Want to know a secret to adding distance and lowering your scores?
Are you going to the gym with a clear plan of how to get results while feeling great?
If not, then know that doing nothing will not maintain what you have … the way to maintain actually requires you to put forth work in the gym / at home. Otherwise, you will lose and miss out on a lot of different things…
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We lose flexibility when we do nothing (or if we do the wrong things)
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We lose speed and power VERY quickly (speed gains can decrease after a week) if we don’t intentionally train these
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Strength gains begin to leave after a month of doing very little..
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We have aches and pains if we go from doing very little to doing a lot (going from playing a small amount of golf… to a lot of golf because the weather is nice)
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And we have aches and pains (back pain, shoulder pain, hip pain, elbow pain etc.) from not listening to our body to take care of it when we should…
… and you put a band-aid on it, pop some ibuprofen or Tylenol (etc), try a few stretches you find online that look like they would help (but probably have no clue if they actually will), and continue on for months or years on end not taking care of yourself until some major injury occurs..
If that describes you or someone you know, what will need to happen to change that? I’m talking more than just about golf too.
Yes, we lower the scores of golfers & help them gain distance – but for so many, we change their daily life & how they feel physically – less pain, less restricted doing what they love without fear and limitation. It’s more than just golf for so many – it’s quality of life.
Flexibility
We lose flexibility when we don’t work on our flexibility – but working on our flexibility is WAY more than just holding stretches for periods of time. Holding stretches actually may not be very effective for a lot of people. What I want to encourage you to go after is a flexibility that you feel in full control of – by that, I mean, movement that is “free” but you feel in complete control of going through.
According to some studies, we tend to lose 10% of our flexibility every decade after our 20’s (this will obviously depend on so many different factors though). But it brings up a good point and observation that “If you don’t use it – you will lose it” – and this is a very true statement.
Speed & Power
We will lose our speed and power – even with everyday tasks outside of golf – if we don’t intentionally train for these things. Speed and power are the first two things that we will lose – before strength and before flexibility. And that’s not a good thing.
Power (think strength with speed – moving a moderately heavy thing quickly for example) is critical for our balance and to prevent age-related falls or loss of balance. Why is that? Because when we lose our balance, it is the speed and force of catching our balance that requires a lot of power from our nervous system and our muscle system.
Speed and power are very easy things to train – and frankly, it’s not a whole lot of work. But to do this the right way, you have to first have the flexibility and the strength needed to be speedy or powerful.
Strength
We begin to lose strength in our muscles (say if we were going to the gym for a long time consistently) in roughly a month if we don’t train like we did in the gym. Walking is NOT enough to prevent strength loss. Neither is running, stretching or yoga (though it may help slow the process down). To even MAINTAIN strength, we must challenge our muscles to give them a reason to STAY strong. If they don’t have a reason to stay strong because we don’t stress them – they will decline in strength and size.
The goal of the body is to adapt to what stressors we place on ourselves. It will adapt for the “better” or it will adapt in a declining manner if it’s not given a reason to maintain the muscle size and strength (because maintaining these things requires energy – energy that the body will use elsewhere or store elsewhere). The body is all about finding ways to be efficient. Which can be a good thing for us … or not so good.
Going From 0 mph to 100 mph
We all will experience aches and pains if we go from doing very little of an activity to doing a LOT of an activity. Just think, if you were used to walking 2 miles per day and then jumped that up to 10 miles per day – how sore would you be? Many golfers do this with golf. Do you keep track of how many “real” swings you do each week? Or at least a range of how many? If we go from 0 swings throughout the week to then on Friday afternoon swinging 50 to 100 times and then on Saturday another 100-200 times (remember to track practice swings) and then maybe on Sunday a few swings here and there – you went from 0 swings during the week to 400 swings on the weekend. It’s no wonder you’re probably sore from that.
But what’s the problem with this? Well, it depends on how well you’re moving (check out this blog for more details on this)!
The problem will really develop into a pattern of where we start taking pain medications (even just ibuprofen or tylenol) to get over the weekend round of golf or to get going on Monday morning because we’re feeling pretty stiff.
Then the problem becomes aches and pain will continue on for months or years on end (or things go away and then come back) because you don’t take the time to take care of yourself until some major injury occurs.
But Isn’t Taking Ibuprofen Enough?
Quality of life without taking anti-inflammatory medications because everyone else is doing it to manage their aches and pains.
“But what if I have arthritis in this joint or that joint and I feel so stiff?” Well, in this case, yes – taking prescriptions given to you by your doctor may help with these things… but the question I want to ask you is this: have you given yourself a fair chance at getting those things better with a skilled physical therapist that gives you the specific exercises that you need and takes 90 minutes with you?
I get it, you may have looked online for something to help – and it might have even been someone with a website, YouTube page or another platform – and the person was/is a physical therapist and recommended to “try these 3 stretches” – and that didn’t work well enough for you, so you’ve “tried physical therapy”. Or maybe you’ve tried physical therapy with a PT for 3 or 4 sessions and they didn’t pay much attention to you and they gave you simple things you could have found online on your own and it just felt like a waste of time because they didn’t seem that invested in taking more time with you.
I totally get it. You’re not alone with going through this – I’ve had many clients that have also gone through the same process of “I tried PT and it didn’t work for me”.
But you see, there is a solution for you and what you’re looking for. It’s not cookie cutter, because you are unique with what you need in the situation you find yourself in. These clients I’ve had that have gone through the same process needed someone that would invest the time and skill to find out what THEY needed.
That arthritis you may have in your joints, or the stiffness that you feel can get better with the right exercises and treatments that are designed around how YOU move as an individual. Your quality of life can be greatly improved when you take action and accountability to make a change.
Reject the status quo of being okay with what so many others are doing: putting a band-aid on the situation to just get by.
Why Your Golf Swing Isn’t Getting Better & You’re Losing Distance
So your golf swing isn’t getting better and you’re losing distance because you don’t have a clear path for getting rid of aches and pains.
If you did, you then would need to have a clear plan for the gym to focus on things that will improve your flexibility, speed, power and strength for golf (and everyday life) – exercises that leave you feeling GOOD and not BEAT UP by the workout.
Your golf swing isn’t getting better because you’re not taking action on improving your body. It takes commitment. And following through with commitments requires intra-personal integrity.
But what’s that?
Intra-personal integrity is doing what you commit to doing … for YOURSELF ( intra means within).
No one else may know about the commitments you make to yourself and whether you are following through with them.
Maybe you’ve made the commitment to wake up earlier? But how many mornings have you hit the snooze button instead?
Maybe you decided to start going to the gym 5X per week? How many weeks (or even days) did you make it before “something came up”?
Maybe you said you would clean up your diet? But how long before you were eating the same way again?
You see…
All of this has to do with a lack of intra-personal integrity. And when you don’t have this kind of integrity, you don’t trust yourself. Because you, and only you, know that when you make a commitment to yourself, you break it.
And this will make it very hard for your golf swing to get better (and very hard to get better with a lot of things in life).
We Give Golfers A Clear Path To Longevity In Golf
Low Scores • More Distance • Less Pain
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