RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ANKLE MOBILITY AND GOLF SWING KINEMATICS

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between ankle mobility and golf swing kinematics. Sixteen male golfers volunteered to take part. Ankle mobility was assessed using the weight bearing lunge test and three-dimensional kinematic data from 10 golf drives were collected using a Vicon motion capture system. Pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated to identify the relationship between ankle mobility and the rotations of four segments; pelvis, shoulders, upper arm and forearm. Large positive relationships were identified for the rotations of the pelvis (r = 0.670) and shoulders (r = 0.604) in the downswing as well as for peak rotational velocities of the pelvis (r = 0.553), shoulder (r = 0.571) and upper arm (r = 0.549) segments. These results indicate that improvements in ankle joint mobility are associated with superior rotations of segments further up the kinetic chain and that the weight bearing lunge test should be used as part of golf specific movement screening.