It’s time for another Golf Fitness post, sorry for the delay!
John Heringer owner of PinHighFitness has been working with me and put together an 18 session golf workout program that I’m about to embark upon. Well.. to be honest, he completed it some time ago (just received an email from mytpi saying congrats on a successful program! <ahem>) and I’ve been ah.. a bit lazy busy and am only now able to begin the golf workout! 🙂
The entire golf workout is customized to me and my fitness level and there was no single face to face interaction required. Using mytpi.com, John set me up with an account and had me watch some videos and do a golf fitness evaluation.
The evaluation takes you through different tests to gauge your present strength and flexibility. You watch a series of videos and try to duplicate what the guy in the video is doing and then rate yourself on how successful you were with it. They catalog this data to get a good idea of your overall golf fitness and flexibility level to see where they need to start you out.
Once that’s complete, John goes in there and builds you a custom golf workout. It’s an 18 workout program, comprised of exercises designed to work the muscles used in golf.
Each golf workout session begins with a 30 minute cardio session of your choosing. Once that’s complete you work through a series of 10-15 exercises varying the number of sets and reps based on your trainers input.
From what I can tell, most of the golf fitness exercises can be done in the comfort of your home, using a combination of an exercise mat, Swiss ball, medicine ball and something called an FMT (Functional Movement Tubing) Band.
Each exercise in the golf workout comes with a video, step by step printable instructions and still images demonstrating the various positions within the exercise.
Here’s an example of one of the exercises..
Shoulder Tubing Matrix 1.
1) Exercise one is called Standing Rows 3-Positions. Start with your elbows and shoulders at 90 degrees with your arms out in front of your body and your thumbs pointing up. Squeeze both shoulder blades together as you pull the handles towards your chest. Perform three hand positions (thumbs up, palms down, and thumbs down).
2) Exercise two is called Circles Forward & Backward 3-Positions. Start
in the same position again, but this time try to make small clockwise circles with both hands simultaneously – as if you were pedaling a bike with your hands . Perform three hand positions (thumbs up, palms down, and thumbs
down). Then repeat with counterclockwise circles in all three hand positions.
3) Exercise three is called Big Swims Forward & Backward 3-Positions. Start in the same position again, but this time try to perform a big swimming freestyle stroke clockwise with both arms simultaneously. Perform three hand positions (thumbs up, palms down, and thumbs down). Then repeat with counterclockwise strokes in all three hand positions.
4) The last exercise is called Hitchhikers 3-Positions. Facing perpendicular to the door with your left shoulder closest to the door, grab the top handle with your left hand and the bottom handle with your rig
ht hand. Keep both elbows and hands chest high and thumbs pointing up. Slowly try to extend your right arm out away from the door and keep your left hand over your left shoulder and both elbows chest high. Perform this in all three hand positions (thumbs up, palms down, and thumbs down) and repeat with your right shoulder closest to the door.
There’s also a video that illustrates the exercise, which you can download to your Ipod which is brilliant, in my opinion. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting to the gym and forgetting all the steps in a complex exercise.
My initial thoughts on the workout..
I really like the fact that you can get a custom golf workout over the internet. Isn’t technology great?? The price is pretty cheap too, $199 for Orlando Golf Blogger readers.
Now, I’m not too savvy when it comes to personal trainers and their costs, but I believe the average is something like $25-$35 per session. So 18 sessions would run you between $450-$630. Granted, there’s many benefits to having a personal trainer, some of which you won’t get with this program, but it’s over 50% less than a non-sport specific trainer and there’s a wealth of golf fitness knowledge at your fingertips.
One thing that bugs me is that about 40% of the exercises require the FMT Band and the ONLY place to purchase it is from the TPI. It’s more a personal gripe though, it makes perfect business sense to do it that way, in my mind, if I’m paying them for this custom golf workout, the least they could do is throw in the first band for free! 🙂
You can try and duplicate the exercises at the gym on one of the cable machines, but I suspect that doing this will limit the effectiveness of the exercise.
Other than that, I’m pretty excited to give this a go and see what sort of improvement I see in my game!
If you have any additional questions or if you’d like to give it a try, email John Heringer and tell him Dave from OGB sent ya! 🙂
John has also written some guests posts and you can read them here.
Essential Components of Golf Fitness – Part 1
Essential Components of Golf Fitness – Part 2