Welcome to the first edition of The Better Golf with Fitness "Virtual Roundtable."
Periodically, I send questions out to golf fitness professionals throughout the country and ask them a question about golf fitness and post them here.
The first question I posed to our golf fitness experts is:
What do you think the most important components of a golf fitness program are?
"Although I feel flexibility, core stability and total body strength should be part of every golfer's fitness routine, finding their weakest link and trying to "correct" it will be the most important part of my golfer's fitness program. To indentify those weak links, I do a complete physical assessment. The results of the pysical assessment will drive the program design."
Anthony Renna (of course, I go first, I'm the boss around here)
www.GolfFitnessProducts.net
"I have to agree 100% with Anthony Renna. Most golfers are simply jumping into a fitness routine without complete awareness of where their current strengths and weaknesses are and how these relate to their swing and their handicap. Once golfers go through a complete assessment, they
have something specific to work on and I think this leads to the quickest and most dramatic performance results".
Susan Hill
www.fitnessforgolf.com
"Aside from the obvious (strength/flexibility/stability), I firmly believe in the importance of coordination as well as rhythm and timing. I assess many of my clients' ability to perform skills smoothly and with agility. Some examples of exercises are jumproping (100x), heavy roping (100x), quick bounces of medicine ball off wall in various ways (10-20x each). These exercises and others are staples for warmups and cooldowns."
Mindi Boysen
www.fitforgolfusa.com
"Every golfer will have different components to address. The best way to
ensure proper training is for an evaluation of body movement. This way
you are working on correcting the proper areas of your body. It is the
same when you see a golf professional, you would not work on correcting
a slice when you have a hook. A proper evaluation ensures the
implementation of an efficient program."
David Donatucci
Director International Performance Institute
941-752-2570
"The most important component of golf fitness is
not only working out the weak points of an individual. A big part what we need
to focus on is improving there overall conditioning. Considering fitness
is so new to golf, I would bet that 90% of all golfers out there are not well
conditioned or even training in a gym. Focus on weak points but do not
ignore the entire body. If you do this you will end up creating different
weak points."
Don
Saladino
Owner, Drive 495, NYC
“I believe it is
often overlooked that golfers are actually athletes. As a conditioning
coach I need to program and coach that athlete with drills that
will help him/her excel on the course. Full range of motion
compound exercises including lunges, squat, deadlifts, rows and presses
are excellent but often ignored tools for athletic development. These
kinds of drills are very effective in building a better golf athlete.”
Troy M Anderson,
owner
Integrated Evolution, LLC
troy@bluecollarathlete.com
www.bluecollarathlete.com
"I feel
performing a full biomechanical evaluation to discover motion, flexibility, strength and postural deficits are the most important ingredients of developing a golf fitness routine. This information
becomes the blueprint of the exercise program and enables me to design effective
exercises for optimal performance and injury prevention."
Brian Schiff, PT, CSCS
The Fitness Edge
Fitness Solutions for Lifelong Health
www.thefitnessedge.cc
“Golf, like any other
athletic event, requires good posture, adequate flexibility,
strength, stability, balance, coordination, power, speed, etc. There
is nothing unique about golf. When you look at he movement pattern
for golf it is like other hitting/throwing sports...TRAIN YOUR GOLFERS TO
HAVE AN ATHLETIC SEQUENCE OF MOTION!!”
Eanna Rushe MS, CSCS,
MES
BioSport Technologies
Cos Cob (Greenwich),
CT
“A physical/functional
screen is paramount in determining deficiencies, imbalances, and/or physical weakness. I feel that the most important components of golf fitness include but are not limited to, strength through range of motion, flexibility and muscular balance in back, pelvic, and shoulders bilaterally, as well as lower body explosiveness."
Joel Raether MAEd.
Asst. Strength and Conditioning Coach
University of Denver
jraether@du.edu
“While certain
components of golf fitness are more important that others, I feel the most
important piece of the performance puzzle is to have a baseline level of
conditioning in the golfer. Doing so will decrease the chance of injury and
also improve the different components of the golf fitness spectrum which
ultimately lead to better performance and a better body.”
Jason Krantz, CSCS
Sonic Boom Golf
"A full biomechanical evaluation is a must. Without a proper evaluation a program might just feed into compensations which might allow you to perform better initially but overtime can lead to tissue breakdown and injury. The fitness program must be a total body program and emphasize areas which are prone to injury and where the client needs the most work."
Brad Keisling, MSPT, CSCS
Orthosport PT
www.orthosportedu.com
"Once you have good swing technique, the stronger you are, the better.
Golfers need to get over their fear of weight training - particularly
in the off-season. Get as strong as you possibly can in the major lifts
like squats, deadlifts, and
bench presses. During the pre-season, start focusing on general power
with exercises such as medicine ball tosses, and golf-specific power
using golf-swing training aids. During the golf season, focus more on
flexibility."
Mike Romatowski
www.golfstarfitness.com
www.mytpipro.com
mikeatfsf@aol.com
