Better Golf With Fitness

Great Workout from Diesel Crew's Smitty

Smitty is back with Part 2- the workout in action.  This is a 16 minute video and will give you some great ideas as Smitty goes over some important concepts.

Why Your Workout Sucks

Don't Listen to the Magazine Crap, You're Doing It All Wrong!

On this blog, I normally don't mention many trainers who don't work with golfers, but there is some really great information about developing your workout template in this video from the Diesel Crew's Smitty.  Lots of great info here from a guy who walks the walk (and doesn't limp as much anymore!)

I will be interviewing Smitty this week on The Strength Coach Podcast about a bunch of stuff, stay tuned. 

Check it out the video here.

Five Iron Fitness Expansion

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted.  I have been super busy with preparing for the golf off-season here in New York since that's when I get much busier.  One of the things I have in the works at Five Iron Fitness is an expansion of 800 sq ft. 

This will allow me to have a little more freedom with classes since I am moving the golf instruction operations into the new room.  I will also have more room to store all of the new toys I have for my Junior Program.

Here are some pics of the progress over a few days:

I am hoping they will be handing over the space by the end of next week as they only need to paint, put some lights up and get the rug down.  (that can also take another 3 weeks so who knows!)

I will keep you posted on the progress.

Video from Men's Health

Here is a video I did on the "4 Part Hip Stretch" for Men's Health magazine.

Golf Rotation Using The TRX- Are You Doing It Wrong?

I love the TRX Suspension Trainer for a ton of exercises, especially what I call "Golf Rotations". That being said, I think you need to be careful with the Windmill exercise that I have seen, mostly because I think it reinforces too much lower body movement. Check out this video to see what I mean.

Baseball for Golf?

Because I have a lot of clients that have problems rotating their hips and getting over to the left side (righty golfers), I have started to incorporate baseball swings to get them to really understand how the hips need to move.  Check out this video.

Should We "Train" Kids Under 10?

This is an article I wrote about my experience at the Titleist Performance Institute's (TPI) Junior Coach Program.  Keep in mind that it was originally written for strength coaches and personal trainers, although I tried to revise it a little to make it a little easier to read.

Last winter I attended the TPI Junior Coach certification. One of the strengths of TPI is its advisory board. For their Junior Coach program, they have assembled some of the world's top researchers, coaches, and doctors with respect to childhood development, to be on the advisory board. The board includes people like Istvan Balyi, who coined the term Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD); Brian Grasso, the founder of the IYCA; and among other top minds, Dr. Ernst Zwick, David Donatucci, and Al Vermeil. With the help of this incredible advisory board, TPI has come up with a brilliant system to train children. At the workshop, they make a very solid case for kids to be starting "deliberate play" at the ages of 5 and 6.

The LTAD approach is "the life-long athletic performance development model," which has been adopted by many countries and organizations, including TPI and USA Hockey, and "focuses on having kids perform age-appropriate skill acquisition drills to maximize athletic potential. It gets progressively more specialized as the athlete develops and reaches the next level of development." 

Tudor Bompa stated "From early childhood to maturation, people go through several stages of development, which include pre-puberty, puberty, post-puberty and maturation. For each development stage, there is a corresponding phase of athletic training."

So what exactly are these "age-appropriate acquisition drills"?  To answer that we need to look at what Titleist calls "Physical Literacy."  Physical Literacy is the "development of fundamental movement skills (FMS) and fundamental sport skills (FSS) which allow a child to move confidently and efficiently in a wide range of physical activities. A child should be physically literate by the onset of the growth spurt."  For girls, peak height velocity averages 12 years old and for boys, it's 14.

First, let's look at fundamental movement skills. They are general patterns of movement that combine two or more body segments and according to Dr. Vern Seefeldt, director of the Youth Sports Institute at Michigan State, they are the "basic vocabulary of sport."  FMS are broken up into four categories:

• Locomotive Skills- running, jumping, dodging, skipping, hopping, bounding
• Stability Skills- agility, balance, coordination, speed, change of direction
• Manipulative/Object Control Skills- throwing, kicking, striking, catching, dribbling
• Awareness- spatial, kinesthetic, and body awareness; rules

To help children develop the important FMS, Titleist came up with the Cyclone Circuit, as discussed in Greg Rose's article at MYTPI.com.  The Cyclone makes the introduction to FMS and all four categories above really fun for kids, a crucial part of keeping them interested. 

After a solid base of FMS, kids can transition into fundamental sport skills, which are basically skills that are more specific to the tasks of that sport, with much more complex movements.  Skipping over the fundamental movement skills and jumping too quickly into fundamental sport skills (Early Specialization) can rob a kid of the proper development.  "A child who develops a better base of FMS will develop sport skills at a faster rate and peak at a higher level of expertise." It's building the foundation before the rest of the house.

Make them athletic first, teach them the sport skills second.

There is also the issue of the "10 Year/10,000 hour rule," popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, although studies on the "10 Year Rule" have dated back to the early 80s. The rule states that it takes a minimum of 10 years and 10,000 hours of training for an athlete to reach elite levels.

The 10,000 hours has been debated, and much of the debate about how many hours is required (some show 4,000, some show 6,000), is "due to the lack of agreement between experts on what they consider practice."  The Cyclone could be considered "deliberate play" and many experts not only emphasize the importance of deliberate play but consider it to be a form of practice.

So essentially, all the hours kids spend in the Cyclone (remember, this is LTAD, they might spend 3 years in this phase), working on fundamental movement skills, counts towards the 10,000 hour rule. By not offering some kind of program to help children develop a better base of FMS between the ages of 5 and 9, we are not only doing a disservice to them but we are making our jobs harder and less effective. Never mind the sports skills, but the skill-based movements that we do as strength coaches in the gym like Olympic lifting, plyometrics and agility drills will be harder to teach as well.

Still Not Sold?

So let's assume that you still think that kids don't need this type of program and will develop FMS on their own in the playground and at school.  I think the most compelling reason to be training them at this age comes from the theory of "Windows of Trainability."   Many experts (including Bouchard, Malina and Bar-Or in Growth, Maturation and Physical Activity; Balyi and Way; Dr. Ernst Zwick and Dr. Liam Hennessey) believe "that there are sensitive periods or critical times in every child's life where certain skills can be learned at an accelerated rate." "There will be certain times in a child's development, that the body is more responsive to certain skills due to changing growth velocity."  Balyi and Way described the "Five S's" that have windows of optimal training:

• Stamina (Endurance)
• Strength
• Speed
• Skill
• Suppleness (Mobility)

Let's look at the research for the Windows of Trainability with respect to Speed and Suppleness.
According to the research, there are two windows of opportunity to develop speed, with boys and girls being different. The first window for boys, is between the ages of 7-9, for girls 6-8. The focus at this stage is agility, quickness, change of direction, linear, lateral and multi-directional speed.  The duration of the intervals/activities should be 5 seconds and under. All of these qualities are being "trained" during the Cyclone, and the kids never even know it. They're just having fun, getting more athletic and developing speed and agility properly.  The second window for boys is between 13-16 and girls 11-13.  The question becomes: "Can they be as fast as possible while training in the second window if they missed the opportunity in the first window?"

For suppleness, the research shows the optimum times for both boys and girls are between the ages of 6 and 10, then again during peak height velocity (for girls 12 years old and for boys, it's 14). Again, all of the movements in the Cyclone are helping kids develop optimal mobility at the most opportunistic time. We all know how important mobility is.

Could we be missing out on an opportunity to help kids become better athletes, regardless of what sport they are playing?  It's possible.

Will it be a lot of work? Yes it will, but it sure seems worth it.

Also worth it is the TPI Junior Coach program. If you have an opportunity to go, it's an eye opening experience. All of the information in this article was plagiarized from the workshop textbook.

For more info about the Five Iron Fitness Junior Program, click here.

Great Warm Up with the TRX

Here is a warm up using the TRX at my friend Dewey Nielsen's studio (Impact Performance Training in Portland, Oregon).  I love this warm up because it incorporates both upper and lower body movements at the same time.

You will see how she gets great length from head to toe with some of the movements and even though it was not meant for golfers, I think it would be an excellent pre-round routine.

Some of the moves are easier than others, and they get harder towards the end. The cool thing about the TRX is that the moves are easily modified by changing foot position or decreasing the range of motion. Do what you can.

One thing to focus on is her posture throughout the warm up. Notice how flat she keeps her back.

You can check out the TRX by clicking the banner below. If you buy one, I make a boatload of dough, so get your wallet out.

Who Need Sugary Sports Drinks? The Natural Electrolytes for Golfers

Here is a video from Robert Yang, nutritionist from Titleist Performance Institute.  I have seen Robert speak a few times a TPI certifications and Summits.  He is always one of the most knowledgeable and informative speakers.

Golf takes a long time, you are out there for a while and it's really important to make sure you are maintaining energy levels.  Many golfers think that using sports drinks will help them on the course.

In this video, he explains why you should stay away from typical sports drinks and start using Celtic Sea Salt. 

Optimal Shoulder Performance Special Offer Extended!

Eric Cressey and Mike Reinold have decided to extend the intro price of $97 for Optimal Shoulder Performance until the end of the day on Wednesday (4/14).  So if you train anyone who has a shoulder, you need to get it!  Check out this video of Eric showing a Sidelying Torso Rotation.