Golf off-season. What are you doing?

Tags

conditioning, coordination, flexibility, golf, golf fitness, physical therapist, physical therapy, power, speed development, strength training, Sundog Rehab, Sundog Rehabilitation, swing faults, Titleist Performance Institute, TPI

This is a year around sport no matter what climate you live in.  And, it is no secret that golf fitness is here to stay.  Since Tiger Woods has proven to the amateur golf community  that general fitness can lead to golf fitness, many have hit the gym as often as they hit the links.

The “what” and “when” can make or break a golf fitness program, especially if you are starting deconditioned or injured.   Will your golf fitness elevate your golf handicap?  Maybe, if you have enough golf skill.  It will DEFINITELY increase your stamina and strength for reducing fatigue or injury during your golf season.

Titleist Performance Institute recommends that 7 fitness components are addressed in a golf fitness program:  posture, balance, mobility, stability (combination of strength and balance), power, coordination, and endurance.  As a certified Titliest Golf Fitness Instructor I have gone through 5 courses to perfect the evaluation techniques of the fitness components listed above.  With the proposed program below all of these components will be addressed.

Mike Romatowski who contributes to TPI and trains at  Core Fitness in Timonium, MD suggests 3 phases of training during the year (listed below).  Periodizing your training is especially important if you live in cold weather and are unable to consistently swing a club during the winter months.

1)  OFF-SEASON

WORK ON:  Rehab, Posture, Mobility, Stability, Balance

TIME FRAME:   3-4 months from Nov – Feb – IN OTHER WORDS, RIGHT NOW!

*Before you begin any fitness program, make sure you have addressed your injuries (Rehab)

Posture is actually the first step to changing and improving your ability to enhance your golf swing.  If you don’t have good body awareness or enough flexibility to achieve good posture, club head speed or trunk separation gains decline.  This can something that takes a lot of time to improve, especially if you have ignored it.  Once you have sufficient mobility and acceptable posture, maintain it with stability exercises.  If you have sufficient mobility and stability, you can address pure strength.  The better strength base you build during off-season, the more power you can build during pre-season.

HOW?:  Yoga, Pilates, dynamic and /or static stretching for posture, body weight functional exercises (with weight if ready) for strength and balance.  Doing abdominal exercises will not necessarily give you stability.  “Finding” your stability may require the assist of a healthcare or fitness professional.

2)  PRE-SEASON

WORK ON:  Power and Coordination

TIME FRAME:  1-2 months in March and April

Power = strength x speed.  If you were able to work through your injuries and mobility deficits so that you could build a strength base, you are ready for power training.   With this type of exercise we are adding speed to our strengthening exercises.  Golfers are often concerned with getting bulky and losing their swing mobility.  If you follow a power training workout with some coordination drills, the power carryover onto the golf course will improve.

HOW?:  Olympic weight lifting with low repetition and high resistance, plyometrics for power, speed drills for speed, agility drills for speed and coordination, TPI golf posture stability drills for coordination.

*Specifically:  Crossfit, Insanity, P90X for power…but be careful not to overdo it and get injured prior to golf season.  Many of these programs are too advanced for people who do not have a strength base.

3)  IN-SEASON

WORK ON:  Mobility and Endurance

TIME FRAME:  5-6  months May – Oct

During golf season you want to focus on not getting tight or fatigued.  Since you fixed your mobility deficits during preseason, use this time to maintain it.  Light cardio will maintain your endurance.   Remember that cardio is purely raising your heart rate.  If you continue with 1 or 2 sessions / week working on low load power exercises or interval training you will not only maintain your endurance, but also maintain power.   Using the interval training as cardio will also control any weight gain.

HOW?:  Yoga, Pilates, Moderate intensity cardio (running, cycling, rowing), interval training and Olympic lifting for maintenance only.

Sundog Rehab

Still feel lost?  Have injuries you are worried about aggravating with an aggressive program?  Get into the clinic!  Get evaluated with a physical exam, video analysis and personalized program.  See info here for contacting me to get started ASAP.  There are only 3 -4 months left before the season starts.  Apppointments are conveniently located at Sundog Rehab in Rapid City.

Resources

YOGA FOR GOLF:  http://ptsportswellness.wordpress.com/2010/06/04/back-pain-keeping-you-off-the-links/ GOLF EX FOR STIFF

PEOPLE:  http://ptsportswellness.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/are-you-a-stiff-golfer/

YEAR AROUND GOLF CONDITIONING:  http://www.ajga.org/media_center/coverstories/08_Stories/11-5-08.asp

Ready Position = Athlete

Tags

Athleticism, baseball, defense, developing an athlete, golf, hip strength, power, ready position, triple point, wrestling

Get low, stay on your toes and get ready.  In  basketball it’s called triple threat. In baseball it’s referred to as getting your gloves down.  In golf it’s called the address position.   Billiards, volleyball, golf, basketball, football, rugby, wrestling, cycling…  Once you learn the ready position you are destined to become an athlete.

Baseball

Golf

Notice how in the pictures shown that each athlete has a slight knee bend and hip bend without arching or hunching of the low back.  Learning how to engage the gluteals and maintain “neutral spine” is a skill that will set the ordinary little leaguers from those that advance to the all star team.

In adolescent athletes who make the plays or hit the ball further, they have developed a knowledge of how to create power through their hips.  This makes them faster, quicker, and less likely to become injured.

Cyclist

Wrestling

So the key to developing or creating  lifelong athleticism is to train the ready position.  Developing neurological connections that will enhance muscle memory for development of the ready position will ultimately make it easier to pick up any sport and excel…at any stage in your life.  I was recently told by a client of mine that he can tell at first swing weather or not his business golf outing will be for business or sport.  He can tell by looking at his address position if his partner will be competitive on the course.

This concepts strengthens the fact that kids should focus on skills rather than sport specialization early in life.   Go to basketball and football camps that foster hard work and lots of defensive drills.  Play games that force quick reaction so that the participant has no other option to stay low and on the toes.  As a youngster this concept is easier to train and develop, but it could also be a key component in the rehabilitation process in order to keep the patient from returning with additional injuries from sport.

Assessing Athletic Injuries with SFMA and FMS

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assessment, FMS, function, Functional Movement Systems, golf, Gray Cook, physical therapy, SFMA, TPI

This movement assessment tool has changed my whole outlook of looking at the deficits in my patients and athletes.  The Functionl Movement Screen (FMS) was developed by Gray Cook, PT and Kyle Kisel PT and endorsed by Titleist Performance Institute front runners Greg Rose, DC and Mike Voight, PT.  The team got together and developed the the Selective Functional Movement Screen (SFMA) for healthcare professionals to use in guiding treatment of injuries.  The reason I like these tools so much is because they ma

kes sense.  In Physical Therapy school you are taught to look for the source of pain and treat it. We are also taught to identify corresponding deficits that may be affecting the source of pain. The problem with identification of those findings is that there was no way of making it a scientific process.  The SFMA and  FMS has been tested on 10’s of thousands of athletes (primarily advanced football players and golfers) and is continuously collecting data for ongoing improvement of the system.

The FMS

Functional movement screen was developed to identify impairments that may lead to injury.  This tool is quick and can be performed by coaches, trainers or anybody trained in using it.  We will focus on the SFMA in this blog because it is utilized more in Physical Therapy.

The SFMA

Another reason the SFMA is so great is because the baseline tests can be performed quick (<7 min).  When you have more time they can be broken out in a systematic format.  Each of the base tests below are graded as dysfunctional/non-functional based on if the client can perform the movement and painful/non-painful based on if it causes discomfort.  If a test is graded as dysfunctional non-painful, then it can be broken down to help identify the contributing factor that may be linked to the client’s source of pain or limitation that might potentially injure them.

The Base Tests are:

1)  Multi-segmental Flexion

2)  Multi-segmental Extension

3)  Multi-segmental Rotation

4)  Single Leg Stance

5)  Squatting Pattern

6) Upper Extremity Movement patterns – 4 variations

7) Cervical Movement Patterns – 4 variations

Here is how the SFMA can help identify contributing factors that may be causing pain:

Joe has pain in his right buttock after running 5 miles.  Typically, in Physical Therapy, we attempt to bring on the pain in order to make sure we are treating the structure at fault.  We can hypothesize that there may be something wrong with his back or gluteal musculature, but when performing our strength test and assessing the spine, everything looks great.  In performing the single leg stance test – he fails drastically.  With this we can break out the test in order to identify if he might have vestibular dysfunction, hip mobility limitations, weakness in the core/hip muscles, or limited ankle mobility / stability.  Although his back seems to be without pathology, we can ensure that we are treating the correct contributing factors that my be affecting his running.

Mobility before Stability

The SFMA does an excellent job guiding you towards the most limited deficit affecting the client.  Once we have a list of things to focus on we can begin treatment.  Find the deficits affected by joint or muscular limitations (mobility) and emphasize them first.  Once the client has enough mobility, or is improving, stabilize the newly acquired motion.  Easy, straight forward.  You might not think that when you first look at the breakout charts, but eventually after getting the hang of it the clients will get better quicker.  They will be less likely to return to Physical Therapy.
Physical Therapists are known for being the experts at functional movement.  Sometimes we can get bogged down by taking Range of Motion measurements, testing in isolation the strength of a muscle, or finding a stiff joint.  These do not test function.  The Base Tests above are functional movements that should be linked to evaluations to optimize physical therapy assessment and outcomes.  Thanks to Gray, Kyle, Mike and Greg spreading the knowledge of the SFMA, it WILL eventually be a vital component of most physical therapy practitioners.

Functional Movement Systems – the new book is out!