Realistic Goals of Golf Conditioning, Part II
Mike Romatowski
Seven Pillars of Golf Conditioning…
The seven major components of golf conditioning are: Posture, Strength, Stability, Mobility, Balance, Coordination, and Power. An obvious strategy is to work on your weakest link. If your balance is poor, for example, it makes sense to prioritize that component in your workouts.
I also like, however, to try to make a golfer’s strong points even stronger. There’s nothing wrong with taking what you’re good at and making it even better.
Posture is the key to all good golf workout programs. Your body parts have to be “stacked” properly atop one another in order to produce quality movements. You must strive for good posture both in your normal life and in your golf address position and swing.
The most common postural fault in golfers is called a “C” posture – it occurs when your upper back is too rounded. A golfer with “C” posture in normal life will almost always set up to the ball with the same faulty posture.
Strength is defined as your ability to handle a workload in the “primal movement patterns.” These patterns are pushing, pulling, twisting, bending, squatting, and lunging. I would also add the acts of lifting and carrying to this list. Strength in the gym is accomplished through resistance training, either with bodyweight or external weights such as barbells and dumbbells.
Stability is your ability to control the movement of one body segment while you put another body segment into motion. The best example of this in golf is your ability to stabilize your lower body during the backswing without swaying or sliding your hips.
Mobility is your ability to move a body segment to whatever magnitude is necessary. An example is the ability to make a full backswing turn.
Balance is an obvious term. It’s unlikely you will actually fall on your face during your swing (at least, unlikely for most of you). But balance and kinesthetic awareness (your sense of where your body is in space, especially relating to the objects around you) are critical to a great swing. Balance is actually the easiest of the seven components to improve.
Coordination in golf refers to your ability to properly sequence the movement of body parts. Every good golfer uses the same sequence in the downswing: Hips › shoulders › arms › club. Most poor golfers violate this sequence, mostly by starting down with the shoulders or arms before the hips. You can do coordination exercises in the gym to improve your sequencing.
Power is a Whole Different Ballgame…
Power is the last of the seven components. Power is the combination of strength and speed – in other words your ability to express your strength at high speed. When you train for power in the gym, you must use movements that occur over the same time frame (less than 2 seconds) as a real golf swing.
Ultimately the very best power exercises are done from your exact golf posture, using your exact golf swing speed.
When training specifically for golf swing power, it is better if the exercise either looks exactly like a golf swing, or nothing at all like a golf swing. If you try to emulate a golf swing with a heavy object (such as a heavy medicine ball or a dumbbell), it will create a faulty motor pattern because the object is too heavy. You’ll use your muscles in a completely different way than they are used in the actual swing.
Mike Romatowski creator of "18 Magic Moves for Golf Conditioning", owns Five-Star Fitness, a golf conditioning and post-rehab facility in Owings Mills, Maryland. Mike works with amateur and collegiate golfers, including 2005 U.S. Open participant Marlowe Boukis and AJGA (Chicago) winner Michelle Grilli.
The articles at GolfFitnessProducts.net are for informational purposes only and are not intended to substitute for direct examination and exercise prescription by the appropriate health professional. It is strongly recommended that you do not perform any exercise program without the consent of your personal physician.
