Free Your Spine, Fix Your Swing

on February 3, 2016

Protect Your Game

Thoracic extension is a key for your game. However, due to daily life, the majority of us are lacking this motion, and, in fact, are making it worse. Slumped, rounded shoulders with the head and neck tilted forward are doing more than just hurting your posture, it is destroying your game!

This Lesson Is For You If:

You sit at a desk all day

You have poor posture or flexibility

You have an over-the-top swing

Thoracic Extension – What It Is and Why You Need It

The thoracic spine is made up of 12 vertebrae and makes up the upper and middle back. When this becomes compromised, we look in other places for our mobility and stability. The problem is, we are not designed to be very mobile in other places, so golfers will start to break down and try to use the lumbar spine for mobility. The goal is to eliminate compensations in a player’s body because compensations can lead to injury.

When a player sets up in poor posture, they are setting themselves up for swing faults immediately. Think of a player who has rounded shoulders. When they start their backswing, the amount they can rotate is very limited. To help them turn further back, you will typically see the player stand up and flatten our their shoulder plane. Now they have the difficult task of trying to get back on a correct plane with both the spine and shoulders. The result is typically an over the top swing. All of this because they started out with poor posture. I am not saying this is the ONLY reason, but it’s a common flaw that we can easily fix.

In order for us to maintain our golf posture throughout the entire swing and create power, it is important that our thoracic spine have mobility. It will need to have full function of flexion, extension, side flexion, and rotation.

In this video I will address the problem and show you a few exercises you can do in order to reverse the damage. We will work on extending the spine and working to restore mobility to the proper surrounding muscles.

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Tyler Parsons

Director of Golf Fitness & Head Teaching Professional at Parsons Golf Performance

Tyler started in golf early on, playing in many junior events. He was known for his length and blowing it by his competitors. He contributes a lot of this to always trying to keep up with PGA Tour long hitter and friend, J.B. Holmes, who he grew up playing with on their high school team.

Tyler graduated from the University of Kentucky with a B.A. in Kinesiology, exercise science. This is the study of the human body's movements and biomechanics, so it was a perfect fit when Parsons started personal training and started looking to help golfers off the course. Upon completion ofthe Titleist Performance Institute certified golf fitness program, who are the leading company in golf specific training, he then went on to obtain their highest level of certification (TPI CGFI Level 3 FP).

After a few years of training other golfers, he connected with childhood friend, Holmes, and started training him helping protect his body and improve performance. This caught the eye of Matt Killen, swing coach for Holmes. Later the two joined up and Tyler moved to Bowling Green, Ky to work alongside Matt with Killen Golf. Since then Tyler has worked with PGA Tour players, Josh Teater, Kenny Perry, Blake Adams, and current rising star, Justin Thomas.

Along the way Tyler put his knowledge of golf and body movements to the test and started designing a program to not only increase speed, but test its limits. Spending time working on his body in the gym and performing specific key "speed" movements in the swing, Tyler jumped his club head speed from an impressive 120 mph to 152 mph. He is now teaching this program to all skill levels of players, helping from their game. His results can be seen each week as Justin Thomas tees up and delivers his blistering speed on tour as one of the pound for pound longest hitters.