golf swing itself? What do you What have you discovered?
Yeah, there's a number of factors. I'll say the big rocks in the
jar would be physical fitness, so are you are you exercising, are you
doing some strength training. Secondly, it would be weight management, So if
you're overweight, you're likely to have back pain. When it comes down to
the nitty gritty, so some of the things that can impact it, Like
you mentioned the golf swing mechanics can certainly affect the back. So some recent
examples might be will Z l Taurus that gets into a position where the back
is arching towards the ball and side bending quite a lot. So that's a
potential position of injury. So they're the little ones. But I'd say,
like I mentioned the big rocks in the jar exercise, weight Management, sleep
and diet thread, I've noticed that when I start putting on a couple pounds
that I'll have a tendency my back will hurt more. And right now I
am at the lowest weight that I've been since my wedding. I mean,
I've been working really hard on trying to cut out on the out that I'm
consuming and how many times a day did I eat, And so I'm definitely
feeling the impact of not having the extra eight nine pounds. I mean,
that makes a big difference for sure. And do you have a particular exercise
routine that you do or is it more just the diet focus. Well,
my exercise is walking and walking the golf course a couple of times a week
and also the morning stretching. But other than that, if I go to
the gym, which I don't do very often, and I my wife is
going to knock out a door any second and go, what do you go
to the gym today? It's I go. I swim. That's my primary
exercise. The gym is all swim, which also is my back a lot
good. And I'm a big proponent in and exercise what you enjoy as well.
So if you enjoy swimming, your yogi, you're walking. Consistency is
key. So even some of my clients, I hate going to the gym.
I don't want to use any ways, and I'm fine with that.
There's there's a number of different ways to get a good stimulus for your body
excellent. Another another thing that on your list of topics to discuss kind of
leads into this, and we were talking about, you know, morning stretching
and whatnot, but also getting ready for your round of golf and the reasons
why it's important to have a warm up, not just to walk right up
to the first eat, right from a car to the pro shop to the
first t. You're probably not gonna play as well as you could, I'm
assuming, and you have reasons for this for sure, And there's a number
of different reasons. And I guess the culture here is typically the player will
get to the course, like you said, they'll run to the pro shop,
they'll pay their green fees, they might get a coffee and a meat
pie here, and they expect to play their best possible golf. And I
think it's really good to take some insight from what a lot of the professionals
do. So write a cup. Just recently, you see, they had
a full gym setup, so a lot of the players will go into the
gym, they'll do some mobility work, they'll do some activation drills with bands,
like going through the golf swing movements, and that's for a number of
reasons. Fred. So Firstly, it's an injury management tool, so to
play golf as long as possible and as long as you'd like to, you
need to be able to move well and mitigate injuries. Secondly, it's a
big performance benefit as well, So the Heartless Performance Institute TPI did some study
around this. If you're doing a five minute warm up, you're likely to
hit it about five yards longer with every shot, so over around that certainly
adds up as well. So both of those two reasons is why you should
be doing it. You can get increased yardage with just a five minute warm
up. Yeah, yeah, certainly. So. If you type into Google
now or into your phone five minute warm up TPI, I'm sure the article
will come up. It's just some quick banded exercises, so doing some squats,
doing some rotations with a band, essentially doing movements of the golf swing,
and because the muscles are primed to go, you're likely to hit it
further. And I guess if we imagine the body as a car, if
you jump in your car, you put the pedal down, it's likely your
car is not going to be prepared to go quick and you might hear it
a bit noisier than what it typically would, Whereas if you jump into the
car, let the motor just churn for a minute or two. The cars
better prepared. And our body's pretty similar in that manner. That's why I
have an electric car. We're going to take a time out. We're gonna
be back right after this, Billy, I want to know, let's go
over some specific warm up drills. They're going to help the grease up your
body and get you warmed up and get you a couple act yarns. If
you're not going to go had balls, but you even if you are,
you still need to do some warm up drills. Let's go over a couple.
What do you go for sure? So some easy ones you can do
at the course. These ones are a good bang for your barck, and
that's the biggest thing as well with a warm up, it needs to be
easy, quick and accessible as well. Otherwise golfers will make an excuse some
way to try and avoid it. So if you're at home listening now,
we're at the course or wherever you may be, you can have a golf
shaft across your shoulders, get yourself into your golf posture, and I want
you just to try and turn your shoulders as far as you can with that
golf club across your chest. With each of these exercises, I like around
ten repetitions, two repeats each direction. So that's a really quick and easy
one. That's correct. One I like is yeah, And with the golf
swing, typically the rotational centers are where a lot of injuries can come from
it. And what I mean by that is the upper back and the hips.
These are really the two areas of the body that are rotating quite a
lot to create a good golf swing. So if we're having restrictions in those
areas, it's going to a limit your ability to move and be It's going
to cause the lower back to become more involved, which we don't want ideally,
right right. Yeah. So a few other warm up stretches you can
do is by secondly having the golf shaft across the front of your hips and
from there would I mean to go through these as well thread with some demonstrations.
Well, it's an audio podcast, so if you use your words to
describe them, it would be much more effective. We do put these on
social media, so you know, these short little clips. So if we
have something that's visually compelling, then we'll use that as well, but try
to describe them because most of our audience is for sure. I'll go through
them in terms of language, and then I can send you some stuff afterwards
if you like, for your social media. Oh yeah, and I can
put those in the show notes. Yeah, okay, So back to the
second drill. So you can have the golf club across the front of the
hips in your golf posture and just trying to complete your backswing and also your
impact position with the club there, so trying to rotate as far as you
possibly can. One quick stretch of life for just trying to open up the
hips as well is put your butt of your golf club on the ground.
Your hand will be on top of the iron shaft and from there just performing
a squat and holding that for thirty seconds. And a lot of people don't
realize, but in the golf swing, particularly in the backswing, we're starting
to load into a squat like pattern, similar to someone like Rory McRory for
example, he's obviously the poster boy for that squat move in the backswing.
So if you have a bit more flexibility there, you're able to maintain that
position. And another quick one for your shoulders is just having your hand on
top of the iron shaft, have the other hand onto the grip and just
trying to push the hands over your head. So just trying to stretch the
lat dorsy muscle which sits underneath the shoulder there. I like that one.
So that one, you're just taking your club and you're giving some resistance.
It's all about resistance, right, Yeah, that's right, So moving through
resistance so that when we go into our golf swing we don't have that resistance
there or less resistance there. Okay, what else? More more more so
far three minute warm up? I mean, how long of warm up should
we do for our body, not just hitting balls before around? How long
should we spend it. I like around ten to fifteen minutes, so I'd
like it to be quick effective and going through essentially every movement that you have
in the golf swing. And also I can link you to a PDF guide
as well, Fred where it has all the exercises I recommend before around.
Some other ones I do like if you have access to some exercise bands.
Some exercise tubing is having the band underneath your lead foot and from there taking
a back swing. So from there I like to do again same pattern,
ten repetitions, two repetitions each side, really trying to get the core muscles
working and prepared for what you're about to do in your golf swing. And
then also putting under your trail side and going through the impact position and the
follow through. There's some quick ones. Some other ones around the body I
like, is it a next stretch just turning your neck as far as you
can, looking down to your underarm and just pulling your head down gently just
so with stretching those neck muscles around our shoulder. Some other stretches I like
to do going around the body is also going into a toe touch. A
lot of people here I work with can't touch their toes, so going through
that ten times and doing the reverse of that, reaching behind the legs,
trying to arture that ten times. But like I mentioned, Fred, those
stretches are all in a guide that I've got, so I can link you
to that, so it's easy. And we've got visual demonstrations for that too.
Oh that's great and well I appreciate that very much, and we will
put that in the show notes and in the blog post so that people can
download that for free. I want to go back to the exercise band.
Give me another explanation of it. So you put the exercise band around your
foot and then go through the golf swing, but you're holding the band down
on the around with your foot and pulling through is did I interpret that properly?
Yeah? That's right. So you have it under your foot, either
you can tie or just stamp on one end of the band. You have
the other band in two hens and just completing your backswing, so you'll have
that anchor point as your foot obviously the other anchor point is your hands and
just going through the golf swing gently. So what that enables you to do
is all these muscles that are working. We're just trying to engage them.
And what we know about physiotherapy or physical therapy is if you're strong and resilient,
there's a very good chance of limiting injuries. So that's really important before
you take to the tee or even to your practice tea. Excellent, excellent.
I'm sure that you don't advocate drinking alcohol on the golf course, but
that's a hard one to tell people not to do. So let's keep it
at walking the golf course versus writing in a buggy, as you would say,
yeah, yeah, definitely. So in terms of alcohol, if you're
having a good time and that's how you play your best golf, go for
it. It's probably not the best. And how sure you're playing your best
golf with the alcohol, try it without the alcohol and see what happens.
You might get bored. I certainly agree. I don't think it's the best
performance tool, but each to their own. But like you said, Fred,
walking the golf course versus a cart, I think there is some huge
benefits behind that. And you reference back pain earlier in a golf cut.
A couple of things are happening. Firstly, you're going over paths and potholes,
and the cart will be bouncing up and down. So in that instance,
yeah, in that instance, your back and your upper back and neck
are taking quite a lot of that pressure. Whereas when you're walking, obviously
you're absorbing the force through your ankles, your knees, your hips, and
it's getting dispersed equally throughout the body. And the second thing, when you're
in a cart locked into the sitting position, our shoulders are slump forward,
which is the complete opposite of what we want to do in the golf swing.
Whereas, again, if you're walking, you're up nice and tall,
and a lot of those muscles an't getting into those compromised positions. That's so
true, so true when you're walking. Now, I walk and I push.
I have a push cart, three wheel push cart that I use.
I cannot carry a golf bag over eighteen holes. It just I just think
my back would tighten up. It would be you know, it compresses everything.
If I'm trying to carry my golf bag. Is there any research or
studies done on the impact of carrying your bag versus not carrying your bag?
Yeah, there certainly is, Fred, And I'm the same as you,
mate. So when I carry a golf I tighten up, I feel tired.
And an interesting story earlier this year, I was living in an apartment
complex and I used to leave my push cart where I parked my car and
I went to golf one afternoon and someone had pushed had stolen my push cart.
So I thought, okay, Well, so I thought, I guess
I'm carrying today. And I was playing just nine holes, and after the
nine holes, I found I was so fatigued. I was really stiff in
the shoulders and neck. And that was just for the nine But going onto
some studies, so there was one interesting study published, I think it was
twenty sixteen, but they were comparing the oxygen consumption of pushing your bag versus
carrying, which is basically the energy expenditure. So what they found, if
you carry your golf bag, you're expending about ten percent more energy. So
again, if you're playing golf and you're trying to play your best golf,
conserving energy is really important. So firstly the physical move of the golf swing.
Secondly mentally as well, we need to make sure that we're on point.
And especially if you're playing in an environment where it's warm as well,
extra energy is going to be an extra sweat, which is going to mean
obviously that dehydration factor as well. Secondly, with carrying your golf bag is
what we've just talked about, is the physical part of it as well,
so in terms of the muscles. So again, carrying a ten to twenty
pound bag on your back or more, it's going to weigh down quite literally
and metaphorically as well. So again for me, it's always always push,
and even on that some people like to pull their bag behind them, I
much prefer them to push it in front of them. With that, your
posh is up taller, you're not getting turned to one side, and you're
not creating these imbalances as well. Yeah, I definitely have felt that I
used to have a two wheel curt and would pull it and pushing it was
much better on my shoulders and on my back. Well, another time out
coming up right now, we'll be right back. For those people who do
enjoy carrying their golf bag, they like the sound of the clubs rattling against
each other. You're saying it takes you're using ten percent more energy, which
is fascinating to me that you really are expending more energy, and we'll have
a problem at the end of the round with the idea of, you know,
starting to get too tired to finish the round. Are there specific exercises
that you would recommend for someone who wants to carry the back to strengthen their
back so that they can carry it over a four hour period, four hour
plus period. Yeah, certainly, And it was interesting. I put up
this study on my social media recently and there was some slight kickback on it.
And because I haven't seen a lot of the college golf in America,
I've watched it online, but I didn't realize a huge number of them carry
their golf bags, and a number of people mentioned that a part of them
going through the college system is carrying their bag as a sign of respect,
which I do appreciate. And also, secondly, some people carry their bag
because it's affordable. And also some people want to burn more calories because golf
is their main form of exercise. So if you want to burn more calories
and the golf course, sure carry your bag. Do be aware that it
may affect your performance for all those reasons that we mentioned earlier. But again,
I'm happy if someone wants to try and do that. So to answer
your question, if you want to make yourself more resilient and able to carry
your golf bag, I'd be considering a lot of exercises carrying a weight in
one hand. So an exercise which is called a farmers carry pretty self explanatory,
as a farmer would carry a hailbale or something heavy like I don't know,
a tin of petrol or something similar. You'll walk up and down a
space that you have. Twenty meters is a great distance trying to carry that
weight. But as you're doing that, you're trying to stabilize your body.
So you don't want your body to be swinging back and forth trying to control
that weight. You want to try and stay level with your chest and your
shoulders, so your shoulders should be parallel with the ground. As you're doing
this, you're going to strengthen a lot of the muscles deep in around your
spine. There's a muscle called your transverse abdominus, which basically acts like a
corset around your spine. So by controlling that weight, you're going to strengthen
that muscle there. And I see a lot of golfers that do carry their
bag. It's on the side of their shoulder. It's flopping around and people
don't realize what the body has to do to try and stabilize that shoulder joint.
So a lot of those deep muscles are working really hard, which we
don't realize. So I like that farmers carry And also some other exercises are
quite like is if you have access to again an exercise band is grabbing a
band, tying it to a door handle at home or at a gym,
you can do the same is just trying to rotate like you're pulling back a
bow for an arrow, doing that ten times. And what that enabling you
to do is, firstly, it's enabling you to move well, so you're
trying to rotate your thoracic spine the upper back, and at the same time
you're strengthening those muscles that sit close to the shoulder blades and around the chest
as well. So I guess quick summary of that, it's make sure you're
strengthening in terms of stability, trying to control the body weight and control that
weight moving side to side, and then secondly, try and strengthen through rotation
as well. Often I'll see little children carrying a backpack on their way to
school and the backpacks are very high. I mean they're kind of hunched over,
right, you see them, you know, leaning forward, trying to
hold onto the bag. And it's very similar to watching somebody carrying their golf
bag where they're they're kind of hunched over, and then when they get to
do their golf swing, their body position is a little more hunched than they
should. It's not a good stable athletic position. Does that happen to Can
you be creating problems for yourself when you're carrying your bag? Yeah, to
your bag, And I guess our body responds to how we treat it as
well. And our body is a product of our habits and our environment too.
Fred. So, like you mentioned, if you're carrying your bag,
gravity's trying to pull that bag forward and down, which is going to lead
into this more rounded position. And on the major tours, I can probably
think of a handful of people that have that rounded posture. So Victor is
probably an outli He's a bit more rounded with his chest if you look at
some of the really good golfers on the tour. So look at Jordan Speith
and Justin Thomas and John Rahm. A handful of these really good players.
Their spine is in a really good alignment. And I'm just going to touch
briefly on a little trip I had to Turkey. It slightly off topic,
but I went to Turkey. No, No, I love that. I
went to Turkey and a part of our tool we're going to where they make
a lot of these really nice carpets. It's part of their culture. So
anyhow, we went to this store. There was about five or six old
Turkish ladies and they walked out of the store to sell us this carpet.
And anyway, with these ladies, Posha, it was essentially hunched almost to
like where there were ninety degrees. Their chest is facing the ground. Yeah,
and because they've been making carpets since they were very young, they've really
adapted into this position. So firstly, the muscles will start to adapt into
this position, and then secondly the joints will start to fuse almost where they
can't actually get out of that position. And that's a very extreme point of
reference. But again, going back to carrying a golf bag, you want
to be very mindful that you're trying to stay up tall, be very natural
and making sure that you're not getting into these compromise positions, and a vast
majority of my clients are between thirty five to sixty years old. Most work
at a desk, and I guess the desk can be a devil. I
like to say, so you get if you get im coughtant to that,
it's not the it's not the desk that's the devil. It's the chair that's
right, that's right. So on that note, if you are a desk
worker, it's trying to get up throughout the day. Every hour, I'd
recommend and try and reverse that sitting posture. So if you're sitting on your
backside most of the day, I like to try and get people reaching over
their head as high as their can. You're asking your back from there.
Your next going to straighten up and you're going to be in a totlet position.
And then secondly he's doing a basic kid flexa stretch, so where your
leg will go behind you. You should feel a stretch on the front of
your hip, and it's just trying to reverse what you've been doing for the
last number of minutes or hours. Interesting. Interesting, Let's find out what's
happening on golf Smarter Mulligans this week and then we'll take another it's a brief
time out, and then a couple more questions for our last segment. We'll
be back in a moment. This week on Golf, Smarter Mulligans is part
two with Wall Street Journal columnist John Paul Newport commenting on his piece called Golf's
Biggest Delusions Nine things that people say about Golf that isn't true. We got
into one of my favorite topics to discuss on the golf course, and that's
questioning why we need to get our egos in the way and make the game
even harder than it already. Is. This te at forward movement which is
out there now that the USGA and the PGA of America are pushing is absolutely
brilliant. The idea is you want to play from the tees that create the
approach shots into the green that are the most fun to have, which would
be the approach shots where you're using the same club that maybe the pros would
be using into their greens on a long par four, most of the pros
are using pitching wedges to eight irons into the greens to have the maximum amount
of fun. The greens are created to accept shots with a wedge or a
nine iron or a seven iron at the most, and so you're going to
have a lot more fun. You'd be a lot less frustrating if you're hitting
shots into greens with the appropriate clubs those greens were designed for. You're going
to be more likely to get on the green, have birdie putts, you
have reasonable pars, so you figure out where the tea's you should be playing
are to give you those type of shots, and for most people it's way
further forward than where they tend to play. That's episode two hundred and thirty
four of Golf Smarter Mulligans featuring John Paul Newport, being featured on our podcast
offspring Golf Smarter Mulligans being released this Friday morning, Originally published as a member's
only episode in March of twenty twelve, which means that even if you've been
listening for more than a decade, chances are you've never heard it before.
So if you're entertained by what we present here each week, then don't miss
the chance to get two episodes every week of Golf Smarter, the longest running
golf podcasts that proudly focuses on making us better smarter Golfers and Golf Smarter Mulligans
episodes from our archives that we visit the best of Golf Smarter that can't be
found on any podcast platform anymore. They're both available for free from wherever you're
listening right now. Let's talk about hydration and nutrition on the golf court right
critically important. And when I'm talking hydration, I don't mean let's go get
another beer or crack open a bottle of wine. I played with these guys.
This guy was in the wine industry, but they had a couple of
beers and then they had a bottle of wine. I was like, wow,
like you don't want anything, Like, no, I can't drink on
the golf course. I can't drink alcohol on the golf course. But very
curious what you recommend to, you know, keep the wheels from falling off
the at the end of the round. And I think that hydration and nutrition
are critical to that help me out well. And hydration and nutrition again many
golfers don't think about. But it's these small things that you can do that
add up in the long run, and they might be one, two or
even ten percent. I think, like you mentioned, it's it's a huge
part that's commonly missed. Friends. So with a lot of clients that I
deal with, firstly we touch on hydration and the Australian Institute a Sport here.
They're a big body that does a lot of research for sports performance here
in Australia. So their recommendation about water intake is roughly seven hundred and fifty
millileters to one point five leaders per hour. And when I tell people,
yeah, when I tell people that normally blows their mind. And again it's
a big range as well. So let's say if we bring that back to
golf, I would suggest roughly four leaders throughout your round, which might be
four big bottles of water. And the reason we say that is because when
you're walking, when you're swinging a golf club, you're consuming energy and with
that, the muscles are basically burning this energy and they're consuming salts as well.
Also, the other thing that's going to happen when you play golf,
you're going to sweat most likely. So to make sure that we're getting the
best performance, we need to firstly a replace that water that we're losing through
sweat, and then secondly replacing the salts as well. So My advice around
that is making sure you take your four leaders with you. If you haven't
got access to taps on your course, pack more in your golf bag if
you do have taps, consistently filling it up. And secondly, with that,
to make sure that you're getting salts into your body. You need some
sort of sports supplement or take some mineral salts with you, or you can
pre mix it in your bottle of water. And I'm not talking about the
table salt, which is typically just sodium. We need we need the pure
rock salts. So with that, you have a number of different salts such
as sodium, potassium chlorides to make sure that you're replenishing a lot of the
salts that you lose. And when our muscles are contracting, there's basically a
salt channel that's working. So if that salt channel is upset, that's going
to lead to things such as cramping, more fatigue, dizziness, all those
sorts of factors, because your body's essentially telling you do something about this because
otherwise I'm going to start shutting down. So that is a really important factor.
And touching on nutrition now, when we're again playing golf, we're using
a lot of muscles. We're expending energy, so we need to make sure
we're trying to keep that keel even. And there's a really good book out
there called Hole in One Nutrition, which was written by doctor Robert Yang,
a very good book, so i'll plug that. And what Robert talks about
in the book is maintaining a solid or a stable blood sugar level. And
what blood sugar is, it's basically your body processing glucose, which is a
form of sugar. And with this what I commonly see people will not eat
for nine holes. So the blood sugar starts to dip quite low. They'll
get to the half way house. They might have a sandwich, they might
have a chocolate bar, they might have a can of cola, and all
of a sudden that sugar spikes up again, so they might get this big
hit of energy. Then they'll get to the fourteenth fifteenth hole, the energy
starts to drop down again. Oh yeah, there's a crash. And imagine
trying to close out a good round thread. When you've got dehydration in play,
your salt balances out of order, you've also got hunger going on in
a decrease in your blood sugar and all of a sudden, you're trying to
sink this four foot part to have your PB score. So again, these
ten percenters all add up. So what you should have in your golf bag
is a fat sauce. So I like to packing in nuts or some sort
of muse libar to make sure that you're keeping your fat intake there. Secondly,
I like to have a form of carbohydrates, so I think really easy
ones are fruit like a fresh banana. I like sandwiches, so using a
good multi grain or whole grain bread white bread, it's typically absorbed a bit
faster, so I wouldn't recommend that for golf. And then thirdly is having
some sort of protein sauce as well, So I really like to have a
beef jerky. You can have some sort of protein supplement in a shake or
a bar. But again these little things. It takes you five minutes to
prepare for this and put it in your golf bag. And a lot of
clients I typically say after implementing this, they say, I just feel so
much better. And it also it's after a round as well. You're not
you're not flopping on the couch after your eighteen holes. Yep. Yep.
Peanut butter pretzels one of my all time favorites. Peanut butter, peanut butter,
jelly sandwichweet bread, little banana on it all one of my favorites.
Yeah, and just grazing for me, it's just grazing through the entire round
versus having something at the turn at the halfway house. But just constantly ticking
little bits and pieces at a time through the entire round. I think makes
it makes a big difference. What are your thoughts about, you know,
these drinks that have a lot of supposedly replaces your electrolytes, things like Gatorade,
these sugar things. Oh you're laughing, that's not good. And I
guess those companies do a great lot of work to market themselves, and they're
associated with a lot of different sports teams. So when a lot of consumers
think of hydration, they think of Gatorad and power A, these mammoth companies.
I will note with those with those sports drinks, a lot of them
have a lot of sugar. So if weight management is a goal of yours,
you need to probably consider that. What I'm a big proponent of is
if you're going to go with one of those sports supplements because they're easy,
they're there, They're in every almost pro shops that I see. I'd probably
say mix it with a bit of water, just to make sure that you're
not consuming that big whack of sugar in one hit, or buy a tub
of it and mix it yourself, because again, if you're having that big
whack of sugar, we're going to upset that blood sugar level, which is
going to affect how we again concentrate and play. Or the other suggestion I
like is back to that mineral salts. So mixing in those salts in your
water, you're going to have a pretty similar outcome to what it is drinking
one of these typically very sugary and also expensive sports supplement company products. Fascinating,
and all of that is part of the injury prevention program that you should
develop. There's different things that you can do. One of them, of
course, is seeing hydrated and keep your nutrition up. But what are other
injury prevention suggestions do you have? Yeah, so back what we mentioned about
back pain injury, there's a number of things that's going to help prevent this
from happening. So I think first and foremost is having a regular exercise routine
like yourself, Fred, So I think that's a great idea to do what
you enjoy, whether it's swimming, whether it's walking, and having some sort
of form of resistance as well. So what we know from resistance exercise,
whether that's with weights or a band or with your body weight, you can
basically prevent one third of all sports injuries from occurring, or also overuse injuries
such as tennis elbow, golfer's elbow. We can practically have those amount of
injuries by doing resistance exercise. So I typically, like three times a week
a lot of my clients, I give them a thirty minute workout, and
that's enabling them to build resilience, get stronger, hit the ball further,
but obviously prevent injury. The second thing I need to mention as well is
golfers. We love to practice, and I'm a golfer myself. I sometimes
get carried away when I watch a YouTube video or I've seen my coach and
i think I've got to get those reps in to get the technique in order,
or i might have a really average round and I'll get home. I've
got a net in my backyard, so I'll hit fifty or one hundred balls
into a net. What that's going to do. It's going to spike your
activity levels. And there's something that we call in sports medicine world. It's
called the acute ta chronic workload ratio, and in layman's terms, it basically
means what have you done in the last month versus what have you done in
the last week. So let's say me, for example, I play golf
once a week eighteen holes. If next week I go and play thirty six
holes, I've essentially doubled my workload ratio, which is a really big risk
of injury with that. With that workload, we want to keep it roughly
thirty percent within that variable. So for me, instead of playing thirty six
holes, playing twenty seven, I might be able to get away with even
slightly less than that. But I guess to note if you go from one
drange session a week to three or four, I would probably expect some sort
of ache or pain to occur. And with our body, we like homeostasis,
which means we like to keep things stable. If we see these really
big spikes or drop offs in your activity level, it can be expected to
run into injuries of some sort. And the other big thing I'll mention on
is some swing characteristics as well that can cause injury. So the first big
one, and it's very heavily debated, is early extension, which is practically
where the hips get closer towards the ball prior to impact. From here,
it puts our body in a position where our back is arching, it's side
bending, and also we're rotating at the same time, which puts the back
tissues, particularly on the trail side, in a lot of stress. So
that is one position I like to see controlled. The second position I see
quite a lot of is the over the top move, so where people look
like they're cutting wood versus the lead hip starting to rotate first. And another
big injury era I see in the golf swing is the dreaded chicken wing.
So what happens in the chicken wing Instead of that laid arm starting to straighten
and extend, it starts to flix. As our arms starts to bend,
the muscles in our elbows have to control the clud face even harder, which
over time can lead into stress and particular tennis elbow fascinating. This is really
important information, Billy, I really appreciate your reaching out and coming on and
sharing with us so much of what you've learned and what we now know that
we've got a long way to go, and it will improve your golf game.
That's the bottom line to all this. These type of exercises and drills
and insights will definitely help your golf gam How can people find out more about
you? Billy? Thank you, Fred, You appreciate the time, and
thank you for putting a lot of work into what you do. And again,
over nine hundred podcasts is a great achievement. So I do thank you
for sharing your information and of course and for people that want to find my
stuff, I'm on Instagram at golf Underscore physio underscore ozaus that is spelled and
my website is Golf Physiotherapy Australia dot com. There's tons of free stuff.
There's a free mobility guide there, so get in contact. I'd love to
help anyone out. So I've been traveling the last few weeks and I got
a chance to be a guest at Congressional outside of Washington, DC. I
had to borrow clubs from the chorus and wasn't a huge fan of what they
gave me. I'm not going to mention the mek. It was just my
preference and I really could not get comfortable with that partter they gave me.
Oh well, anyway, we played the famed Blue Chorus, and even playing
from the whites was a hug huge challenge. Luckily we played in short sleeve
weather, as it rained the following day and the temperature dropped each day the
rest of the week. I guess that's going to happen in mid October,
right. Well, as long as you stay in the fairway, you have
a chance to score well, but you hit the ball into the rough and
it is thick and punishing. I did have one good stretch of five holes
from five to nine that went par, bogie par, birdie par, and
the birdie was pretty awesome, So forty three on the front was quite respectable,
but the back really did me in and I shot a fifty six.
So I was really happy to break one hundred, but haven't been that close
to triple digits in a couple of years. But I was having too much
fun, so I didn't care. We had a great caddy who retired from
being This is a great story. He retired from being an attorney twenty two
years ago and then became a full time caddy. He and here's the deal.
Now, I could have recorded a conversation with him, but that was
the best story, so it really wasn't worth it. So anyway, he
and his wife, who was also an attorney, had a coin flip to
see who was going to stay home with the kids, and he won.
So he became a caddie and says that he's a much happier person because of
it, and he's a good caddie. I want to thank this week's newest
Golf Smarter Ambassador, longtime listener and regular email buddy, Pam Johnson of Tallahassee,
Florida. Thank you Pam for her participation on the podcast. Pam chose
to receive the Glove and Glove storage compartment from our friends at redroostergolf dot com.
It's a unique glove subscription service that offers a tremendous amount of styles and
sizes to fit everyone's needs and now they have much more than just glove,
so please check them out at redroostergolf dot com. All Pam did to receive
this gift was take less than one minute to all our toll free golf Smarter
listener line and record the week's show opening. You're invited to be one of
our ambassadors too, please and when you do, you'll have a choice of
a free gift. Check out today's show notes to see more on and the
links for each of the gifts that you can choose from, whether you get
Tony Manzoni's video, a box of Odin X one balls with a Golf Smarter
logo, or that glove and glove storage compartment from redroostergolf dot com. So
if you write to me and you have a question or a comment or a
suggestion, don't be surprised when I write back with an answer and a plea
to open a future episode. To see and hear highlights of the podcast interviews
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