Most recreational golfers share a very specific routine: do nothing active Monday through Friday, show up to the first tee Saturday morning, rip a driver, and then spend the back nine managing some combination of back tightness, hip soreness, or a shoulder that didn’t quite feel right on hole 3.
A proper golf warm up takes about five minutes and does more for your round than any club in your bag. Skipping it is the single most common reason weekend golfers end up hurt.
Sound familiar?
The good news is that the majority of golf-related pain in recreational players is preventable. Not by playing less — by playing smarter and giving your body a little more of what it needs before, during, and after you play.
This guide is for the golfer who plays once or twice a week, doesn’t consider themselves an athlete, and just wants to finish 18 holes feeling good.
Why Weekend Golfers Get Hurt More Than Serious Golfers
It seems counterintuitive. Shouldn’t the person playing five days a week be more likely to break down?
Not necessarily. The golfer who plays regularly has a body that’s adapted to the demands of the swing. Their tissues are conditioned. Their movement patterns are grooved. They warm up because they’ve learned the hard way.
The weekend golfer goes from a week of sitting at a desk to explosively rotating their spine 80-plus times in four hours. Their hips are stiff from the office chair. Their thoracic spine hasn’t moved freely in days. Their glutes are barely firing. And they skip the warmup because there’s a tee time to make.
This is a recipe for pain. Not because golf is dangerous, but because the gap between what their body can do and what the swing is asking for is too large.
The Five Minute Golf Warm Up That Actually Helps
You don’t need 30 minutes and a foam roller. You need 5 minutes of targeted movement before you hit that first tee shot.
Focus on these areas:
- Hip 90/90 stretch (2 minutes): Sit on the ground with both legs bent at 90 degrees — one in front, one to the side. Hold each side for 30–60 seconds. This targets hip internal and external rotation, the most commonly restricted movement in golfers.
- Thoracic rotation (1 minute): Sit in a chair, cross arms over chest, and rotate left and right 10 times each. This wakes up the mid-back that was frozen at your desk all week.
- Hip hinge practice (1 minute): Stand and practice bending from the hips — not the waist — 5 to 10 times. This re-establishes the movement pattern your body needs to maintain posture during the swing.
- Half-speed swings (1 minute): Start with half-speed swings before you go full. Let your body find the pattern before you try to load it.
None of this is complicated. But it consistently reduces first-tee stiffness and makes the difference between a clean first shot and a pull that sets a bad tone for the round.
The 3 Most Common Mistakes Weekend Golfers Make
1. Skipping the golf warm up because of time
We covered this above, but it bears repeating. Ten minutes of warmup saves you hours of post-round soreness. If your tee time doesn’t allow for it, show up earlier. Your body cannot go from cold and stiff to full rotational load without paying a price.
2. Playing through pain that’s trying to tell you something
There’s a difference between normal stiffness that loosens up after a few holes and pain that’s getting sharper as the round progresses. The first is your body warming up. The second is a signal that something in your movement is loading a tissue beyond what it can handle.
Pushing through the second category — especially low back pain, hip pain, or sharp shoulder pain — is how a manageable issue becomes a season-ending one.
3. Treating the same spot over and over without asking why
The golfer who reaches for ibuprofen and a heating pad every Sunday has a pain pattern. That pattern is their body telling them the same thing every week: something in how you move is creating load in the same place, every round.
The fix isn’t more anti-inflammatories. It’s finding out what’s causing the repeated stress and addressing that. Which is exactly what a TPI assessment does.
The numbers make the case. A 2024 study of championship golfers in Portugal found that half of the golfers surveyed had been injured during their playing career, with the lumbar spine the most commonly affected area. A review in Sports Medicine and Health Science points to limited hip rotation as a repeatable driver of golf related back pain.
What to Pay Attention to During Your Round
Pain is worth paying attention to, but it’s not the only signal. These patterns during your round are worth noting:
- Back tightness that builds over 18 holes (often thoracic restriction or hip compensation)
- One side consistently hits better than the other (often a mobility asymmetry)
- Fatigue in your lower back that isn’t there in the first few holes (often a stability or strength issue)
- Shots that break down when you’re tired (your compensations become more pronounced as muscles fatigue)
- Hip or knee soreness that accumulates over the back nine (often a loading pattern issue)
These aren’t normal parts of getting older. They’re information about what your body needs.
When to Get Assessed
You don’t have to wait until something hurts badly enough to stop you from playing. In fact, that’s the wrong time to start — because by then, you’ve already accumulated months of compensation patterns that take longer to unwind.
Consider a TPI Golf Assessment at Continuous Motion Physical Therapy if:
- You finish most rounds with some level of soreness or pain that you’ve accepted as normal
- You’ve noticed a consistent swing fault your coach keeps correcting that doesn’t seem to stick
- You’ve had a golf injury before and want to make sure you’re not setting up for another one
- You want to play consistently into your 50s, 60s, and beyond without giving things up
- You just want to know what your body’s limitations are before they become problems
The assessment takes 60 minutes. You leave with a clear understanding of where your body’s physical limitations are, how they connect to your swing, and a specific plan to address them.
Most recreational golfers are surprised by how much better they feel on the course after just a few weeks of targeted work. Not because they became elite athletes, but because they stopped asking their body to do things it wasn’t physically prepared to do.
Golf doesn’t have to hurt. Let’s find out what’s causing yours.
→ Book a TPI Golf Assessment at Continuous Motion PT
Continuous Motion Physical Therapy serves golfers in Goodyear, Litchfield Park, Avondale, Surprise, and the West Valley of Phoenix, AZ.
