GetFit Top Tip

So many people play golf and often complain about injury. The most common injury is the back. Although around 75% of golfing injuries are attributed to bad swing techniques, a lot of these are connected to incorrect posture.

During a Drive, you will be expected to laterally rotate your hips and shoulders. The more the rotation and the faster the controlled lateral movement, the further the ball will go.

Always keep your spine as straight as possible before you start you swing.

To help the spine strengthen, you must train the core muscle and create mobility. One exercise to help achieve this is a reverse lunge with lateral flexion.

Simply step backward into a reverse lunge and then hold one hand upwards and the other downwards whilst you crunch your body. Try this 10 times on each leg. This will help create more stability for your legs, glutes and abdominals. This will also give you more mobility in your spine allowing you to practice longer and hit the ball further.

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Yes its true golf is now recognized as a sport, and about time too.

What is golf anyway, its just hitting a ball with a stick to a hole in a field!!!

Well actually real golfers walk 7000 meters with 15 kilos on their back whilst only stopping to move their body from a static position, to moving a golf club over 150 km per hour.  The stopping and starting does create a lot of stress on the body.

Even now we can see that the top pros are employing personal fitness trainers to improve their golf, not their looks. For the top professionals, they are looking for more mobility and power to help them move the ball further and more fitness to allow them to practice for longer and to be still fresh playing the last few holes.

Now for the amateurs,, Does the average golfer need to work out??
Well being a professional golfer, I have seen people quite quickly spend 500 Euros on a driver that might give them 10 meters and of course lots of money for lessons to improve their techniques. These are all fine and frequently help, amateurs will infrequently improve themselves physically to move better and faster.

To hit the ball further, you require more club head speed. This will come from levers and co-ordinated speed.  The levers are knees, hips, shoulders, wrists and maybe feet and the power will come from the muscles attached to these joints. With training, these muscles will get stronger, moving the joints faster and more co-ordinated and your club will move faster, finally hitting your ball further that your opponents.

Leon.

Leon is one of newest Personal Trainers on the team, and as a Golf Pro locally in Luxembourg, is ideally positioned to help you with your golfing fitness, posture and overall physical conditioning, as well as improve your swing.

Arrange a consultation with Leon today by going to our Online Consultation Form.

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Ok, so it looks like some of you have set your goal to do a triathlon. Great job, that’s the first step.  But how do you reach it?  Training, right?  But “how much training” is usually the first question. 

To help determine your training program, you need to think of 2 things.  What the distance of your goal (race) is and  how you want to accomplish your goal (race).  Is your goal to just finish the triathlon?  Be an age group winner?  Finish in the top 10 of your gender?  Or be in the top 3?   Once you answer those questions, it helps you to define your training program. 

When I decided to do my first triathlon, waaaaaaay back in 1987, I was a beginner swimmer, experienced  cyclist and competitive runner.  I set my goal to just finish.  It was a sprint distance, 500 meter pool swim, 20k bike, and  5k run.  I reached my goal and finished, even with dropping my water bottle on the bike (having no water in 30c heat for the entire ride), and dropping my chain on the course!  Because my goal was to finish a Sprint distance triathlon, that helped determined my training program. 

Next, think about what your strongest and weakest event is in the 3 triathlon disciplines…that will lead you to your individual training, but that’s for next time!

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Yep that’s right, I only train three times a week.

I’ll qualify that, I only purposefully follow my training schedule 3 times in the week. I do a 35-40 minute program, utilising bodyweight and some simple equipment, followed by a cardio intervals session lasting 20-25 minutes after that. Some quick stretches and I am done.

Today I started a new program involving squats, push ups, stability ball leg curls and a couple of core exercises too.

The difference with my programs, is they are focused, structured and designed for maximum impact in the minimum time. No hanging about, chatting to folk in the gym, watching the TVs, posing in front of the mirror.

I literally had a gap of 60 minutes between clients and got my workout done, with time to spare for a shower before meeting my 12 noon client.

If they is any wastage in your routine, if you are still isolating muscles, doing bicep curls and ab crunches for example, its time to get more focused and do some more worthwhile exercises.

Tim

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A very new kind of training program is coming very soon.

The Weekend Warrior Workout is designed to supercharge your sporting performance without eating in to your normal sports specific training and busy lifestyle.

Over the coming weeks I’ll be releasing sneak previews and more details of how to get your hands on your copy of the program as soon as it becomes available.

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