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

The weather has finally broken, you can get back on the golf course and the season has started in earnest - as much as you love it, your life just got even busier! You need to find time to get in the practice and play as well as balance work and family commitments. One of the things that typically gets left behind then is your strength training. Alternatively as we head into golf season many will deliberately stop training, believing they have done that work over winter and i

This article originates from a twitter interaction I had with Nick from StrongerGolf and Alex Ehlert (@GolfingAthlete1). The conversation started with a tweet by Nick stating: I couldn’t agree more with that statement! Too many times have I heard coaches, trainers, PTs, etc saying something along the lines of ‘you can’t squat until you have x amount of hip mobility or you can’t deadlift until you can touch your toes.' To be blunt this is false. There are many variations of al

Most golfers attempt to be far too specific in their strength training and far too general in their energy systems training. This is probably the biggest mistake I see. I’m a big believer that strength is the most general physical quality, getting strong in general movement patterns will carryover to all other movements. A rule of thumb developed by Mike Boyle that I like is that 80% of your strength training will be the same regardless of sport. I’ve covered the why and how

There is no denying that distance matters. Indeed, of the top 10 players in the world right now 8 are in the top 35 of driving distance on the PGA tour and of the two that aren’t one is Henrik Stenson who basically hits a 3 wood off every tee these days. Similarly, research has an increase in driving distance of 17metres will reduce your score over a round by 2.5 shots - maybe not listening to my childhood coach when he would spout that old adage ‘drive for show, putt for do

During the competitive season, a golfer pretty much has one primary goal: To win tournaments - and maybe if you’re an amateur to cut your handicap (but one should take care of the other; if you’re reducing your handicap you’re probably winning tournaments, and vice versa) Sounds simple, right? However, think about how much planning, preparation and work goes into that one simple goal. First and foremost, you have the technical and tactical work that the swing coach administer

The dumbbell row is a key exercise for any athlete to master. The horizontal pull a.k.a row is a fundamental movement pattern everybody should be able to do for a start, the lats are also a key muscle for generating power in the golf swing as they are responsible for shoulder adduction (i.e. the movement of the arms in the downswing), whilst scapular retraction (the major scapular movement promoted by rows) is beneficial for rotational mechanics. More rows will balance out yo

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