Golf-specific-fitness-secrets
The Real Secret to Golf Fitness
In today’s day and age, professionals are trying to get ahead of the pack by bringing out the “latest and greatest” tip to improve your driving distance, putting accuracy or greens in regulation. The one aspect that cannot be ignored is that the body is what controls the golf club! The main difference between professionals and amateurs is that amateurs have a day job that pays f...
The Queen
This month, we are going to introduce you to the Queen of the golf swing: The abdominals. Fitness trainers, Biokineticists, Physiotherapists and even popular fitness magazines have been throwing the term “core” around for a few years now, but unfortunately, many professionals’ understanding of the function of the core leaves a lot to be desired. This article aims to explain t...
The king of the swing
The Gluteus muscle group does a lot more than attract our attention and cushion us as we sit! Well-developed glutes allow us to stand, walk and run upright and recent studies have shown that the gluteus group plays a substantial role in core stability. Another interesting fact is that the gluteus maximus is the largest muscle in the body Why are glutes the “King” in g...
Strengthen your Core for solid golf
It is commonly accepted by teaching professionals that one of the keys to solid ball striking lies in the ability to maintain one’s spine angle throughout the swing. Good core stability definitely improves this capability and research has shown that the glutes (bum muscles) play a major role in assisting the inner abdominal muscles to support the lower back and therefore maintain spine angl...
Core stability exercise - Avoid neck and back pain
Have you ever suffered from neck or back pain? If you haven’t you are definitely in the minority. Most people have suffered with pain in their spine at some point in their life. With the stressful nature of modern living, spending a lot of time at a desk and behind a computer, or in the car stuck in traffic, we find ourselves in poor postural positions for hours at a time. This leads to imba...
Rolling your way to a better turn
Golfers often complain to me that they are feeling limited in their ability to make a full shoulder turn in their golf swing. The issue here actually lies in thoracic spine mobility. The thoracic spine is the middle part of your back just above the lower back and in between the shoulder blades. Limitation in thoracic spine rotation is a common occurrence these days because of the posture people a...
Are you a Kugel
As any red-blooded South African knows, the term kugel describes someone who is more concerned with the way they look than with their end result.So what does this have to do with the physical dimension of the golf swing?Consider this: Although the world’s top ball strikers have patent differences in the way their respective golf swings look, scientific research has proven uncanny similaritie...
A Balancing Act
Since your feet are your contact with the ground during the golf swing, it stands to reason a potential physical limitation is balance. Some of your most obvious swing faults are referred to as “moving off the ball”, either by “swaying” (to the right) or “sliding” (to the left) and this can be corrected by improving proprioception, which is the very form balanc...
Your mobility is like a chain-reaction
In the midst of the latest golfing popularity bubble, you may have heard the term “Mobility” oft bandied about. To help you to easily understand the importance of mobility, consider that an efficient golf swing requires a balance between mobility and stability, with the required kinematic sequence from the ground up as follows:Foot – STABLE; Ankle – MOBILE; Knee – STA...