The Top 11 Low Back Pain Exercises For Golfers

The Top 11 Low Back Pain Exercises For Golfers: How To Use This Guide

Test each of these movements out 5-10 reps. See which ones feel good and which ones do not feel good. Once you’ve done this, then you can begin to perform the exercises to make you feel better. 

You shouldn’t be choosing exercises that continually make the pain worse. 

1. Pallof press (anti-rotation)
2. Thread the needle
3. Bent over row 
4. Side Plank
5. Deadlift
6. Goodmornings
7. Supermans
8. Kettlebell around the world (overhead)
9. Prone swimmers
10. Cobra
11. Child’s pose

If you are looking for a more step-by-step process to select exercises and stretches i’d recommend checking out this article I wrote a while back.

Additionally, here are a couple other exercises for back spasms if that’s what you’re struggling with.

Pallof Press

This exercise is an excellent anti-rotation movement. If you do this movement properly you should feel it quite strongly in your oblique muscles and middle to lower back muscles. 

Since the golf swing requires you to also decelerate through the follow-through, this movement greatly assists with that. 

Thread The Needle

This exercise is designed to help you improve your range of motion so that you can wind up more during your swing. More range of motion generally means more power, which means more distance on your ball. 

Bent Over Row

This movement is designed to strengthen your entire back in addition to your arms.  Depending on how heavy you go on this one you can also improve your grip strength too, which aids in club control. 

Side Plank

Side planks are an excellent movement to build strength and endurance in an isometric fashion. Additionally, they work your obliques, gluteus medius, fibularis longus/brevis, and quadratus lumborum. 

Deadlift

A great overall back and leg strengthening movement. I recommend people start light, learn the form and then progress into higher intensity (more weight), over the serious of a few months and years. 

Goodmornings

This is one of my all time favorites as it feels like a good hamstring lengthener and also helps to build up the strength and endurance up the lower back musculature in addition to the glutes. The gluteus maximus is an important muscle group in the golf swing, used for power production. 

Supermans

This movement helps to add in some more spinal extension into your routine, ensuring that your body is used to spinal extension and strong contractions of the lumbar spinal erector muscle groups. 

Kettlebell Around the World

This movement is great to use as a shoulder opener and actually can become quite tiring in the deltoids after a while. 

Prone Swimmers

These are very useful to help to improve internal rotation, external rotation, abduction, and flexion range of motion, all of which are needed in the golf swing. Additionally, these are challenging enough and are a great way to improve your shoulder muscle endurance. 

Cobras

This is a spinal mobility exercise focused on increasing spinal extension range of motion and habituating your spine to being in an extended position. 

Child’s pose

This is great mobility exercise that increase spinal flexion, shoulder flexion, ankle plantarflexion, knee flexion, and hip flexion. It’s also very useful as a relaxation exercise when done with deep breathing. 

Wondering if you should use ice or heat for lower back pain?

Check out this article about ice vs. heat for back pain and let me know what you think.