Golf Fitness Basics

If you are looking to improve your golf fitness you should consider 5 aspects of fitness. Each is individually important but nonetheless should not be ignored. Golf demands golfers to have basic flexibility, stability, balance, coordination and muscular endurance. If any of these qualities are absent, the golf swing will be inefficient and inconsistent. The golf swings is athletic from stance to follow through. All major muscle groups are used in a specific sequence to allow distance, consistency, and accuracy. The non optimized golfer might hit a few solid shots in a round of golf, but that is chance and not skill.
Without taking it to the basic fitness components, your swing cannot be consistent, nor will it ever have accuracy along with distance.

• Stability: This is your ability to utilize your strength and flexibility. You need have stability have an optimized swing.

• Flexibility: Flexibility is a must to achieve a full backswing and front swing without strain. Lack of flexibility creates strain in your body and ultimately affects your golf swing, depriving your golf swing of club head speed, accuracy, and distance.

• Balance: Balance is your body’s ability to perform all the component of your golf swing while staying on your feet. As you begin to improve stability, flexibility, and strength often times balance training is missed. If you are strong but are falling out of your swing you are losing almost everything you have worked so hard for.

• Coordination: The golf swing requires a particular sequence of motion. This motion must be done over and over again in the same sequence to have lowered scores and consistency.

• Endurance: Having endurance is your body’s ability to maintain all of the above components for an entire round. Not only that when you body has endurance is allows you to maintain the mental aspect of the game a little bit better.

Implementing golf fitness for your golf swing MUST include ALL of the above components and you will get you results!

Driving it home

I was out on the course yesterday with a friend who was playing from the blacks while the rest of us were playing from the blues...not only was he still out driving us he was more consistent. This is the type of person that gets great results from what we do at HIO golf fitness. His game is already great but it is stuck. Adding more yardage to his game, adding more consistency to his game is tough cause it is there already...it is getting the body to be into peak condition and then raising the peak again that is going to get him to drive it home. It is going to be a fun adventure as we travel together with his training. All this being said he is already driving it home.
Now you may be asking what IT is???? It in this case is not the ball, not the swing, not the player, but the program. The program is going to to take his game to the next level.
Lesson one:

1. Get back to the basics
2. Break down the body into individual parts and work from there
3. Add Cardiovascular routine

The basics at HIO Golf Fitness are getting the body to function at its highest potential. The nervous system is the master controller of all movements and if that system is not under par ;)
then the body will not be optimizing. So we are going to be on a strict regiment of checking the nervous system.
Breaking the body down is going to be the most challenging aspect for my friend. His swing and game are already great and taking him back to elementary-seeming body movements is going to seem strange at first but time and time again we see quick improvements. Without checking him and watching him play I know that pelvic tilts and single leg balance are going to be key into his improvements.
Cardiovascular routine: I am going to change his current routine from random and long to quick and effective.
I am looking for to watching the process of DRIVING IT HOME.

One Armed Man and Reversed Spine Angle

Out on the course on Sunday, My father and I were playing with a gentleman who loves golf so much that he played for a significant amount of time without the use of one of his arms. He was so trained to play that way he still just uses one arm to putt.
Watching this man play was like amazing. His body was mobile and stabile. It was the almost the picture perfect swing. The only swing fault he consistently had was reverse spine angle. He was so flexible and so used to using one are with his full swing he contorted his body to create power. As you can imagine one would have to do playing with one arm.
So to make a long story short reverse spine angle typically can create a myriad of issues with power, accuracy, and efficient...let alone the added stress to the spine. "A Reverse Spine Angle is defined as any excessive upper body backward bend or excessive left lateral upper body bend during the backswing." (mytpi.com) According to TPI it is the number one cause of back pain in the golfer.
In order to correct this through fitness the golfer must gain strength with in his core and trunk as well as create proper biomechinaillcay mobile swing.
This is done with Exercises such as

1. Chops
2. Lifts
3. Pelvic Tilts
4. Planks
5. Reverse Crunches
6. Dead Bugs
7. Golf Professional drills (talk to your local golf pro)

As your body begin to work in the proper pattern for the golf swing, distance, accuracy, and consistency will improve.

As for the one armed golfer...keep playing my friend and we will play soon!