3 Reasons Why Sitting For Long Periods Ruins Your Golf Swing and Causes Injury
If you spend hours a day sitting at a desk, in the car, or on the couch, you may have noticed your golf swing doesn’t feel as smooth or powerful as it once did — or that nagging back, hip, or shoulder pain keeps showing up after a round.
Many golfers wonder why their distance is decreasing, why their posture breaks down mid-swing, or why injuries seem to appear despite practicing and playing regularly. What often goes overlooked is how prolonged sitting quietly changes muscle balance, mobility, and movement patterns in ways that directly affect your swing mechanics. In this article, we break down three key reasons sitting for long periods can sabotage your golf performance and increase injury risk — and why addressing mobility and posture is essential for swinging stronger and staying pain-free.
Prolonged sitting leads to the shortening or tightening of muscles
A sedentary lifestyle causes muscle imbalances. i.e. the hip flexors, and spinal extensors, quadratus lumborum, upper trapezius muscles, neck extensors and chest muscles. The repetitive shortening of these muscles during prolonged sitting then causes weakness in all of the opposite or antagonists of these muscles. Tight hip flexors cause weak glute muscles, tight spinal extensors create weak abdominal muscles and so on. Muscle weakness and tightness causes injury.
2. Sitting leads to tight hips and tight upper backs many golfers will compensate with their low back.
Because sitting leads to tight hips and tight upper backs many golfers will compensate with their low back. Instead of getting the mobility for the golf swing from the hips and upper spine (which is correct) the mobility is gotten from the low back which is not meant to be mobile, it is meant to be stable. Repetitive compensation and dysfunction causes injury.
3. It becomes impossible for you to maintain your posture throughout the golf swing.
If your hips and upper back are limited in mobility it is impossible for you to maintain your posture throughout the golf swing. According to Titleist Performance Institute (TPI), loss of posture is “any significant alteration from the body’s original setup angles during the golf swing”. TPI also reports that 64% of amateur golfers demonstrate this incorrect swing characteristic.
If this sounds like you and you want to improve your mobility check out my 8 week online mobility course and my 4 week golf mobility course.
