ELECTROMYOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF TRUNK MUSCLE ACTIVITIES DURING A GOLF SWING

Young-Tae Lim¹, In-Sik Shin², and Sang-Yeon Woo³.

¹Department of Physical Education, Yeungnam University, Kyungsan, Korea. ²Department of Physical Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. ³Division of Physical Education, Soonchunhyung University, Choongnam, Korea.

The purposes of this study were to describe and compare the activation patterns of the trunk muscles during a golf swing using surface electromyographic (EMG) techniques. Five male collegiate golfers served as the subjects and the golf swing was broken into five phases using the critical instants identified from video recordings. Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were used to test for significant differences (p < .05) in average and peak normalized EMG values between the left and right muscles for each phase. The significant bilateral differences in muscle activation were only found in the average and peak rectus abdominus (acceleration phase), external oblique (acceleration and early follow-through phases), and erector spinae (late follow-through phase). Highly active trunk muscles in the follow-through phases may indicate the hyperextension of the trunk, which leads to lower back injury.