The Missing Link in your Golf Performance Team

By Victor Trasoff-Jilg ATC, PES - Posted June 26th, 2009 @ www.mytpi.com

There are a variety of key components needed to ensure that your golfer is able to maximize their success. Building a performance improvement team around them is a great place to start. Typically this team would include a teaching professional, a strength and conditioning professional, and a medical professional. The medical team member has been traditional thought of as being either a physical therapist or chiropractic physician.

These are the two professions most familiar in the eye of the general public. This article would like to introduce a third professional that may be ideally suited to act as the medical provider, the Certified Athletic Trainer. Besides having the skill set to evaluate and treat the golfer they may also be ideally suited to implement the conditioning program. Lets call the Athletic Trainer the jack of all trades!

The missing link seems to be the incorporation of athletic trainers into the golf performance team. Other professional sports, including the PGA TOUR, all use Athletic Trainers as part of their sports medicine team, usually as the leader of the athletes’ medical services. Athletic training is practiced by athletic trainers, health care professionals who collaborate with physicians to optimize activity and participation of patients and clients. Athletic training encompasses the prevention, diagnosis, and intervention of emergency, acute, and chronic medical conditions involving impairment, functional limitations, and disabilities.1  The athletic trainer is typically the medical professional first to treat, assess, and often is in charge of coordinating the rehabilitation and corrective exercise routine of the athlete. Athletic Trainers are typically trained in:

1. •Kinesiology and human physiology.
   

2. •Injury prevention.
   

3. •Assessment of acute and chronic injuries as well as common ailments.
   

4. •Treatment of injuries using modalities like ultrasound, electric stimulation, massage, stretching, etc.
   

5. •Corrective exercise and rehabilitation programs.
   

6. •Post operative care of orthopedic and general surgeries.
   

7. •Coordination of services between teaching staff, doctors, physical therapists and strength and conditioning coaches.
   

8. •Basic Pharmacology.
   

9. •Taping and Bracing for injuries and prevention.
   

10. •Strength and conditioning
    

Some places athletic training services are provided:

1. •Athletic training facilities
   

2. •Schools (K-12, colleges, universities)
   

3. •Amateur, professional and Olympic sports venues
   

4. •Clinics
   

5. •Hospitals
   

6. •Physician offices
   

7. •Community facilities
   

8. •Workplaces (commercial and government)
   

Typical clientele of Athletic Trainers3

1. •Recreational, amateur, and professional athletes
   

2. •Individuals who have suffered musculoskeletal injuries
   

3. •Those seeking strength, conditioning, fitness, and performance enhancement
   

4. •Others delegated by the physician
   

Adding an athletic trainer will have many benefits to your Golf Performance team. The greatest of which is having an individual that will be able to transcend almost all of the other specialties and is able to fill into a variety of rolls and skill sets that are required. An athletic trainer will also help in diagnosis of acute injuries as well as emergency treatment of conditioning that can befall your athletes.

Reference Section

1. Definition of Athletic Training (approved by NATA Board of Directors in October, 2007)

2. Adapted from www.nata.org website

3. Adapted from www.nata.org website