To help PGA Magazine readers learn more about the ways they can bring golf together with health and wellness, we’ve added this recurring department that will include best practices information from the Golf Fitness Association of America (GFAA).
The GFAA was started by the publishers of PGA Magazine in 2020 and is led by an advisory board of PGA of America Golf Coaches and highly regarded golf fitness experts, including GFAA President Dr. Steven Lorick. We hope you find this department beneficial and encourage you to learn more about the GFAA at golf.fitness.com.
Help Students Maintain Distance as They Age
Jaacob Bowden, PGA,Coach,Swing Man Golf,Las Vegas, Nevada
It’s hard for me to believe, but I’m fast approaching 50 years old. I recently went out to Belle Isle Golf Detroit and tried the Long Drive game on their Toptracer Range. My drive at 48 years old ended up beating golfers significantly younger than me. I was asked what I do to stay in golf shape and what the everyday golfer can do to keep his or her distance as they approach 50 or get older in general.
Here are three points to emphasize with your clients:
1. Take some time once or twice a week to practice swinging fast. The golf world is starting to catch on to this, and you see it with the increasing popularity of various overspeed-type training aids. Spending money on those isn’t necessary, though. The gains are coming from the speed practice, not some magic app or training aid. All you really need to make progress is your driver and, hopefully, some sort of radar device to measure your speed. That’s it.
2. Work on maintaining or even building strength. If your focus is on golf, make it measurable and golf swing specific, particularly to what you do in the downswing. Band isometrics are portable and a great place to start. If you’ve got access to cable machines or dumbbells, you can build strength with those, as well.
3. Spend some time working on mobility and your ability to keep length in your backswing. You can simply spend time breathing and moving through the entirety of your golf swing, freeing up points of tension along the way. Breaking it down further, work on neck rotation, getting your arms across your chest (shoulder mobility), torso rotation and hip rotation.
I will add that building takes a bit more effort than maintaining. Doing something weekly does a nice job of defying age and holding your body in place. To build, you can do it weekly and make progress, but a bit more elbow grease can help your clients speed up their gains and help them even reduce their golf age.
Implement Fitness in High-Performance Academy
Bill Scott,PGA, Senior Lead Instructor,Don Law Golf Academy,Boca Raton, Florida
Our High-Performance Academy is a comprehensive pro-gram geared toward tourn- ament-playing juniors ages 8-18 who see golf as a serious part of their future. They want to take their game to the next level, and we do so through this holistic program – skill development, competition and physical and mental fitness.
We have an accomplished team of PGA of America Golf Professionals on hand to mentor the students of the Don Law Golf Academy with modern player development concepts, and golf fitness is a prominent facet of our programming. As such, we have partnered with a local gym and transport our High-Performance Academy students there twice per week to work on their stretching and warmup routines. Back at our academy, we place a focus on speed training and ground force techniques to help students get faster and stronger.
We initially had to fend off many questions from parents who were “curious” about the merits of this aspect of our training. But with education (of the parents as much as the students), everyone now understands the importance of fitness, speed, power, endurance, agility, mobility, stability and so much more on the golf swing and to our young golfers.
As PGA of America Golf Professional coaches and mentors, we discuss the importance of nutrition and a solid mental game on their long-term development and ultimate performance to truly provide a well-rounded approach to helping them achieve their goals in golf.
In addition, we implement a number of remedial fitness concepts into our general youth programming and summer camps, but focus the more intense and thorough fitness programming on our high-level juniors.