You Were Told Rotation Is Bad for Your Back. It's Not.

I was running a workshop a few weeks ago, and afterward a woman came up to me with a question I could tell she'd been carrying around for a while. She told me her provider had looked at her X-rays, seen some changes in her spine, and told her the rotation in her golf swing was causing it. His advice was simple: stop golfing.

So she did. She hasn't played in two years.

Two years. That number is still sitting with me as I write this.

Here's what got me. She didn't have low back pain. She wasn't in distress when she saw that provider. Her X-rays showed spondylosis, which is just a fancy way of saying degenerative changes in the spine. And somehow that got turned into "your swing is doing this to you, so you need to stop."

I had to sit there and explain to her that spondylosis isn't damage. It's not a disease. At her age, it's an incredibly common, expected finding — I'd bet most active adults over 50 have some version of it on imaging, golfers or not. It doesn't mean her spine is falling apart. It doesn't mean rotation is dangerous. Honestly, it just means her spine has been alive and doing its job for a few decades. That's what spines do.

The Advice Hurt Her More Than the Golf Swing Ever Would Have

This is the part that actually frustrates me. Taking golf away from her didn't protect her spine. It just took away the movement, the strength, and the confidence that kept her spine capable in the first place. Two years of not rotating didn't preserve anything. If anything, I'd guess she's more deconditioned now than she was the day she got that advice.

Your spine is built to rotate. That's not a flaw in the design, it is the design. When you stop moving a certain way because you're scared of what's already sitting on an X-ray, you don't protect that area — you just let it get weaker. The muscles that used to support the rotation get weaker. The tissue that used to tolerate load starts tolerating less. And the fear of movement ends up doing more damage than the movement ever would have.

I see this all the time, honestly. Someone gets a scan back, reads a word like "degeneration" or "arthritis" or "disc bulge," and immediately assumes the worst. Assumes their body is fragile now. Something to protect instead of something to train. But findings like these show up constantly on scans of people who have zero pain. The picture on the X-ray doesn't tell you the whole story. How your body actually moves, loads, and adapts — that's the story that matters.

We're Built to Adapt, Not Sit Still

This is the part I wish more people understood. Your body doesn't get weaker from moving the way it's supposed to move. It adapts to it. The more you rotate, load, and use your spine the way it was designed to be used, the stronger and more resilient it gets. Avoidance doesn't protect that resilience — it quietly erodes it.

To be clear, I'm not saying push through pain and ignore it. If something hurts, the answer isn't gritting your teeth and hoping it goes away. It's figuring out what's actually driving the pain, correcting it, and then gradually working your way back into the movement your body needs. Small steps back in, not permanent avoidance. Rebuilding what you can do, not writing it off forever.

What I Told Her

I told her spondylosis by itself, without pain, was never a reason to quit golfing. That her spine wasn't fragile, it was just deconditioned from two years of avoiding the exact movement it needed. And that the way back wasn't more rest. It was rebuilding her rotation, her strength, and honestly, her trust in her own body again, one step at a time.

What "Just Stop" Actually Costs You

This is why I have such a hard time with "just stop" as advice. For golf, for lifting, for running, for chasing your kids around the yard. When someone tells you to stop moving because of something they saw on a scan, it's worth asking what they're actually protecting you from. A lot of the time, the honest answer is nothing. And the cost isn't just missing out on something you love for two years. It's a body that gets weaker, more fearful, and less capable the longer it sits still.

If you've been told to stop doing something you love because of what showed up on imaging, I'd get a second opinion. One that actually looks at how you move, not just a picture of you.

Ready to find out what your body can actually handle? Book a discovery visit with Momentum Spine and Sport in Orange City, and let's build a plan to get you back to rotating, swinging, lifting, and moving with confidence.