Lower Back Exercises For Golf

Lower Back Exercises For Golf

In this article and video, golf strength and conditioning coach, Jamie Greaves, demonstrates three lower back exercises for golf that will not only improve your strength but also help reduce your risk of injury in one of the most common areas for golfers.

Deadlifts, or a hip hinge, are really helpful patterns for golfers to develop lower body muscle mass, strength and power, particularly through the posterior chain – so the hamstrings, glutes, and mid to low back. This is a really important area for golfers from an injury reduction standpoint, as lower back injuries are extremely common. 

In addition, lower back exercises such as deadlifts and the hinge, can help us to increase your swing speed and are an important part of any golf strength training.

There are other benefits of these types of exercise that I demonstrate in the video above – one of these being that they increase golf grip strength. They also help improve hamstring and hip mobility. 

In the video above, you'll see me perform three variations: a dumbbell Romanian deadlift, barbell Romanian deadlift, and trap bar deadlift. The Romanian deadlift variation is the way that I like to start training the hip hinge pattern with my golfers, and usually with dumbbells. 

The next progression is the barbell Romanian deadlift. A good Romanian deadlift may be my favourite hamstring mobility exercise out there. It allows for more load to go through the movement. With the weight out in front, it does provide a little more of a technical challenge, which is something to be aware of. 

Finally, we have the trap bar deadlift, which allows golfers to start to use a lot of weight in a safe and efficient way. With this exercise, I like to coach it as more of a hip hinge pattern, but it can also be used as more of a squat pattern. Golf squat exercises and golf core exercises are well worth adding to any golf-specific workout to help improve your lower body strength. It might look more advanced – and in the video above, it’s described as such – but it's one that I have most of my students perform.

Be sure to watch the video to see how each exercise should be performed.