Here is the last post from Dee for a couple weeks! Enjoy!

Well all my friends and hard working clients…it’s time for a vacation!

Off to Rome, Florence and finally Venice where my parents will renew their vows after thirty years of marriage on gondolas!

I am excited for the break, but also look forward to coming home where all kinds of good things will be going on…

1. 3D Motion Capture comes Friday, June 12th and Saturday June 13th! We will be the first company in the US to bring 3D to the public this way!! Be a part of it for only $350 (or so). It will be a HUGE player in your game going to the next level in a short amount of time!
2. We are designing the Colorado Golf Club Gym facility
3. Trish will be getting back from TPI Junior Level 2- so we will be the only company in the US with two level two Junior certified pros!
4. Trisha is playing in the Colorado Open at the end of the month where there are rumors of me caddying for her!??
5. And more “secret” cool things going on!

Have a great ten days, train hard and we’ll see you after the 19th!

In the meantime, Tyler will be updating here a few days a week, stay posted for the most current information in golf and fitness!

Tyler again.  Dee is still having trouble posting because he has a windows computer.  But hey, lucky for you all, my Mac is unaffected so let’s press on.

Today I’m going to shed some light on what makes a good golf workout for me.  This post is in response a conversation I had with a client of mine about wanting to be sore the next day following a workout.

Do you have any idea how much trouble Arnold Schwarzenegger has caused me in my career?  Ok, it’s not just Arnold, the whole body building community that has brainwashed the average athlete into thinking that no pain no gain is the only way to train.  It’s not!  Here are, in no real apparent order, my thoughts on the effects of muscle soreness as it relates to golfers.

When I am referring to traditional weight lifting techniques, I am referring to 3 sets of 10-12 reps of 60-70% of your 1RM, performing each set, resting 30-45 seconds, then completing the second set of the same exercise all while fighting for those last couple reps. If your trainer has you doing any of the above and calling it golf fitness ask for your money back.

Traditional weight training techniques do not help golfers (with the rare exception of an ultra elite golfer needing a hypertrophy phase in a periodized plan but even then I would recommend only during one microcycle during the early offseason).   Why does the average golfer want to train differently?  Lets start with your purpose of working out.

Body builders are training for aesthetics while athletes are training for performance.   So if we have different goals then we should train differently, right?  Golfers need power, stability, flexibility, and balance in a much greater demand than they need strength.  I can hear the strength coaches cringing.  Yes at the elite level you will reach a power plateau until you add strength.  So lets say we do need strength.  Is that what 3 sets of 10 will get you? It’s not.  3 sets of 10 will make you bigger, slower, and sorer.  Talk about your lose-lose.

So most of our weighted golf exercises fall into categories and this is how the set reps adjust for each:
•    Power or maximum strength – we are looking at maximum of 5 reps leaving a couple good reps out there (not training to fatigue) and aiming for more sets 3 – 8 depending on phase of cycle.
•    Stability – we are looking at 10-15 reps usually around 30% or less of 1RM.  Tyler you just said you don’t train 10-15 reps didn’t you?  Look at the percentage, we are usually challenging the stabilizers and putting the weight in a range that won’t over tax the brain.  These are more for activation and coordination then they are for strength.

The other tip I can recommend when it comes to avoiding soreness is the circuit the exercises.  You want to be fresh when you come to the physically demanding exercises.  If you put in some fun “fluff” exercises you will avoid wasting your time will still not exhausting any particular muscle.  By fluff, I mean the stuff that doesn’t seem hard, muscularly, but is great for your golf game.  Single leg activities, stretching, and swing drills make great fluff in between your heavy sets.

I’ve attached a link to my good friend John Novosel Jr.s blog.  He is a competitive long drive guy.  Check him out in the gym by watching the videos from May 5th and May 6th. Golf Strong

He bench presses like a girl, but he hits the ball out near 400 yards.

Good luck golfers.  Keep your pain to the golf course, not after the gym.

I wanted to expand on my most recent article about Kenny G and Charles Barkley.   I have received a lot of positive feedback and questions about the importance of past sports in the development of a golf game and I wanted to take another stab at how I’m using this data.

The golf swing is an incredible balance of cause and effect pushed to their limits.  Determining the CAUSE is a real problem for golf instructors because of how varied the effect can be.  Here is how I look at a simple example of a slice.  By the way, I’m kind of like a computer in these cases.

Input:
The golf ball sliced.  The golf ball sliced because the face was open and the path was coming from outside to in compared to the target line as the golf ball was struck.

Analysis:  This could have been caused by a physical restriction.  Or poor technique caused by a misconception. – I need more input to figure out which bucket to put this golfer in:

Search for more input:
Physical: The right shoulder is tight.  The thoracic spine is tight.  Both hips are tight and the glutes are inhibited (the light switch is broken, not just the bulb).  This is easy.  I can test for each of these capabilities and any one of these COULD cause the swing fault and shot patter that I discussed.  But what else?

Conceptual: The golfer may think that the clubface should stay facing the target for as long as possible instead of rotating around the curve that the club is swinging on.
Or, the golfer may think that his or her best way of creating speed is to chop the arms down like chopping wood.

There could be an infinite list of places where the concept could go wrong so lets jump ahead and just say, this golfer doesn’t know what the hands or body is supposed to do to hit a draw correctly.   So now I apart from the physical fitness, I have to teach him what to do.

The art of teaching is picking which is the important input.  But if you get the right input then the solution is easy.  Ask what sports the played growing up and see how I use that new input a lot now and here’s how I do it.

If a golfer has some success with his stroke then the swing can’t be completely broken.   But in order to fix a semi-broken swing you are going to have to change everything.  A fully broken swing can be caused by either nothing working or two things working in the opposite directions.  If a swing is semi-broken then everything is only partially doing the right things and all parts will need some level of adjustment.

That is the great cause and effect relationship in golf.  If I tell your hands to do something different, chances are the chest is going to have to adjust as well.  To adjust my chest, the pelvis is going to have to do something different, which means the legs and feet are doing something different.  Woah.  Before you run home and throw out your golf clubs in desperation let me clarify my last post.

We, as golf coaches and body coaches, could start to change your biomechanics from either end: the feet (body) or the hands.  Either way, we are going to have to trust that your brain makes minor little tweaks and changes to make it all work again.  So which end to start from has always been a debate among teaching professionals for some time.  Do I get the body in the right place and then just say, “try and hook it with your hands” or do I teach the hands what to do with smaller swings like pitches and chips and then tell the golfer that the full swing is just like that only bigger?  In the first example: the hands are adjusting to a “fixed concept” of the body, in the second example; the body is adjusting to a “fixed concept” of the hands.

Let me bold this statement.  If you want to change a swing, get one part correct and then work on fine-tuning with the other.  If you want to struggle with golf, bounce back and forth making random changes to the grip, set up, downswing, impact etc.

Back to the original post.  I am now deciding which one to fix and which one to leave a variable based on what sports or activities each golfer played before the age of 15 (I just picked a number, test this variable if you want).  If they played a lot of body sports then that is going to be the VARIABLE.  If they played a lot of hand sports then that is going to be the VARIABLE.

An example of this is a good body athlete.  I could spend 5 lessons getting the hands perfect and just give a simple idea for the body to make this new hand movement work.  “Don’t change your hands, try and find a body position that works with what we are now doing.” Then I give my best guess at feelings for the body until we get something that matches.  I am telling you, this works wonders on the learning curve.

Pick the right problem bucket and the solution is easy.  This is just a new way to get into one of a few buckets.

Hope that helps.

Otherwise send me more questions and I’ll clarify on Thursday.

Your Body Faults are Your Swing Faults
By Dee Tidwell

Juniors! One of my biggest frustrations with the golf industry today is its total focus on instruction and equipment only. It has been drilled into our heads that if you don’t get the best clubs and a lot of instruction, then your game will never be as good as it can! Phooey!

While I think this is mostly true, and consider clubs and instruction paramount to success, I believe the missing and most important component to success for a junior golfer is an optimally functioning body! This, unfortunately, is also the least important part of the game that is discussed with the junior golfer, and THE MOST IMPORTANT!

Check this out…most clubs “out play” the player using them…that’s right, your clubs are better than you! Unless you get into better shape, you will never achieve the full potential of your shiny new clubs, nor play up to your ability and potential!

In my ten years of individually assessing every client that walks in my door, my data says strongly that 98% of those tested have poor posture, forward head carriage, a decreased lordosis of the lumbar spine (flatter than normal- looks like a flat lower back), an increased Thoracic spine kyphosis (too rounded in upper middle back), tight hamstrings and calf complex, and a weak core. And these statistics are true for juniors as well!

These problems lead to decreased range of motion; decreased rotation ability; fatigue because the body has to work harder when you have poor posture; decreased respiratory capabilities; internal organ compression; excessive neck and shoulder stress; and pain! Ironically, the most frequent swing faults (those listed below) are caused by the aforementioned body issues.

I have listed three of the most common swing faults that juniors struggle with. So let’s educate you about what causes them from a bio-mechanical standpoint, because if you identify with any one of the three, I advise that you talk with your instructor and a golf fitness professional like myself to create a plan to fix the issue so that it doesn’t become an “ingrained pattern” that will begin to wreak havoc in your game!

So here we go…information gathered by PGA teaching professionals, and research done by Titleist Performance Institute, the three most common swing faults most golfers struggle with are:
1.    “Early Extension”
Defined-
When the hips and spine start into hip extension or straighten up to early in the downswing, it is termed Early Extension. This is where the hips and pelvis move closer to the ball on downswing

2.    “Loss of Posture”
Defined-
Loss of posture is any significant alteration from your body’s original set up angles during your golf swing. This loss of posture can affect all aspects of the golf swing including timing, balance and rhythm.

3.    “Over The Top”
Defined-
Over the top is perhaps the most common swing fault among high handicap golfers. It usually occurs due to an overuse or over-dominance of the upper body on the downswing.  As a result the club is thrown outside of the intended swing plane, with the club-head approaching the ball from the outside in. This creates a pull if the clubface is square or a slice if the clubface is open.

These three swing faults are characterized by the same bio-mechanical (body) deficiencies:

1.    Stiffness of joints in lower body- hips, vertebrae, sacroiliac joints, knees, ankles
2.    Can’t rotate around lead hip (internal rotation)- if the pelvis is unable to rotate around the lead hip due to joint or muscular restrictions then forward and lateral movements will dominate the pattern.
3.    Flexibility in hips and shoulders- in order to rotate around a stable posture, one must have good flexibility in the hips and shoulders. This allows you to get the club into key positions without altering your spine angle.
4.    Inability to separate upper and lower body- and visa versa allows the player to maintain a stable posture and a proper sequence of motion during the swing. Limited trunk to pelvis separation is usually caused by reduced spinal mobility and shortened latissimus dorsi flexibility.
5.    Inability to stabilize core- Abs/Glutes- the ability to stabilize the lower body is directly proportional to gluteal and abdominal strength. A stable neutral pelvic posture helps prevent thrusting toward the ball.

So in the end, we at Championship Golf Fitness believe that the body is a main determining factor to the success and longevity to your game.

If you want to hit it further, be more consistent, shoot lower scores, get a scholarship to play in college, beat your friends, and be a top Colorado junior golfer, then you MUST get a junior golf fitness program as soon as you can!

I know, I know…when are we going to stop picking on poor Charles.  But this isn’t picking on poor Charles, this is about one of the key parts of a golf lesson that I have been playing around with lately.  Doctors make thier assessment in part by taking a history, and this is a very key part in the diagnosis in the medical world but is still very primative in the golf world.

I have recently been taking some extra time looking at a player’s history.  I usually ask, “What sports did you play or activities did you do growing up?”  I usually would listen for key words and phraises.  If I heard “tennis” I knew we were in danger of reverse spine angle/early extension.  I knew if “I didn’t pay much sports growing up” then I knew that we were in for a bumpy road, but I am now looking at it in a slightly different way.  Check this out.

I had a client who was a “good athlete” and was struggling with golf for a while.  Upon investigation I realized that he played lots and lots of basketball, football, and some baseball – but not pitching.  I did some quick calculations in my head and realized that most of his activities were simple hand sports and complicated body awareness sports…

My VERY next client was also struggling with something similar but he wasn’t a good athlete.  In fact, he was the complete oposite end of the spectrum.  He didn’t really play sports as a kid, but was active in music and the arts.  Music, that sounds pretty demanding on the hands.  “He was able to make lots of hand adjustments quickly wasn’t he?”  Hmm….

This got me thinking.

I have spent some time now, teaching the athlete how to use his hands with gentle guidance on the body and the musician is getting lots of body awareness work with only minimal attention to the hands.

I’m now working on trying to categorize sports as body awareness or hand awareness and adjust my teaching accordingly.

Some examples of Body Sports are:

• Basketball,
• Football (except QB)
• Baseball (except pitcher)
• Track
• Swimming
• Weight Lifting
• Soccer

Some examples of Hand Sports are:

• Lacrosse
• Football (QB)
• Baseball ( pitcher)
• Ping Pong
• Music (except singer)
• Golf

Now this is totally primitive, and based on a few people, but it is something that I have had a lot of initial success with and something you should think about.  What part of your golf fitness needs more fine tuning?  Are you more prone to have hand problems or body problems?

Good things for you to know.  For me it is like knowing that your family genetics are prone to diabetes.  If you know that, then you can easily adjust.  If you know that your past is filled with body sports, then you should probably start training your hands in practice and make most of your short term adjustments with the body.

Just a quick thought to get you thinking before the weekend.  Oh and don’t send me hate mail, I will try to leave Charles alone starting now.

Tyler’s back today to comment on a question that one of our readers emailed in.  He asked, “How do you react when the phrase muscle memory is used?”  This is how easy it is, if you have a question, send us an email or Facebook message or comment and we will get to it asap.  So here we go!

Muscle Memory explained

I am not too picky when it comes to proper usage of words, for me it has always been the idea communicated that is far more important.  So the idea of “muscle memory” is a key part of the motor learning process, the term muscle memory is sort of like how a millipede got it’s name – I imagine that process was something like this, “look at that thing?! it’s gotta have a million legs.”  Back to muscle memory.  The closest thing a muscle has to memory is a tendon reflex.  This is when the doctor hits you in the knee and then your leg bounces out and you laugh – well, at least I laugh every time that happens.  Muscles are contractile tissues that do as they are told, and this is where the importance of the idea comes in.  When most people refer to muscle memory they are actually referring to a motor pattern.

Difference between muscle memory and a motor pattern

A motor pattern is stored in the brain and involves a movement.  Motor patterns can be broken down into two kinds: fine motor – just your hands like writing or using a fork; and gross motor – full body stuff like the golf swing or spinning and flailing when you come across a bee (hopefully you don’t have a great motor program for the latter).  The more repetitions of a motor pattern that you do the more repeatable it will be.  However, a motor program involves not just the muscles but every sense you have.  Let me repeat that another way, the motor pattern is dependent on the state of mind, the images you see, the adrenaline levels you posses, the sounds you hear, the level of saliva in your mouth and pretty much everything going on in you and around you when you build the pattern.  This has some very distinct differences from the image of muscle memory that need to be factored into training.

Implications of training a motor pattern

Motor patterns actually involve, to some extent, all of the senses in the body.  The limbic system is the part of your brain responsible for emotions.  This is why if you perform in a different state of mind than you practice you will have trouble repeating the same motor pattern.  A motor pattern an electric message sent to all the parts of the body involved in producing that pattern, lets call it your HD channel.  The limbic system is responsible for analyzing millions of incoming data and can be thought of as static on this channel.  When you are doing block practicing, usually you are able to create a pretty clear picture.  But then you get on the first tee and all of this static starts appearing because the situation has changed.  Soon you can’t really hear who’s talking and you don’t know if you are watching ER or Scrubs (in my example, all you knew was it was a medical show).  When you don’t know what show your watching is when you fail to produce under pressure.  Many athletes have discussed being in “the zone” as a feeling of being deaf, being numb, and having tunnel vision.  All of these reflect clear motor patterns and explain how they are able to recreate the exact same movement time after time.  The stronger the picture (motor pattern) the better the performance will match that picture.

Practical Implications

Ok, so far this has been a lot of theory.  Here is what you need to practice now that you understand that it not just the Muscle Memory going on but really a motor pattern that needs to be trained.

1)  Muscles dont’ have memory, but a motor pattern will become clearer with more repetitions.  The current numbers are to do lots of repetitions: 350 to set a pattern and about 5000 to change a pattern <–this is my area of expertise.

2) There are two kinds of practice, as Dee mentioned earlier:

Block practicing where you repeat the same motion over and over in succession.   Think of this as normal practice.
Random practicing where you vary the criteria required.  Think of this as playing on the course.

3)  When you are building a pattern try to practice in the same state of mind as you will be performing.  I had a psyche teacher who said, “If you are going to study high then you better come to the test high.”  I don’t think this is the best practice (study sober kids), but this does mean that if you are going to be under pressure on the course you need to find ways to putt yourself under pressure when you practice.  Competitions and a practice companion help this out a lot.

4)  I could go on talking about HOW to practice forever, but here is a big key.  Vision is one of your strongest sense and provides your brain with a lot of information.  When you are trying to change a swing, make sure you understand when and how the ball or club will look different in the motion.  Your muscles only respond to pictures that the brain sends them, if you can’t envision a movement, then you will not be able to manifest it in movement.  Use the eyes to help retrain your swing and you will have a better chance of making changes.  I always ask my students, “how does this look different” when I put them at a different top of back swing, delivery, or impact position – and now you know why.

I’ll say it again, if you have any topics that you would like Dee or I to cover, don’t hessitate to ask.  Now it’s Friday and my day off from work, time to go work on my motor patterns at Blue Mash.

Dee had such a great post about pain that we took a few days off to celebrate, but I am back to point out one last cause of pain that we (Dee) forgot.  You could have a perfect golf swing, you could have a perfect body, and you could have the perfect diet, but if you don’t warm up, then you are at a great risk for injury – well, unless you are one of the rare hypermobile people in the world, but lets not talk about them.  What we are going to talk about today is a story I heard at my last trip to TPI-land from one of my fellow trainers.

He had a client who was an avid athlete and a newish golfer who started taking lessons at a high end club.  This athlete was used to getting a real warm up before playing so he pulled out his jump rope and started skipping on the driving range.  Within a few minutes of pulling out the rope, the general manager came by and told him that he was offending the members and had to stop…..I was speechless.  Kai Fusser, Annika Sorenstam’s trainer, said that Annika does 20 minutes of skipping rope before playing why can’t this trainer’s client?  Maybe he should have told the GM how it helps players deal with adrenalin and gets them in the right state of mind…I doubt that would have helped.

Dee brought up a great point about golf being a sport.  I wonder if I will ever see the general acceptance of golf being treated like other sports and seeing dynamic stretching, skipping rope or other useful means of getting warmed up as common place.  Until then, I will continue to do lunges, squats, step overs, and half of the Tom House shoulder routine every time I go to the golf course. Every time.  As one of our Clubgolf member’s saw this Friday when I was going to practice at Blue Mash Golf Course, I even do some form of warm up to putt.  I might get some pain for a variety of reasons, but failing to warm up is not usually one of them.

I’m off to skip rope.

Tyler here with a review of Phil’s new DVD program: Secrets of the Short Game. For those of you who don’t know my background. I am a great ball striker who has had periods where he struggled around the green. As a result, the short game has become one of my biggest passions within the big picture of swing mechanics. And when the best short game wizard comes out with a new DVD, assume that I have it pre-ordered.

My short game ideas have come from a few key sources. In the book world, I have read lots of the older books concerning wedge play. Tom Watson has a great one. Tom Kite has a great one. And most recently, Stan Utley reset the bar with his Art of the Short Game book blending technical and feel oriented instruction. In the techie world, I have had the privileged of seeing some 3D’s of some great short game artists. So I have an ok understanding of some of the different ways to do it. And no, contrary to what anyone says, it is NOT the same kinematic sequence as the full swing. The data backs it up. There can be similar shots, but as a whole, it is not the same. The other major source of my short game information is a great Baltimorian instructor named Bernie Najar. He is a very knowledgeable instructor and former Teacher of the Year for the section. Smart guy with a good website, www.parsavers.com if you want to check it out. Ok enough of that stuff, on to Phil’s DVD.

The two DVD set is very well put together. It starts with a great montage featuring some of his best short game shots in tournaments; set to a soundtrack that could have doubled for a major motion picture theme – it really reminded me of Pirates of the Caribbean. It really got you in the mood to get up and down like a hero.

The DVD set has sections on putting, chipping, flop shots, bunker, and specialty shots. The real meat of this program is in the putting and chipping sections.

Phil recaps a bunch of standard putting principles, but with his own twists. He has a clear matter of fact way of stating his facts and gets confrontational about certain conventional wisdom. He clearly says there are many ways to putt and spends more time talking about reading greens and good putting drills. It is simple and clear and I think a good view for any beginner, anyone struggling with their putting, or anyone who loves Phil’s interviews and can’t get enough of the big “cheesy.”

His chipping section is very good. It keeps the mechanics really simple – possibly too simple – and focuses a lot on the adjustments that need to be made for each shot. He demonstrates the significance of the “hinge-and-hold” method of chipping and how all good chippers do it. It is the ONLY method in his mind. One of his big keys is to accelerate through every shot – he goes so far as to say that the clock image of same distance back and through falls under the “what are you thinking??” category. Interesting considering his short game coach usually gets the credit for the image.

The rest of the DVD set show’s more situational adjustments that are good for novice and intermediate golfers to be aware of. I highly recommend this product if you are getting into learning how to score but if you are an overly technical golfer (like me) then you might find the instruction section somewhat lacking. If you want more technical stick with Stan Utley. But until Stan comes out with a DVD this is the best short game DVD available.

Dee here to talk about your flabby, non-functioning booty!

We all know that the glutes are the king in most sports.

Tyler and I both know that the better functioning your glutes are, the farther you will hit it because they are powerful hip stabilizers, rotators and extenders.

Try this exercise to get that booty working better!
Golf Fitness Guys present- More hip turn for more distance!