Shoulder Mobility and Your Golf Swing

Why Shoulder Mobility Matters

Shoulder mobility plays a pretty important role in creating an efficient and powerful golf swing.

If you don’t have enough movement around the shoulders, it can make it harder to get into a good backswing position, as well as affecting what happens through impact and into the follow-through. Your body will often find a way around the restriction, which can lead to compensatory movements elsewhere in the swing and over time, possibly contribute to aches and pains.

It’s Not Just About the Shoulder

In this video, I go through a few simple exercises that can help improve mobility around the shoulders. But importantly, it's not just about the shoulder itself, but everything around it too (as I explain in the video).

The shoulder blades, upper back and your posture all have a big influence on how freely your shoulders can move. If your upper back is stiff or your shoulder blades don’t move well, you can have perfectly good shoulder flexibility but still struggle to get the movement you need in your golf swing.

Why Mobility Can Become More Limited

A lot of us spend hours sitting at a desk, in the car or on the sofa, which can gradually reduce how much movement we have through the upper back and shoulders. And, as we get older, maintaining that mobility becomes even more important if we want to continue swinging freely and making a good golf swing.

You Don’t Need to Spend Hours Stretching

The good news is that you don’t necessarily need to spend hours stretching. A mix of mobility exercises, along with some strengthening exercises for the shoulders, upper back and surrounding muscles, can make a big difference. The key is finding out what you actually need rather than simply doing lots of random stretches and hoping they help.

Where I Would Recommend Starting

And this is where i would recommend to start... Try the exercises in the video and see how they feel. Pay attention to whether one side feels different from the other, whether you struggle to get into certain positions, or whether your movement feels restricted.