Why Your Golf Swing Isn't Consistent: What Golf Biomechanics Testing Reveals

You've taken the lessons. You've watched the swing breakdowns on YouTube at midnight. You've bought the alignment sticks that are now holding up tomato plants in your garden. And you still can't hit it straight two days in a row.

If that sounds like you, you're not alone, and you're probably not doing anything wrong the way you think you are.

Golf Rewards Consistency, and Consistency Is the Hardest Thing to Find

Golf might be the only sport where you can play the best three holes of your life and then completely lose it by hole seven, and nobody, not even you, can explain why.

For a lot of golfers around Spokane, the pattern looks something like this. Your ball-striking is great one round and falls apart the next. Or there's a nagging ache, low back, hip, elbow, wrist, that shows up during or after you play. Or you've simply plateaued. Lessons help for a week or two, then the old pattern creeps back in.

The usual advice is more reps, a mobility routine off a YouTube video, or "just relax and trust your swing." Sometimes that works. Often it doesn't, because it's aimed at the wrong problem. And here in Spokane, where the golf season is shorter and a lot of golfers go from barely moving all winter to eighteen holes on the first warm Saturday, that gap between what your swing demands and what your body can actually do tends to show up fast.

The Real Question: Is This a Training Issue or a Physical Limitation?

Every swing problem falls into one of two buckets.

A training issue means your body is capable of the position or the movement, you just haven't grooved the pattern yet. Time, reps, good feedback and coaching will fix this.

A physical limitation means your body cannot get into the position your swing is asking for, no matter how many times you practice it. Maybe your lead hip won't rotate far enough. Maybe your thoracic spine, the part of your back that should rotate in the backswing, is stiff and your low back is doing that job instead. Maybe your shoulder or your ankle mobility is limiting how far you can turn or how stable you are through your down swing.

Here's the part most golfers never get told: you cannot tell the difference between these two by feel, and you usually can't tell from video alone either. A tight hip and a bad habit can look almost identical on camera. That's why so many golfers pay for lesson after lesson trying to fix something that was never a technique problem to begin with. You can't coach your way around a joint that physically won't move.

Going Beyond Par: Golf Biomechanics Testing in Spokane

Going Beyond Par is our golf-specific biomechanics testing program here at The Movement Clinic in Spokane’s Kendall Yards. Instead of guessing which bucket you're in, we measure it.

Our golf biomechanics testing includes four parts:

• A golf-specific mobility and stability screen. We check the exact ranges of motion your swing actually requires, hip rotation, thoracic rotation, shoulder mobility, and single-leg stability, and compare them to what your swing is asking your body to do.

• Golf-specific power testing. This tells us how much rotational power your body can actually produce, not just how far you hit it on your best day of the year.

• Video analysis of your real swing. Not a model swing from a textbook, yours.

• A kinematic sequence evaluation using motion-capture data. This is the piece most golfers have never had done. It shows the exact order your hips, torso, arms, and club move in during your swing. An efficient swing fires in a specific sequence, pelvis first, then chest, then lead arm, then club. When that order breaks down, power leaks out somewhere, and often a compensation pattern shows up as pain instead.

Put together, this tells us whether your issue is a training problem, a physical one, or some of both, and exactly where to focus.

Here's an honest limitation, because you deserve to know it before you book anything: we are not swing coaches. If your testing comes back clean and the real issue is technique, we'll tell you plainly and send you back to your pro. This test cannot fix a bad grip or a rushed backswing. What it can do is stop you from spending another six months on lessons trying to fix a hip that was never going to rotate that far no matter how many buckets of balls you hit.

This also isn't for every golfer. If you're looking for one quick tip to try before your Saturday round, this isn't it. This is for golfers who are done guessing and actually want an answer.

A Real Example: Mike's Story

Mike, 52, a weekend golfer, came in with low back pain that showed up almost every time he swung. For two years, he'd been told the same thing: strengthen your core. He did the work. The pain never moved.

His Going Beyond Par testing found something different. His lead hip had limited internal rotation, well below even what a human should have--let alone a golfer! Because his hip couldn't turn as far as the swing needed, his pelvis was moving toward the ball in what we call early extension. This put a compressive force on the joints of the low back. That's a physical limitation, not a strength problem, and no amount of planks was ever going to change it.

We went to work directly on opening up that hip rotation. Within a few weeks, the back pain was gone. As a bonus, his ball-striking got noticeably more consistent too, because his body could finally move the way his coach had been asking it to all along.

What Happens If You Book This

The first step in our Going Beyond Par program is to book a Movement Assessment and one of our sports chiropractors will order our golf-Biomechanics testing during your first visit at our Kendall Yards clinic. You'll go through extensive mobility and stability screening, power testing, video analysis, and a kinematic sequence review, using the same motion-capture approach performance labs use, applied specifically to your swing and your body. You'll leave with a straight answer: training issue, physical limitation, or both, and a plan for what to do next. In addition, you'll recieve a copy of our training guide to help you develop a training plan that works for you.

Book your Movement Assessment, because guessing costs you more range balls, more lessons, and more ibuprofen than one real test ever will.

Start With Your Movement Assessment

PS: This is for golfers who want a real answer, not another quick tip. If you just want a stretch to try before your next round, this probably isn't for you. But if you've been chasing the same swing fault or the same ache for more than a season, an hour of testing will tell you more than another year of lessons ever could.

More about the Author

Dr. Byers has practiced chiropractic for 13 years and is the founder of The Movement Clinic in Spokane. He earned his Bachelor's in Nutritional Science from Brigham Young University and his Doctor of Ch

iropractic from Parker University in Dallas. He holds certifications as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), a Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) Medical and Power Level 3 provider, a Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) Level 2 specialist, an Active Release Techniques (ART) Full Body provider, a Functional Movement Systems (FMS) Level 2 specialist, and a Fundamental Capacity Screen (FCS) provider. He works with runners, golfers, and everyday athletes, and believes getting you out of pain and moving better should always go hand in hand.