Chris is a TPI Certified Level 3 Golf Professional Fitness Coach.
Currently there are 12 such TPI Coaches in Europe.
LEFT PHOTOGRAPH - Chris with Dr Greg Rose and Dave Phillips (Level 3 Training in Oceanside California Sept 2008) www.mytpi.com
RIGHT PHOTOGRAPH - Chris with Robert Yang (Nutritionist - Level 3 Training in Oceanside California Sept 2008) www.robertyang.net
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Golf Fitness
Junior Players
Adults
Functional Performance Training
Swing Tempo and Timing
Power Training and Tempo
Transition Sports
Tiger Woods sits on top the World Golf Rankings for many reasons. Equal to his extraordinary skill levels he has the build of an athlete that would encompass any top class sporting event.
For the young player, athleticism in competitive golf is essential if you are going to compete. There are a number of reasons for this: -
- Muscular efficiency increases power.
- Muscular efficiency allows the player to engage muscular interaction at the correct time to establish the most effective kinetic sequence (timing).
- Muscular endurance increases the ability to practice your skills for longer periods with out loosing control or form
- Muscular balance allows the golfer to maintain accuracy in movement at high speed.
- Muscular balance allows full control over the club even at slow speeds
- Muscular flexibility allows the player to complete movement range with out injury
- Maintaining joint range allows freedom of movement
- In general GOLF FITNESS allows the player to maintain mobility and stability with in the limited range of the golf stance.
Controlling the body movements is not easy for young golfers, as during the schooling few children have the opportunity to develop their centre body control (core). Playing the Playstation or Wii are now well embedded hobbies of the young, however there is great enjoyment to be had on the golf course (see Benefits of Playing) along with the athletic development that golf can bring.
Simple core stability and balance skills are ideal for all ages which will enhance the young a person’s ability to learn not just golf but a host of other activities.
For the older enthusiastic junior, fitness, thanks to Tiger, is a priority. Body balance is essential for your gym work to enhance your golf. Golf specific training is crucial to maintain muscle length and joint range for increased power and control while maintaining technique.
With the hectic life most adults lead, leisure and fitness play a hugely important role in maintaining healthy living. Golf and golf fitness fit beautifully into any well-being program that will not only improve your golf skills and performance, but will enhance your daily life style.
Office and vehicle bound occupations continually promote poor body posture which, inevitably follows into your golf action. Realigning your skeletal position takes a body mechanical advantage allowing easier movement and coordination.
Efficient rotational sequencing relies on a correctly structured posture. Common postural problems caused by weak abdominals, tight hamstrings and tight quads (among a number of others) can be quickly corrected with some determined training. Dynamic arm leverage again relies on a correct posture combined with an equally important muscular stability-mobility combination across your back and chest.
“If you want to play at your best you must place your body in a position to take a mechanical advantage, if you don’t do this your competitors probably will”
For many years golfers have been advised against muscle building training due to the of loosing performance. If trained incorrectly then there is a real risk of this happening, however muscle building shouldn't be a problem as long as you follow these rules.
- Establish good mobility before entering a power building phase. This applies to joint and muscle range.
- Establish good joint stability before entering a power building phase
- Ensure your main power sources are balanced.
- Ensure you include speed training into your program so the power sources are capable of delivering speed through each chain.
Here's the problem you can have. Lets say you are limited in rotation so you decide to increase your power in the upper body with some bench pressing for some extra power. This is a pretty standard exercise that you get in most gyms through a fixed ma
chine or a Smith Machine. Ripping into your routine you gradually increase your chest power (definatly a good thing for golf). However you have ignored your instructors advise to do Rows (also good for golf) and you fail to stretch, or even worse you already have a poor posture and have ignored the fact that this should be corrected before power training. So pumping away at those bench presses, you have successfully shortened your pec's. Now your scapulars are pulled forward, your golf posture is compromised and you have reduced your rotation even more. You will probably have disengaged any Type IIb fibres that want to fire, so you have now reduced your already limited rotation and you have probably lost speed. Now that extra strength you have gained will be useless and completely ineffective resulting in loss of power.
Heres the right way to train:-
- Establish a corrective posture training program so your shoulder blades (scapular) are stable and you no longer stoop when sitting and standing. This can be done as a daily 2 minute routine at home. All Swing Builder lessons include postural drills.
- Include your bench press strength program with some speed work (fast press ups - If you can't do a press up then you shouldn't be Benching)
- You must do Rows to balance of the powerful pectorals with the back muscles (rhomboids). This maintains your good posture and allows your upper body to rotate.
Your rotation range will not be compromised, your postural stability will be enhanced and your new found strength can be used to increase power.
This is a simple example of increasing power by maintaing a balance in one section. To be really effective all sections need to be trained correctly for speed to be multiplied throughout your movements and into impact.
Establishing a smooth sequencing pattern throughout the swing movement requires the lower body chain to sequence with the middle body chain and the middle body chain to sequence with the upper body chain. Timing would therefore require a speed balance in the movement of each section
Incorrect training programs that fail to maintain segmental speed disengage such segments from its progressive chain. Striking balls educate the player to sequence, or at least feel a sequence that enables a moderate quality impact. However this will quickly break should a poor program be embarked upon.
A quality coach will recognise when such sequences are broken, identify such problems and program the player back to a tempo that allows a quality ball strike to blossom.
This is a major issue with training enthusiastic players who are going to give it all in the gym and expect results that propel them to a new level of play. Conditioning coaches may well be unaware of the fragile balance that exists with established players. The sense for distance control can be maintained should the program be monitored correctly by the coach. Maintaining an open communication with the conditioning coach and golf professional is essential, with a simple rule. The more the student works the greater the monitoring required. Once a balance has been broken re-establishing an old sequence is impossible. The player will quickly loose confidence as hard work turns into game destruction. Progression turns into regression and the player has no where to go but backwards. This is not a necessary route and with good screening and coaching the player can strengthen their game into a new level that can serve as a base for future progressive training programs.
For more Information on Developing Your Golf Fitness follow these links
Exploring the Relationship Between Striking a Golf Ball and other Sporting Activities
Tennis to Golf
On the face of it transferring to golf from tennis should be a simple process. Both rely on a complete body engagement and ballistic rotation of the body centre to generate power in to a held lever. Hand and arm strength are required to support the strike and both are explosive through impact. Both sports require lead foot to ‘ground’ in preparation for the power side to unleash to compress the ball. This is all the perfect combination for delivering power; however, there is an important difference that is noticeable at impact, especially with high quality hard hitting tennis players.
Having coached a number of these tennis players it’s noticeable how they ‘brace at impact’ when striking a golf ball. This is due to a built an instinctive process that has been trained over many years of returning tennis balls. It wasn’t until I played tennis with two of these guys that I realised this mechanism that had been educated. The intensity in the body to deal with a 100mph tennis ball was incredible and made perfect sense with my observation as they try to use this same action to support the body when impacting a golf ball. Unfortunately, the result was a loss of power as the club ‘stalls’ reducing impact speed and compression on the ball.
What was even more significant was when they increased the effort level and associated ‘impact strength’ with ‘impact speed’ further reduced golf ball distance. The process used to succeed in tennis actually reduced the golf performance. A more relaxed technique must be learnt to develop ‘deep internal rotational’ allowing fast twitch muscle fibres to fire to maintain the synchronisation and ‘feed’ the club with power into and through impact. This is a motor skill that can be learnt like any other and only requires diligent practise and an understanding of the process to create power into the golf ball.
Articles coming soon....
Functional Warm Up for your Joints
Functional Hand Strength and Power
Developing Arm Speed
Developing Dynamic Strength
Developing Ballistic Rotation
Developing Dynamic Balance
Developing Dynamic Stability
Learngolfuk is a progressional site with lots more information to come.