Welcome to the Balance Body Podcast. My name is Ada Wells and I'm owner of Pro Balance
Physical Therapy in Pilates in Alameda, California. Joining me today is Roxanna Cohen and what
I'd like to talk to you in this segment about is thoracic mobility and its importance in
the golf swing. Now thoracic mobility is important because in the golf swing we have what's
called the primary axis of rotation or the spine angle in the golfing world and we want
to be able to rotate around that spine angle without our body coming up and moving into
different positions. So it should stay around that angle throughout most of the swing. If
a person does not have adequate thoracic mobility what you'll often see is they're going to
get it any way they can. So they're going to bring that club up, they may come in and
lose their posture by coming up and compressing into the lower back. They might also end up
bringing the shoulders up and having a flat shoulder plane. So what we're going to do
is a little test, test for thoracic mobility. What I've done is I've taken two golf clubs
where you can take two dowels or even just tape an X on the floor at a 45 degree angle.
We're going to go ahead and bring that dowel up over your head and just behind your back,
alright? And keeping your knees together and facing straight ahead, we're going to go
ahead and allow, we're going to go ahead and have Roxanna rotate all the way to one direction
towards me. And what I'm looking at is to see if the angle of this dowel is past the
angle of the club, which she just about makes it. Let's go ahead and do it to the other
direction and here she's able to make it past that angle. Good and back. And so that angle
is about a 45 degree angle. Now PGA norms, they're able to easily do this both direction.
In fact, they're probably closer to 55 degrees. So if your golfer is unable to rotate past
this 45 degree angle, then they really need to work on their mobility. So let's do a couple
of exercises here on the trapeze table. Hand me their dowel there. Let me pick these up.
That address thoracic mobility. So let's come on over here to the table and just have a
seat off the edge. And what I'm going to have you do is go ahead and actually scoot all
the way back so that your knees are off the edge here, okay? And it's optional if you
would like them to be standing or if you would like something underneath their feet. Let's
go ahead and just place your arms at 90 degrees and just go ahead and hold onto the uprights
of the Cadillac. And now we're going to go ahead and take this hand and hold onto the
upright here. This hand is going to go ahead and take a hold of the tower bar. And what
we're going to do is we're going to imagine, when you rotate, you're going to imagine that
you're pulling the bar and the upright in opposing directions as you rotate. Good. And
then come back to center. Again, we're going to pull the tower bar and the upright away
as you rotate and back to center. One more time, pulling them away and center. By me
having her pull, what we're doing is trying to have her engage and stabilize through that
shoulder girdle as she's going into that rotation. She's going to definitely need that when she's
holding the club up at the top of the backswing, okay? We obviously would repeat this on the
other side. So then after you have them do that, we want to make this a little more functional
so we can have them come into standing. And here we don't need to spring the bar, but
I usually end up putting the bar approximately so scoot forward so it's about at your chest
distance. Good. Let's go ahead and bring the bar up. And we're going to go into what would
be a golf position. So bending slightly from the hips and knees. And go ahead and let's
take this hand and we're just going to grasp onto the upright here. And same thing. We're
going to try to pull apart the tower and the upright. Good. And back to center. Again,
pulling apart. There we go. That's it. Rotating. And back center. One more time, pulling apart.
So now we're getting that rotation of the thoracic spine in a functional position for
that golfer. Good. And we're going to relax. Okay. Now the next exercise is going to be
one where we can actually use the springs in here. So what I'm going to do, this setup
is interesting. So we're going to take two blue springs and I'm going to actually criss-cross
the springs. And the reason why I'm doing this is I want to make the bar a little bit
higher. This is the carabiner from the safety strap. And I'm going to use a handle here.
So I'm just going to hook these right to the end. This is going to allow us to be able
to swivel or grip. Let's go ahead and lie down on your side. And it's ideal if you
have a little something, if they've got more broad shoulders, to place underneath their
head. There we go. And just relax there. And I'm going to place this a little bit slightly
behind there so we have somewhere to rotate. Okay. So I have them stacked on their hips,
stacked on their shoulders. The bottom hand, let's go ahead and let's rotate. There we
go. The bottom hand is at approximately a 90 degree angle. And let's go ahead and take
hold of your grip there. And so from here, we're going to take a breath in. As you exhale,
stabilizing the shoulder girdle, we're going to rotate through the rib cage. Good. Inhale
as you come back up, keeping the shoulders down. Exhale, reaching back. Good. So this
is a nice scapular stability exercise, but also thoracic mobility. So I might have them
do this three to five times here and back up. Then what we can do is a nice assisted
stretch. So take this hand, place it behind on that bar. And we're going to take this
hand and just place it right there on this bar. Now, what's going to be nice in this
position is that I'm going to be able to stabilize her. And let's go ahead and we're
going to rotate. I'm going to give her a little bit of an assisted stretch on the way up and
back down. How's that feel, Roxanna?
It feels great.
Good. And back one more time. Up. So she's really liking this. And back. Good. And so
we'll go ahead, bring that back down, and then I'll take it from here. So those are
a couple of great exercises that you can do to improve thoracic rotation for your golfer.
