Golf physical conditioning program

Strength is equivalent to the top speed of a race car, and RFD the mph. Most golf seasons are very long and these qualities can drop off quite quickly if untrained.

The good news is that maintaining them can be accomplished with quite a low training volume. It will also have a positive effect on injury prevention and fatigue management if organised appropriately. Golfers who have not previously engaged in strength training, but have played a lot of golf often benefit more from strength training in the beginning stages of their training.

Swinging the golf club is basically a form of RFD training in itself. By giving the player a bigger base of force to draw from through strength training, club head speed often increases. To give a practical example of the difference between training for strength and RFD, think about a heavy squat and a bodyweight squat jump. The squat movement pattern is an excellent one for golfers to develop high levels of strength and RFD, as it has excellent transfer to the ability of pushing force into the ground during the swing.

As we know this is an important element of attaining high club head speeds. To train for strength in a squat movement, use a load that only allows you to perform a low number of reps low being approx. When the load is high relative to your current strength level, subsequently your movement velocity is low. Under these constraints you have no choice except to produce high levels of force to stand back up from the bottom position.

This is the nature of strength training, you gradually teach yourself how to produce more force. In contrast, when training the same movement for RFD think about a squat jump with just your bodyweight. This leads to jump training having more of an effect on producing force at high speeds, as opposed to total force like in strength training. From my experience, increasing the total amount of force you can produce in a movement through strength training, and the rate at which you can produce force through RFD training is an excellent way to develop the physical qualities that enable faster club head speeds.

As well as using jumps to improve RFD, I also program many different variations of medicine ball throw movements for developing rotational power. Here is an example of an RFD exercise for rotational power:. The aim of this article provide an insight into how I currently organise the physical preparation of golfers.

Hopefully golfers, trainers, swing instructors, physios, and fitness enthusiasts enjoyed the read and found some useful information. All questions, comments, tagging, and sharing are welcome. All the information to the programs I built based on these 5 pillars can be found here:. He works with golfers of all levels, in individual and group settings. Hansen Fitness Instagram. I like the article MIke, outlining things in a well explained way Do you think that the pillar 3 of stability is just an extension of Pillar 1 motor control like you have mentioned when talking about stability , just as you have grouped mobility and flexibility together but distinguished the difference between the two?

I don't like using the word stability by itself for the imaging it creates stopping movement and tend to use the term dynamic stability and control instead. I particularly agree the first two need to be targeted and the strength and rate of force development being developed through the available range in a controlled fashion.

I would be interested in your thoughts. Great job articulating the 5 pillars! I will certainly share this with my golf fitness members. Keep up the good work. Billy T. Well-done, Michael Carroll. I'm an avid amateur low-handicap golfer and golf fitness devotee who holds a Level 1 certificate. Articles like yours pump me up. Thank you! Event Schedule. About Certification. Maintaining Certification.

ProSite Information. Swing Characteristics. TPI TV. Sign In. Pillar 1 - Motor Control Motor control is the ability to carry out the movement you intend to do. In my opinion the most important movements for golfers to have great control over are: -Pelvic Tilt: The ability to know what position your pelvis is in, and change it to what you desire is crucial for desired muscle recruitment and stress distribution.

Log in to leave a comment. Great article! Wonderful ideas, well explained. This is where the athlete or coach using high-velocity peaking can be particularly useful, turning gym time into real-world performance statements. Golfers have varying times between golf competitions, plus travel time, which makes training with regularity difficult but, if planned properly, very possible. I encourage golfers to have some sort of off-season, especially as juniors, so that they can work on gross strength qualities during the winter months.

This works well with developing players. It means that as they grow up, they will have a good strength base and can make the most of training residuals to plan training around travel schedules. Training residuals are the amounts of time it takes to see qualities start to diminish from an established set point. The residuals vary, but give us a rough idea of how long athletes might have to work on certain qualities. I have known athletes to take very long breaks and see only small decrements and others take short breaks and see big regressions.

What is important is that once a quality is trained, it is easily regained. Stronger athletes have to do less to keep their strength levels at an acceptable standard in season than athletes who might be trying to retroactively attain strength during the season.

Travel itself can add a lot of stress to the athlete: dehydration; nutrition challenges , especially when visiting more exotic locations; changes in time zones; and disrupted sleep due to these changes. This can lead to lethargic athletes who have little desire to visit a weight room or hotel gym. A playing week will usually start on a Thursday and end on a Sunday, if the athlete makes all subsequent cuts. Generally, I suggest an athlete lifts on a Monday or Tuesday.

Golf athletes need to learn that lifting in and around tournaments, when habitual, will only enhance performance in the long run. Athletes who avoid lifting will be rewarded with fragility. Figure 1. When an athlete makes the cut, a simple change is to add in a heavy lift to provide the right workout. Tournaments still require a heavy lift later, but the training is done after both competition days are complete. A cut in the field will occur generally after Day 2.

Missed cuts are not an opportunity to lick wounds; instead, use the time to prepare physically and get in a heavy session in order to keep related physical qualities in good order before the next tournament. Those of you who have experienced the delights of such training venues will be familiar with the usual half-baked investment most hoteliers make in their gym facilities. I encourage athletes to take bands, suspension straps, and a skipping rope with them, as these take up very little luggage space.

Warm-up: Prehab, mobilize, foam roll, etc. A Skipping: 3 x B Goblet squats or DB front squats: 3 x C1 Press-up or suspension press-up: 3 x 6 4-sec eccentrics C2 Pull-up or ring row:3 x 4-sec eccentrics D DB goat belly swing: 3 x 15 paired with side planks. Figure 2. Hotel workouts will always be a problem, as most gyms are equipped to just create an illusion of training. Golf athletes need to be creative and independent when traveling. While social media keeps me contactable, I consider p.

The key is for the athlete to keep the intent the same despite a change of exercise selection. You can achieve a lot with supplementary bodyweight training, an understanding of tempo training, bands brought in a suitcase, and knowing your way around a dumbbell rack.

I often encourage athletes to scout the surrounding area for suitable gyms as strength and conditioning gyms are easier to find now than ever and CrossFit boxes are common the world over. These places usually welcome a traveling athlete, often charging a nominal drop-in fee or even no fee in exchange for some social media promotion.

Once an athlete is lifting habitually, this concern is quickly overcome; however, just getting them to this point in the first place can be tricky.

Presently, the biggest swingers are in the sub-discipline of long-drive competitions, with club head speeds at around mph—mph faster than their PGA counterparts—and ball speeds of nearly double the average golfer. Coming back to professional golf, a lesson from this is that there is little to fear from adding mass. It also adds a robustness factor, as mass can be protective and confidence-building.

Golf has a disparate strength and conditioning culture, which varies based on the national governing body amateur program, coach predilection, and conjecture, hearsay, and misconception. Many of the young golfers I meet who have studied and been part of American university golf programs or come through countries that have comprehensive NGB input usually have a handle on appropriate strength and conditioning.

On the other hand, many golf coaches, even at high levels, still hold perplexing ideas on the subject. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes.

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Gosheger, G. Lauersen, J. Prieske, O. He works in Essex, U. I am 77 year old golfer and first time in my life began working out at the gym on November 20th. Another priority is to increase the explosive power of a player. This is needed during shots as each swing is a burst of tremendous energy from the top of the upward swing of the club, to the moment of collision with the ball and then back to the top in the other direction, also known as the follow through.

A lot of what is presented as golf strength training programs has a therapy-focused angle. This is because many golf injuries are related to the overuse of muscles. In the past, the role of physiotherapists used to be to deal with the issues caused during golf games and so in most cases, golfers went to physiotherapists only after they were injured and not before.

Nowadays, physiotherapists and other golf conditioning coaches are now moving to a prevention-by-training rather than cure-after-injury approach.

Therapists are also exploring strength and conditioning to develop techniques for reducing injury. There is enough research to support that overuse injuries can be reduced by as much as half with strength training.

A golf strength and conditioning program should focus on weak areas susceptible to injury. Injury prevention should also be considered as a very important benefit of undertaking golf strength and conditioning training as many golf injuries come from the overuse of muscles and joints. This can be worked on using exercises that improve joint stability as well as supportive rehabilitation after joint damage.

The shoulder joint is the primary location which is moved at a high rate as it acts as the pivot for a club swing during a golf shot. This is why many exercises focus on making the shoulder joint strong as well as flexible so that fatigue, and more crucially, the chances of an injury, are minimized. The hips should be a key area of focus for a golf strength and conditioning program.

A huge portion of the power that goes into hitting a golf ball as far as possible comes from the hip muscles. The hips also act as a connection between the lower and upper body, both of which put in a significant amount of energy into a club swing.

Various hip exercises concentrate on the hip hinge, which is the movement from an upright posture to a bent golfing posture. Players who can move their hips benefit greatly from exercises related to obtaining the correct hip hinge.

From a physical standpoint, a neutral curvature of the body which is neither too straight nor too extreme is most useful for injury prevention from using the hip hinge posture for a long time.