Whenever I step outside of the bubble of this great online community or the gyms I work out of this is probably the first reaction and most common question I get. Obviously there is lots of great research and data to explain why but research is pretty boring and people often fail to see the relevance to the real world or to their golf game in particular. This is where a good analogy comes in handy to help cut through the noise and fake news you get so much of on the internet

You’ve been convinced - after all, all the top guys are at it. You head to the gym with the intention of working on your fitness to improve your game, you sign-up, pay your membership fee, and head to the changing room. Quickly you change and stuff your clothes into a locker, eager to get out onto the gym floor. Once out there it hit’s you - "what am I actually going to do here?" Looking around and thinking back to your PE days you know you need to warm-up, increase blood flo

In the first part of this 'improving golf fitness' series I explained why golfers are left spinning there wheels, doing programs that leave them seeing little to no carryover to the golf course, due to not training properly for the needs of the sport. Based on the needs analysis from the previous article we know we need to focus, not on endurance, but on strength, speed, co-ordination and flexibility to improve for golf performance. However, this information alone isn't enoug

In my professional capacity as a strength coach, and as a golfer myself, I’ve never meet a golfer who doesn’t want to hit it further! Hitting it further ultimately means generating more clubhead speed. With this in mind, we as golfers, hit the gym and train for speed with great exercises like rotational med-ball throws and lateral jumps, makes sense right? Indeed, research has shown consistently that when vertical jump and med-ball chest throw increase clubhead speed increase

My in-season programming follows two major rules: 1. Keep intensity fairly high whilst reducing volume in order to maintain strength. 2. Train for power in the 24-48 hours prior to a competitive round to ensure optimal power output and performance. More detail on the rational and practicalities of the first point can be found in my previous article on in-season training. From here on out, this article will focus on the second point. I will state up front that what is deta

Rotational sports take place in all 3 planes of motion, yet most of the traditional weight training programs take place in the sagittal plane. This overlooks an opportunity to improve. Vladimir Zatsiorsky talks about the delayed transmutation of qualities, meaning you build qualities of strength and power in the off-season and then there is some amount of time that needs to take place to transfer them to sports specific qualities. It is essentially that question of I've put 5

For those that don’t know supersets are a technique of putting two or more non-competing exercises together and alternating between for the prescribed number of sets and reps. If you were to superset a deadlift and a press for 3 sets of 5 reps, for example, it would look like this: Deadlift x5 Press variation x 5 Rest period Repeat process twice more Traditional supersets are meant to save time in the gym and maximize metabolic stress or hypertrophy. Whilst saving time in the

The question of whether it's best to increase flexibility (I prefer the term mobility), muscle mass (synonymous with strength for many) or work on fast twitch muscle fibre development (power development) to improve clubhead speed was put to me recently by one of the respondents to our welcome survey and I thought the answer might prove valuable to all. Like most questions in the strength and conditioning world the best answer is usually it depends…It depends on your needs as