Golf Blog by The Orlando Golf Blogger

The Essentials of a Golf Fitness Program – Part Deux

Hello again everyone!

Thank you for your patience in Part two of our series where I’ll talk about the much anticipated Strength/Stability and Power components of a golf fitness program.

If you missed out on part one, here’s the link.

Essential Components of a Golf Fitness Program

So without further ado:

Strength/Stability

Once you have developed mobility in your body and you are able to create a “bio-mechanically efficient” golf swing (see “kinematic sequence & MyTpi.com for more info) and move your joints through proper range of motion, then you are ready for strength and stability.

Strength and stability refers to not only using resistance to strengthen your body (like weights, cables, bands, body weight, etc.) but also the ability to stabilize both your body and the joint that is moving. As golf has a lot of moving parts, the ability to stabilize and utilize the CORE is essential in creating a stable base from which you can create a sounds swing.

Some great stability and strength drills include: front plank/prone iso abs, kneeling chops from high to low or low to high to create distinction between your upper and lower body, rotations with bands utilizing your obliques, side planks, high row and low row with bands or cables, downward chest press with cables or bands and many, many more. To see some of these in action and view others, check out the exercise library at MyTpi.com.

Typically, I like clients to perform two sets of many different exercises with a resistance that is fatiguing usually within 12-15 repetitions. If done three times a week with days of rest in between you can achieve great results. If you are “hardcore” then you could also vary between “push/pull” days where one day includes pushing exercises and the other, pulling exercises. This could allow you to train five to six times a week….but then when would you have time to golf?

Power

Ah yes, the unquenchable thirst for more power and distance. Although power comprises of an important component of a golf fitness program, the reason it comes last is to truly prepare your body for the ballistic movements. Moving at high speeds can be a recipe for disaster and injury. Just think about that one swing you took and tried to kill it and felt your back ache  for days afterward…you know what I’m talking about.

So once you have all the other components implemented and have made significant improvements, then power can be introduced.

Many great power movements include a medicine ball such as lateral tosses against a wall both face on and perpendicular to the wall, seated rotation med ball slams, and a fave of mine, the squat/press/rotate and throw to partner. If you can’t use a medicine ball, try incorporating bands in the same movement pattern with a higher speed. Another great one for the lower body includes lateral jumps from 1 leg to the other which can incorporate both power AND balance.

Once you’re ready, power exercises can be implemented a few days in the week with your program. Usually two or three exercises with one or two sets each is plenty. Remember, the goal of power exercises is NOT to make you sore, the goal is to train your fast twitch muscle fibers so that they engage with more velocity during your swing. This leads to increased swing speed and ultimately, the much desired increase in distance off the tee.

Well folks, that about covers it for the Essentials of a Golf Fitness Program! I hope you learned some valuable information with which to attack your golf fitness goals.

And remember, if you have any questions or would like to set-up your own, individualized golf fitness program, you can contact me at John@PinHighFitness.com or 800-610-8939. You can also follow me on twitter at PinHighFitness.

Today’s guest post was written by John Heringer, owner of PinHighFitness.com. John is a Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) Certified Golf Fitness Specialist as well as a Certified Strength and Core Specialist (CSCA) from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).

I was tooling around on stumbleupon and came across this video of the muscles used in golf. I figured it goes along well with the golf fitness series of posts.
It discusses the primary and support muscles used in golf.

Have a great weekend!

Last week I highlighted a cool golf fitness product called FIT for Golf that I encountered during my time at the 2010 PGA Merchandise Show.

As a quick refresher, FIT stands for “Fitness Illustrated Training.” On each of the six pound medicine balls, there are eight illustrated exercises that are designed to work the golf specific muscles and help golfers overcome the eight most common swing flaws.

I was given one of the FIT for Golf medicine balls at the show to try out and review. I decided to embark on a 30 day program, where I work the ball every day (well… I might’ve missed a day or two, here and there.. ) for 30 days and gauge to see what noticeable improvement I see in my golf game.

I’ve been working with the ball for almost two weeks now and I’ve yet to complete eight exercises without breaking a considerable sweat. One thing that bugged me about the FIT for Golf kit is that it didn’t come with any workout routines.

For me, when working out, I like to know exactly how may repetitions  and sets I need to do to complete the workout and once I fulfill those, I get a great sense of accomplishment. Not being a golf fitness expert (yet ), I needed some guidance on creating a workout that was robust enough that I benefited from the routines without being so intense that I hurt myself while training. I emailed the FIT for Golf asking about this and within a couple hours he sent me routine. For those of you who rushed out a picked up one of these golf fitness training aids after my highly esteemed recommendation, if you wish, you can follow the exercise routine below.

For beginners, start out with ten repetitions per exercise doing only one set. On exercises that work both left and right sides separately, it’s ten reps per side.

After you get comfortable with that routine, increase the reps to 20 per exercise and after that increase the sets, first two sets of 20 than three sets, etc…

They’re also developing a routine for ladies and juniors as well as some instructional videos that will be available on the website, so stay tuned!

I found a really cool golf fitness product while at the 2010 PGA Merchandise Show, it’s called a FIT for Golf training ball.  It’s a six pound medicine ball with eight different exercises illustrated on the ball. The FIT stands for “Fitness Illustrated Training.”

During my visit, I met and spoke with co-creator of the FIT for Golf training ball, Mr. John Ondrush. John’s been in the golf fitness business for over 15 years and has trained professional and amateur golfers alike. Last year he was the official trainer and physical therapist for the 2009 US. Open. In other words, John knows his stuff. Here’s what he had to say about the FIT training ball.

“…bottom line is that from a pro golfer to an amateur golfer we all need to make the same movements and get into the same positions. We wanted to come up with a simple fitness product that is going to be able to get everybody to exercise golf specific muscles. Not only are the exercises for golf fitness, they have a direct correlation to the top eight common  swing flaws.

The number one swing flaw is loss of posture. 75% of amateurs lose their posture, so an example of an exercise to use to correct this would be the five iron drill. The five iron drill is setting up in address position, staying in that  position and slamming the medicine ball up and down using your muscles and maintaining that spine angle, where most golfers are lifting up and moving.

There are three physical components relative to the golf swing to make the golfer better. Whether your Tiger, Ernie, or Phil, the three components are stability, balance and flexibility. The FIT for golf ball and these exercises are going to incorporate all three of those components into your workout program in eight exercises. No poster, no video, no illustrations that you have to look at and follow, it’s all right here on the ball in front of you and you can take it anywhere.

Every Exercise is going to help every component of your swing and it’s also going to get you into shape. If you’re not in shape, your game is going to suffer because when you physically fatigue, you mentally fatigue and we all know that golf is 90% mental. So, we’ve come up with a product that’s really going to help every area that the golfer needs to physically play the game better.

Golf pros are putting this in their shop and they’re actually using it as a training aid. So if there’s an instructor that can’t get a guy to load into his right side, he will tell the golfer to do the step and load drill which is stepping into your right side and loading. That golfer never knew what it felt like before to get to that right side and load and now they’re saying “wow” holding the ball, it’s accentuating the movement and they gain a better understanding of what that feels like. They do the exercise enough times, muscle memory will step in when there’s a club in the golfers hand.

So after 15 years of training golfers I took my eight most popular exercises and my eight most common swing faults and integrated the exercises with the swing faults and made a stupid simple program that anyone can follow.

If you happen to have one of these swing faults we tell you to concentrate on that exercises and do that one three times more than you do the other exercises on the ball. That’s what the pros are doing and they’re realizing that a lot of swing faults are due to a physical restriction in the golfers body.

With these exercises, just doing these simple exercises will help strengthen, stretching out the right muscles and giving the golfer the balance they need to be more physically capable to play the game and this is the direction the game is going.

Equipment and instruction can take you so far, but as Tiger says “the most important piece of equipment is your body and if your body doesn’t work, nothing else is going to happen.” There’s where we’re moving with this whole thing. Whether you’re a 30 handicap or a 2, whether you’re 90 or 19 you can take this ball and get through the work out program and it’s not that difficult and it’s ten to 15 minutes.

If I do this exercise Program, how soon will I notice improvement?

Depends on how often you do the exercises. If you do it one day a week it’s going to be two months, two days a week a month & half. My suggestion is a three day a week program and you’re going to start seeing considerable results within a month to six weeks, because your body is going to start remembering what muscles it needs to turn your back swing, what muscles it needs to shift your weight and what muscles it uses to stay and maintain posture.

With every exercise we’re working on the three components, strength & stability, flexibility and balance.”

Yeah, I’m pretty psyched about this product.

John gave me one at the show to try and review. I’m on a 30 plan, working the exercises five days a week and after working with it for three days, I have some good expectations.

Stay tuned for more 2010 PGA Merchandise Show and Golf Fitness posts!

Greetings everyone!

Tis the season to start your golf fitness program! It’s been great to watch Dave begin his journey into the realm of golf fitness and I wanted to see if I could also help give you all a couple pointers.

Now I know I should never assume, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that many of you think that a golf fitness program consists of:

A) Just actually going to the gym
B) Throwing in a couple crunches for your “core”
C) Getting a great machine-based workout for all your muscle groups

Well, while your intentions are great, the logic behind the workouts will fall short. You see not all fitness programs are created equal. This is why football players, hockey players, triathletes, and golfers will all have distinct types of programs.

I know what you’re thinking…”But John, maybe I don’t have aspirations of playing on the tour and just want to get in shape!”

Well folks, if your program is well rounded and includes some cardio, you can achieve both; great fitness and maximal golf performance.

Let me cover some of the basics of golf fitness today and if Dave is kind enough, perhaps he’ll invite me back.

The Essential Components of a Golf Fitness Program

These are principles that should guide your entire golf fitness program. They include: Flexibility/Mobility, Balance, Endurance, Stability/Strength, and Power. Today, I’ll talk about the 1st three.

Flexibility/Mobility

As a golfer, your body requires a tremendous amount of flexibility and mobility for a truly efficient swing. The problem is that many golfers just don’t have it. They have “C” posture with rounded shoulders at address or perhaps they can’t even get the club up overhead.

The first step in a golf fitness program is to identify those areas and start creating more mobility. If there is pain, you need to seek medical attention to get at the root of it. Once you have taken away the pain, you can proceed accordingly.

Balance

Yes, I know you realize balance is important but how many of you actually practice it?! Try raising one leg up to 90 degrees and holding it there for 30 seconds. If that’s easy, now close your eyes and you will see it become substantially more difficult. Balance is a cornerstone of a golf fitness program because you need a stable base in order to create an efficient swing. Trying to work on that back? Try a standing 1 arm row on 1 leg and kill two birds with one stone.

Endurance

Just because you play golf and walk, doesn’t mean you do cardio! Although walking is great exercise, eventually your body adapts and after a while it doesn’t do much to stimulate your cardiovascular system. There are two distinct types of cardio that I’ll briefly touch on.

• Steady State Training – Maintaining a certain percentage of your Max Heart Rate for a specific duration of time. For example, 75-80% or 30 minutes. Great for establishing a good aerobic base.

• Interval Training – Now this one people are not so familiar with. It incorporates high levels of intensity followed by active rest recovery. For example, 30 seconds of a fast walk on an incline followed by 30 seconds of a normal walk pace on flat terrain. Typically you would perform anywhere from 2-8 bouts of this combo accompanied with a proper warm-up and cool-down. This can be very demanding on the body as your heart rate will go up very high but due to the type of training, the “afterburn” (Excess Post Oxygen Consumption) will help you burn more calories and ultimately more body fat! In addition, it simulates the sport of golf. Think about it; one big powerful swing followed by a rest as you walk/drive to your ball.

Note: As this can be demanding, I only recommend performing it 1-3x/week depending on your experience with exercise.

Lastly, if you do decide to pursue a golf fitness program, don’t half-ass it (pardon my French). Get some help from a qualified trainer, preferably one that is certified by the Titleist Performance Institute (www.mytpi.com, a wealth of golf fitness articles and exercises). They can conduct an entire physical screening process to help determine where you need help on your program so that you minimize risk and maximize your efficiency.

Well, I hope this has helped you all get a better grasp on the basics of a golf fitness program. If you would like more help or are interested in your own personalized golf fitness program, please contact me at John@PinHighFitness.com or 800-610-8939. You can also follow me on twitter at PinHighFitness.

Today’s guest post was written by John Heringer, owner of PinHighFitness.com. John is a Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) Certified Golf Fitness Specialist as well as a Certified Strength and Core Specialist (CSCA) from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).

Bottom Line.. he’s at least  billion times more qualified than I am to be talking Golf Fitness.

Continuing the Golf Fitness series, below are some Golf Fitness videos courtesy of youtube.

The first two are some quick golf exercise videos featuring Katherine Roberts, a well known golf fitness expert who’s agreed to guide me through this series of posts.

The video below is from the fellas at Bionic Gloves, I’ve used some of their golf lesson videos, didn’t realize they dabbled in golf fitness as well. These exercises look pretty good, I like the fact that they all can be done from home as well.

Never heard from Richard Rigor, but these five exercises are pretty simple and very good. It’s pretty interesting, many of the exercises in these videos you’ll encounter if you ever try a yoga or Pilates class.

Dr. Bob Donatelli has a bunch of videos on youtube and he’s worked with quite a few professional golfers.

Enjoy the Vids!

I’ve completed my golf fitness workout and I’ve sent it out for review to a couple of folks who know about golf fitness to get their stamp of approval. Once we work the kinks out, I’ll post it up for everyones viewing pleasure.

-Dave

I don’t know about you, but I am so glad Friday has finally reared her most beautiful head.

So, I’ve been doing this golf fitness New Years resolution for about two weeks now and so far so good.

As of 7:00am this morning, I’ve lost two lbs on the Dave Lair Golf Workout routine and I weighted in a mighty 186 lbs (well technically 185.8, but figured I’d round up ). At least, I believe it’s two lbs.

I found out that my old scale totally sucked and I had to replace it. Every time I stepped on the darn thing, it would spit out a different number, rather than assume my weight was actually fluctuating that much,  I blamed the scale and chucked it out the window.

Now I have a brand new scale and so far so good.

Crazy side note, did you know a single slice of Papa John’s pizza has 304 calories? Yeah, my wife totally killed my diet for me yesterday, she ordered pizza because we were having company. I ate four slices.. nothing like logging a quick 1200 calories in a single meal.

I’m still trying to come up with a good golf workout, my SME and I have been playing crazy phone tag so I haven’t been able to get a professional’s input. but here’s a quick and dirty on the golf workout routine I’m using.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I always begin the workout with 15 minutes on the elliptical machine to get the blood flowing to the muscles and all five days I incorporate an ab exercise or two. If I can swing it, I’ve been doing some type of workout routine on Sunday too.

If there’s any fitness professionals out there, please feel free to comment on my golf workout routine and let me know if I’m on the right track or not. I’ll go into more specific exercises as I get more experience with the movements.

A bit of advice, if you’re just heading back to the gym after a long time away or if you’ve never really had a gym membership, I strongly recommend starting out with light weight. So many times, I would get the “wild hair” and dust off the ‘ol membership, head to the gym, lift weights with my ego (meaning the heaviest I can handle) and hurt so bad for the next few days that I lose all interest in returning.

This time around, I decided to start slow, and work my way up and so far, I’ve found myself excited about the prospect of returning to the gym. So leave the measuring sticks in the car and approach your golf fitness regime with your brain.

Also, found this pretty interesting.. I have a device I’ve been wearing around and it tracks the calories I burn throughout the day. I wore it during a round of golf last weekend when it was 32 degrees outside. I rode in a cart and from 10:00am until 2:30pm, I burned 1542 calories.

Now to put it in perspective, if I’m “at rest” for four and a half hours, I’ll burn between 400-500 calories, averaging about 1.5 calories per minute. Meaning that round of golf riding in a cart, I burned an additional 1100-1150 calories, not too shabby I’d say! However, I think it’s important to mention that, I spent a lot of time that day shivering and I read that you’ll burn more calories than normal trying to warm your body up. So, I’ll wear it again during a round with better weather and see what results we get back.

Here’s a link to the other Golf Fitness posts.

I was on twitter the other day and asked Bubba Watson a little about golf fitness. See below..

@bubbawatson If you don’t mind me asking, what would you attribute your freakishly long drives too? Do you have a weekly workout routine?

@bubbawatson and if you do have a routine, does it vary depending on where you are in the season? (off season, pre-season, post-seas, etc..)

His response..

@DaveLair core strength

Short and sweet. Of course, I would of liked a more in depth answer which would lead to some fitness banter, hoping that one day me and ‘ol Bubba could forge a long lasting twitship and be twitter BFF’s..

If you aren’t too familiar with Bubba Watson, he’s one of the few left-handed PGA professionals and has a driving average of 311 yards. He was ranked either #2 or #3 in 2009 for longest drives. Suffice to say, he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to increased club distances.

After seeing his response, my first question was, what is core strength? My initial impression was abs, and getting that sixer we’ve all dreamed about. But asking around and doing some reading, core muscles are a helluva lot more than that, although, that sixer is still on the golf fitness to do list.

The core muscles include muscles in your abdominal and back as well as muscles in your pelvic floor and hips. Many of the core muscles are buried underneath other muscles and tend to be overlooked by many workout routines. The transverse abdominis is located behind your rectus abdominis (sixer..) and surrounds and protects the whole area under your naval. It’s primary function is to protect the internal organs and aid in good posture. There’s also the erector spinae which also supports your back and the pelvic floor muscles stabilize your spine.

All these muscles and more, work together to stabilize the trunk, help keep your back healthy and improve your balance. Not to mention good strong core muscles help generate tremendous power for many swinging and throwing movements.

If the core muscles are under trained and weak, body doesn’t function as effectively and can result in muscular injuries. People who suffer from a bad back typically have weak core muscles. A weak core can make you old before your time while a strong core, will keep your posture and movements young, well beyond your years.  Take a look at many of the hardcore Yoga or Pilates devotees, they all have excellent posture and typically seem younger than they are, this is due to these activities having a strong focus on core strength. Many dancers as well, put a strong emphasis on developing the core.

I’m looking into incorporating a good “core muscles” workout into my golf fitness routine, I’m thinking it’s going to be either yoga or pilates. Now I know what you’re probably thinking.. pilates, really?

Well, I did a pilates workout Sunday morning, the instructor was taking it easy because there was quite a few beginners and it was still an intense workout. What I like about it is that the entire hour is dedicated solely to the core muscles.

What do you think a good core workout would be?

-Dave

Continuing down the golf fitness path, today I think it’s appropriate to discuss the proper way to train your muscles to impact various aspects of your golf game.

I mentioned previously that going to the gym and working through a “generic” workout routine won’t have a very substantial impact on your golf game. Well, the same rule applies similarly to the types of training you apply to your routine.

What I’m saying is that, once you determine the muscle groups you want to focus on, you also need to decide what your goal for the workout is. If strength is applied to golf without specificity, your golf game won’t improve.

There are three areas that you can focus on, muscular endurance, muscular strength and muscular power.

Muscular endurance is the bodies ability to perform sub-maximal, or less than an all out effort for an extended period of time. Endurance is important in golf  because a golfer swings repeatedly during a round, especially me! Even though there’s adequate recovery time between shots and swinging a club isn’t especially strenuous (unless you’re trying to kill it and hit the ground..) a golfer may hit more than 200 shots during a round. It’s especially useful on the range, where a golfer will hit a large quantity of golf balls in a relatively short period of time and most of the strains and sprains result from a lack of muscular endurance.

Muscular strength is the body’s ability to produce maximal force regardless of the duration involved in doing so. To simplify, imagine if you had to hold a piece of drywall above your head so your dad could nail it, if you had good muscular strength, you could do this all day long, regardless of how many times dad smashed his thumb, if you’re like me, after about 30 seconds you start complaining about how heavy it’s getting. In golf, certain muscles groups use considerable strength levels, these muscle groups are the ones responsible for maintaining certain positions during the swing. Strength is needed to maintain golf-specific posture, balance and control.

Muscular Power is the ability to move as rapidly as possible or to overcome a resistance in the shortest possible time. This is crucial and the most important factor for generating club-head speed and control. In golf, power is created by a rotation of the shoulders, trunk, hips and legs combined with activation of the arms and small-muscle groups in a counter-rotating movement.  In resistance training, power will yield you the most benefit from your golf swing.

The key to building a solid workout routine is to implement the right proportions of muscular endurance, strength and power with focus being whichever area you’re seeking improvement.

Hope you’ve enjoyed it and as always if you feel something I’ve written is incorrect, please leave a comment so we can get it squared away.

-Dave

Just as a side note, from a golf fitness prospective, hitting balls on the range won’t really help you achieve increased distance.

I’ve done a fair amount of research preparing for this golf fitness series and one of the definitive things I’ve discovered is that going to the gym and performing a “generic” workout won’t have a substantial impact on your game. I say substantial impact because, obviously if you workout frequently your overall physical fitness will improve which will have some impact on a round of golf.

As with many sports, performance improvement will really come from a workout that’s tailored towards the muscle groups predominantly used in the execution of that sport. Furthermore, which I’ll discuss later, the workout has to mimic how the muscle will be used. For example, if you’re a long distance runner, training your muscles for short bursts of speed would not be the ideal regime, it’ll help somewhat, but it wouldn’t have nearly the impact that an endurance workout would.

But, I digress..

Below are the muscle groups one needs to focus on if they’re looking to improve their golf game. If there are any that I’ve missed or some that you don’t believe should be there, please leave a comment!

Like I’ve mentioned before, this is new and uncharted territory for me and I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject, just passing on what I’ve learned.

The muscles used in the golf swing..

Chest – increased swing speed and power through acceleration.

• lower pectorals
• upper pectorals

Back – improved posture, ease of rotation, power through acceleration.

• latissimus dorsi (mid back)
• trapezius (upper back)
• rhomboids (upper back)
• erectors (lower back)

Lower Body - maintenance of golf posture, knee flex and injury prevention.

• abductors (hips)
• adductors (inner thigh)
• hamstrings (back of thigh)
• quadraceps (front of thigh)
• gluteals (buttocks)
• hip flexors

Shoulder – consistent swing plane and control of the club throughout the swing.

• deltoids
• rotator cuffs

Trunk – core muscles for faster turn and stored torque.

• internal obliques
• external obliques

Arms – stronger impact position.
-forearms (flexors and extensors)
-triceps
-biceps

Below are some fantastic images I found on SportManiac.com that help illustrate how the muscles are used throughout the swing. There’s also a really great video of a golf swing and the muscles used on their website, so definitely check out the link.

Take Away

Forward Swing

Acceleration

Early Follow Through

Late Follow Through

Hopefully you’ll be able to find something useful in this post that will give you a better understanding of the golf swing and which muscles you need to focus on if you’re looking to improve your golf game via golf fitness.

-Dave