The golf swing is an extremely complex skill that requires most of the joints in the body to move through a large percentage of their maximal range of motion, and the muscles moving and supporting these joints must perform at a high percentage of their capacity. Few movements in any sport require the technical precision and power that the world’s best golfers display as they accelerate their clubs into the golf ball at impact and then immediately decelerate the club head from incredible speeds back to zero by the time they reach their finish position.
This book was written to give you many concise exercises to help improve the mobility, stability, balance, rotational skill, strength, and power of the joint complexes and muscles that directly affect the accuracy, distance, and consistency of your golf swing.
Up to 80% of all golfers will experience at least 1 significant injury during their golfing careers.
One reason for the high injury rate is that the forces created when driving the golf ball produce upward of 8-10 times a golfer’s body weight in compressive forces to the spine. Running — which is considered a high-impact activity that causes stress to the body — produces only 3-4 times a runner’s body weight in compressive forces to the spine.
When we swing a golf club, we require immediate anaerobic energy. But walking a 4- or 5-hour round depends on our aerobic system for energy production. These systems are trained in completely different ways.
For most, it is difficult to find time to get on the course regularly enough to make substantial improvements in any of these areas, never mind all of them.
They are wasting precious time, energy, and confidence making technique changes when their bodies simply can’t perform the desired movement.
At professional golf tournaments, players often make the game seem simple, and their swings look effortless. The reality is that the game is far from easy, and their swings are anything but effortless. Great ball strikers look like they are able to create tremendous clubhead speeds and still finish their golf swing with impeccable balance because they have put many hours of work into the technical aspects of the golf swing and the movement capacity of their bodies.
We want to stop the insanity so rampant in this sport of attempting to change the aesthetic product (the movement) without developing the quality of the underlying instrument (the body).
All these players are phenomenal strikers of the ball, although their swing styles look completely different. They all have an efficient downswing that transfers a very high percentage of the energy produced during the downswing into the golf ball at impact. Their swings look different because the potential for movement within their bodies is different.
In many aspects of life, people tend to practice what they are good at and ignore what they find challenging or difficult. Decent ball strikers often spend most of their practice time beating balls on the range and almost completely ignore their short-game practice.
Cold tissue isn’t as responsive as warm tissue due to the colloid quality of connective tissue. Therefore the warm-up is key to preparing the body for action.
All too often, players, golf coaches, and trainers focus on developing club-head speed with little to no concern for how the player decelerates the club. Even at the highest levels of golf, many players create incredibly high club and ball speeds but develop career-altering injuries as a result.
The body is intuitively intelligent. Most athletes will find that creating speed will increase dramatically as the ability to decelerate improves. The faster our bodies can slow down, the more speed the body will allow to be generated.
Maintaining a large radius with a straight lead arms as the downswing begins requires tremendous control of the spine and a great deal of flexibility in the pelvis, abdominal, and shoulder regions. A limitation in any of these areas will result in a shortened radius (bent elbow) between the shoulder and hand. This results in poor sequencing and decreased power generation. A loss of radius also requires other compensations throughout the body to get the club face square at impact.
One of the components of any good golf swing is having the leg strength to transfer body weight onto the lead leg and extend the hips up through impact. This move creates a tremendous amount of force applied against the ground, which in turn applies it back to the golfer.
Understanding the tremendous power required during a high-level golf swing might finally influence the degree and method of practice a golfer undertakes. An Olympic lifter would never perform hundreds of repetitions of a power snatch because the lifter appreciates the level of mental and physical fatigue that would accumulate and would recognize the opportunity for injury and degradation of technique would be higher than the potential positive return.