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The Plainville Citizen — Thursday, April 12, 2012
Golf Fitness Corner
The importance of a pre-round warm-up By Eric Lunt Special to The Citizen
Due to the abbreviated winter, the golf season is officially here, and with it comes the excitement Lunt of getting out there for the first time. An early start to the season also means golfers are more susceptible to injuries. But early-season injury can easily be prevented if you allow yourself the time to do a proper warm up. Many of the common injuries we see in golf are pre-
ventable by taking a few minutes to warm-up prior to your round. We are all guilty of jumping out of the car, rushing to the first tee, taking a few practice swings and hoping the opening drive finds the fairways. I am here to tell you to make it a priority to warmup prior to hitting that first tee shot. Golf is a dynamic sport that requires ballistic movements, where your muscles are doing a lot of contracting and lengthening. Because of the dynamic nature of the golf swing, if your muscles cannot properly lengthen during the swing, you are setting yourself up for a bad round or, more im-
be used as part of a postround cool-down, or if you are looking to gain more flexibility. Some examples of good exercises to perform in a dynamic warm-up include; neck rotations, arm circles, wrist flexion/extension, standing trunk rotations, lateral side bends, standing straight leg kicks, arm overhead deep squats and alternating wide stance toe touches. These should be done for 10 to 15 repetitions in each direction, and it is important that you perform these in a controlled manner where there are no quick ballistic/jerky motions. I am a believer that hitting balls on the range
should be a part of the warm-up process, but only after you have dedicated 5 to 10 minutes of dynamic stretching. If you do not perform a warm-up, you may find yourself settling into your round by the fifth or sixth hole. And remember, you should never feel embarrassed doing any of these warm-up exercises at the golf course, as you are helping yourself prevent injury while setting an example for other players. Eric Lunt works at Timberlin Golf Course in Kensington and is a Certified Golf Fitness Instructor through the Titleist Performance Institute.
Softball
and she said she wouldn’t mind if all of her players did the same. “All of my infielders wear mouth pieces,” Wodatch said. “Some of them wear masks. It should be a preference. The ball comes off the bat quick. I don’t want to scare them, but I would put a thought in their head about wearing a mask.” Wodatch agrees with moving the mound back for safety
reasons, but she’s still not sure how young high school pitchers will handle the extra three feet. “I just want to make sure it’s a safe distance for 14- or 15-year-old girls,” Wodatch said. “Their arms have to get stronger to throw those extra three feet.” Overall, Wodatch said the mound change is a positive. “You never want to see anyone get hit in the face,” Wodatch said. “After some pitchers windup, they could move up seven or eight feet (towards home).” -Nick Carroll contributed to this article.
Continued from page 20 “I think all corner infielders and pitchers should have to wear facemasks,” Aresco said. “No one wants to wear the mask. They only put them on after they get hit.” Platt coach Trish Wodatch said a few players on her team wear face protection
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portantly, injury. Sustaining an injury early on can nag you all season and can also affect you off the course and make those once pain-free activities not so enjoyable. Many people associate a warm-up as just stretching. That is not the case. The stretching that is involved in a warm-up is called dynamic stretching. This is stretching that is done while in motion, and the main goal is to help increase blood flow to the working muscles involved in the swing. This is not your typical kind of stretching where you would hold a position for a length of time; that is called static stretching, and should only
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