Golf Swings & the Sacroiliac Joint

Your golf swing places many demands on your back. You may have noticed soreness or fatigue in your back after a round or an afternoon at the driving range. One of the most common areas where golfers experience discomfort is in sacroiliac joint of the lower back. Understanding how your swing impacts your sacroiliac joint can help prevent future pain and injury that might keep you off the course.

The Sacroiliac Joint

You have two sacroiliac joints located at the base of your spine between a section of vertebrae called the sacrum -- the fused vertebrae at the end of your spine -- and the iliac bones of your pelvis. These joints have a small range of motion, but they are easily irritated, leading to hip and low back pain. Stress, strain and overuse of your hamstrings, abdominal muscles, hips or lower torso can cause to pain in the sacroiliac joints. This pain tends to radiate away from the joints themselves and into the surrounding muscles including the back, thigh, groin and lower abdominals.

Golf Swing and the Lower Back

The sacroiliac joints provide very little benefit to your swing, but they can bring pain to your game. From address to follow through, you bend, tilt and twist your hips and lower back. That hip motion utilizes all the muscles in the core of you body -- your hips, abdominals, obliques and lower back -- which all eventually tie into the sacroiliac joints. Because those joints don’t move much, they lend only a small amount of flexibility during your swing. However, repeated swings can lead to overuse and imbalanced core muscles, producing painful irritation in the sacroiliac joint and a loss of motion in your hips, lower back and pelvis.

Preventing Sacroiliac Injury

Maintaining flexibility in muscles around the region may be the best way to prevent pain or restriction in sacroiliac joints that can affect your golf swing. Regularly stretch your hamstring, glute, hip and lower back muscles before and after golf and on off days. For your hamstrings, sit on the floor with your legs in front of you. Reach forward toward your toes while keeping your back straight and your head up. Hold for 30 seconds, then release the stretch. To work your glutes and lower back, lie on your back with your knees bent up toward the ceiling. Slowly lift your pelvis and lower back off the floor by tightening your glutes and hamstrings. Hold for 30 seconds and release the stretch.

Treating the Sacroiliac Joint

Chronic pain in your lower back can be a sign of injury to the muscles around the sacroiliac joint or the joints themselves. You should have those injuries looked at by a doctor, who may recommend rest, ice or heat therapy, anti-inflammatory drugs or physical therapy to treat and heal the injury. Sometimes, surgery, including fusing the joints, is necessary. A chiropractor may be able to relieve pain or correct the imbalances through spinal manipulation and related stretching, massage, electrical stimulation and ultrasound.