March 5, 2025 • 8 mins
In this episode, Chris Finn discusses common misconceptions about strength training in golf. He emphasizes the importance of lifting heavy weights, debunks the myth that strength training makes golfers stiff, and explains why strength training is essential for improving golf performance. Chris also highlights the need for maintaining mobility while increasing strength to prevent injuries and enhance longevity in the sport.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Chic on the Rule. Welcome to the Golf Fitness
Bomb Squad. I'm your host, Chris Finn and today we
are actually live uh on x as well as recording here,
so that uh, you know, you're listening now, maybe in
(00:22):
your car wherever you are. This is what we're gonna
start doing going forward, so it'll be uh, make sure
you be on the lookout for it. You know, we're
gonna be answering any questions. I think that's a cool
thing of what we're trying to do is engage with
you more and so we'll be uh putting it out
there on social definitely paying attention one. We will be
doing these episodes live so that, uh, that way you
can pop in ask questions that you have in real
(00:44):
time and obviously be a part of the of the pod.
So today wanted to dive into there's three big misconceptions
I've been seeing about strength and golf And actually it's funny.
This morning at the gym, I was lifting and I
was wearing my p first golf shirt and squatting. I
mean not certainly not a lot, not a lot of
(01:04):
weight for people who are really really strong, but for
those of you you know who don't know what you're
looking for in golf from a strength perspective, is basically
one point twenty five times body weight for a bench press,
one point five times body weight for a squat, and
one point seven five times body weight for a deadlift.
(01:25):
So I'm about two hundred pounds, so you'd want to
squat three hundred be able to squat three hundred pounds.
I actually can squat more than that, So that was
that was fun, but it is a diminished point of
return at that point. So anyway, so I had my
two point or one point five plus X on my
on and I was squatting with a golf shirt on.
Guy comes up to me in the gym and he says, hey, man,
that's probably you play golf. And I was like yeah,
(01:47):
and he said that's probably like too much too much weight. Man,
you're gonna you're gonna get stiff, and you're not gonna
be able. You gonna lose you be able to swing
the golf club as well. And so I just kind
of smiled and I thanked him for his advice. Hopefully
he's listening now and he'll get the actual science behind it.
And while there's certainly no need from a speed standpoint
to squat more than one point five times your body weight.
(02:08):
Lifting heavy does not actually make you stiff or hurt
your golf swing. That is absolute. In the fun buzzword
of the last few years, that's fake news that really,
when we're talking about swinging the golf club fast, you
need to be able to produce force and you need
to be able to produce it fast. So that's going
to give you power output, and then impulse is how
long of a time you can apply that. So the
(02:29):
implication is that if you get too strong that you
lose mobility. In therefore you actually decrease the amount of
time that you're going to have to produce a clip
a speed. You know, produce the force which will produce
club a speed. So if you've ever seen a gymnast
in the Olympics, they obviously are incredibly strong and incredibly flexible.
I think where this misconception comes from is the idea
(02:50):
that when you look at somebody who only does strength
training or powerlifting and they don't ever do any mobility work,
and then they try to move like they have no mobility,
and it's not because they're like super strong because they
don't do any mobility work. So as long as you're
doing your mobility work across your core four of your hips,
your shoulders, your spine, your thorastic spine, and your your
(03:10):
cervical spine, as long as you're maintaining those areas of mobility,
you actually have no concern at all that lifting heavy
will make you stiff or hurt your golf swing. It's
all about the recovery, making sure you're taking care of
your tissue. So if you're doing that correctly, Again, the
numbers that you're searching for in terms of like a
goal would be one point twenty five times body weight
for a bench press, one point five times body weight
(03:32):
for a squat, and one point seven five times body
weight for a deadlift. If you go above that, certainly
welcome to not gonna hurt your golf swing. But that
is kind of where we see the diminishing returns in
terms of clubheed speed going up. All right, So let's
go to the second misconception that I see, and that's
that you should only lift a lightweight and high volume.
So this is kind of I guess dovetailed with the
(03:53):
first misconception I see. I think This is actually the
second part of the conversation with this guy at the
gym is he said, you know you should, you should
really only like throw one thirty five on there at
most and just do tons of reps because you got
to walk really far on golf. It's an endurance sport.
He was very confident. It was pretty funny, a nice
guy though, So I thanked him, and it just couldn't
be more wrong. Golf is not an endurance sport. It
(04:14):
is a power sport that you basically explode, you know,
max effort for less than the golf swing is less
than the down swing is less than a second literally,
and then you got like five minutes until yeah, your
next your next swing. So actually, let's do the math here.
So let's see. So if you got five minutes, so
(04:34):
that'd be what three hundred seconds less than a second,
call it point eight seconds, So I mean, yeah, I
mean that's crazy. It's more that's like a six hundred
to one work to rest to work ratio. Like typically
when you're doing like Olympic lifting or something like, you're
very explosive, you're looking you know, maybe ten to one
work to rest ratios. You're talking five hundred to one.
(04:55):
I mean that's a massively long time for the glycolytic
and the anaerobic systems to reap. The now, is there
aerobic capacity necessary when you're you know walking, well, yeah,
I mean you're gonna walk five six miles over the course,
But it's such the sub threshold, such aerobic capacity threshold,
that it's not really an endurance issue. And in fact,
(05:16):
if you're doing lots of low weight and high reps
and high reps being you know, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty reps,
you're actually training your body and your systems to go slower.
You're not training the explosive, high level force outputs that
you want. And unfortunately, if you're doing a lot of
high rep work in season, it's the volume, the number
of reps you do that actually creates fatigue in season.
(05:38):
The actual the way that you want to be lifting
is going heavy and you know maybe three sets or
three reps and a set you know three by three's,
you know, three x five's really at most, and that
allows you to keep your nervous system primed and producing
a lot of power without having the fatiguing effects of
lots of volume. So that's misconception number two is that
you should only lift a light weights and high volume,
(06:01):
very high on the bs meters. So let's get to
the third here, and this is that strength training is
not even necessary for the game of golf. Now, this
was very evident if you look down the tour trailers,
you know, in the early two thousands, pretty much empty,
maybe a guy smoking a cigar on on a machine,
just kind of hanging out. Other than Tiger Woods, who
was in there. Gary Player, you know in the early
(06:21):
early days, is kind of the only guy in there
as well. Now there's two tour trailers out there. I
mean there's there's a workout trailers or rehab trailer, I
mean there's. It is so much a part and accepted
as a part of an important part, critical part of
the game of golf to be successful at the highest
levels that this is just asinine at this point. But
there's still a lot of old school kind of thought
(06:43):
out there in the golf for a particularly the amateur
side of things, that well, look at that guy, he
doesn't look he's skinny, and look how far he hits it,
or that guy, you know, I was a John Daly
camp full fat was another funny comment that that that's
been said. But at the end of the day, when
you're looking at what the sport golf is, it's a
sport where you need to produce a lot of power
(07:03):
repeatedly over a long period of time. The higher level
of strength that you have, the bigger you're I used
the analogy of jar of marbles. So the bigger your
jar of marbles is, every time you swing, you've got
to take a marble out. So the bigger that jar is,
the more marbles you can fit in, obviously, and so
what we're looking at is the stronger that you get,
it makes your jar bigger, and so you when you're
(07:26):
out of marbles, that's when you get hurt. That's when
bad things happen or be seen when that jar gets low.
So the bigger we can make that jar, the less
likely it is that you can't get hurt. Us like
is that you know there's going to be inconsistency issues,
all those things that goes awry from a golf side
of things. So really strength training is essential for golf.
It is one hundred percent necessary to play good golf.
(07:47):
And the stronger that you can get while maintaining your
mobility Chiostik there, just to make sure that that's not
missed from misconception number one. Getting stronger while maintaining your
mobility is how you actually stay healthy and how you
actually are able to, you know, play the game of
golf for as long as possible, at as high a
level as possible, so that it's fun for you. Hopefully
(08:09):
you know that helps kind of dispel those three big
misconceptions that I see about strength training and golf. Thank
you to my my friend this morning at the gym
who had that conversation with me. It inspired this for everyone.
But as always, I hope that hope that helped you
guys in terms of giving you some nuggets in terms
of what to think about when you're strength training. Obviously
gives you some targets to shoot for when you're thinking
(08:32):
about how much should I be able to lift? And
you know, at the end of the day, the goal
here is to try to prevent all you ticking time
bombs from exploding, and so hopefully this is another step
in that direction. So thanks always for hanging out with
me here at the golf in this bound squad. We'll
catch you next time.
I'm Chic on the Rule. Welcome to the Golf Fitness
Bomb Squad. I'm your host, Chris Finn and today we
are actually live uh on x as well as recording here,
so that uh, you know, you're listening now, maybe in
(00:22):
your car wherever you are. This is what we're gonna
start doing going forward, so it'll be uh, make sure
you be on the lookout for it. You know, we're
gonna be answering any questions. I think that's a cool
thing of what we're trying to do is engage with
you more and so we'll be uh putting it out
there on social definitely paying attention one. We will be
doing these episodes live so that, uh, that way you
can pop in ask questions that you have in real
(00:44):
time and obviously be a part of the of the pod.
So today wanted to dive into there's three big misconceptions
I've been seeing about strength and golf And actually it's funny.
This morning at the gym, I was lifting and I
was wearing my p first golf shirt and squatting. I
mean not certainly not a lot, not a lot of
(01:04):
weight for people who are really really strong, but for
those of you you know who don't know what you're
looking for in golf from a strength perspective, is basically
one point twenty five times body weight for a bench press,
one point five times body weight for a squat, and
one point seven five times body weight for a deadlift.
(01:25):
So I'm about two hundred pounds, so you'd want to
squat three hundred be able to squat three hundred pounds.
I actually can squat more than that, So that was
that was fun, but it is a diminished point of
return at that point. So anyway, so I had my
two point or one point five plus X on my
on and I was squatting with a golf shirt on.
Guy comes up to me in the gym and he says, hey, man,
that's probably you play golf. And I was like yeah,
(01:47):
and he said that's probably like too much too much weight. Man,
you're gonna you're gonna get stiff, and you're not gonna
be able. You gonna lose you be able to swing
the golf club as well. And so I just kind
of smiled and I thanked him for his advice. Hopefully
he's listening now and he'll get the actual science behind it.
And while there's certainly no need from a speed standpoint
to squat more than one point five times your body weight.
(02:08):
Lifting heavy does not actually make you stiff or hurt
your golf swing. That is absolute. In the fun buzzword
of the last few years, that's fake news that really,
when we're talking about swinging the golf club fast, you
need to be able to produce force and you need
to be able to produce it fast. So that's going
to give you power output, and then impulse is how
long of a time you can apply that. So the
(02:29):
implication is that if you get too strong that you
lose mobility. In therefore you actually decrease the amount of
time that you're going to have to produce a clip
a speed. You know, produce the force which will produce
club a speed. So if you've ever seen a gymnast
in the Olympics, they obviously are incredibly strong and incredibly flexible.
I think where this misconception comes from is the idea
(02:50):
that when you look at somebody who only does strength
training or powerlifting and they don't ever do any mobility work,
and then they try to move like they have no mobility,
and it's not because they're like super strong because they
don't do any mobility work. So as long as you're
doing your mobility work across your core four of your hips,
your shoulders, your spine, your thorastic spine, and your your
(03:10):
cervical spine, as long as you're maintaining those areas of mobility,
you actually have no concern at all that lifting heavy
will make you stiff or hurt your golf swing. It's
all about the recovery, making sure you're taking care of
your tissue. So if you're doing that correctly, Again, the
numbers that you're searching for in terms of like a
goal would be one point twenty five times body weight
for a bench press, one point five times body weight
(03:32):
for a squat, and one point seven five times body
weight for a deadlift. If you go above that, certainly
welcome to not gonna hurt your golf swing. But that
is kind of where we see the diminishing returns in
terms of clubheed speed going up. All right, So let's
go to the second misconception that I see, and that's
that you should only lift a lightweight and high volume.
So this is kind of I guess dovetailed with the
(03:53):
first misconception I see. I think This is actually the
second part of the conversation with this guy at the
gym is he said, you know you should, you should
really only like throw one thirty five on there at
most and just do tons of reps because you got
to walk really far on golf. It's an endurance sport.
He was very confident. It was pretty funny, a nice
guy though, So I thanked him, and it just couldn't
be more wrong. Golf is not an endurance sport. It
(04:14):
is a power sport that you basically explode, you know,
max effort for less than the golf swing is less
than the down swing is less than a second literally,
and then you got like five minutes until yeah, your
next your next swing. So actually, let's do the math here.
So let's see. So if you got five minutes, so
(04:34):
that'd be what three hundred seconds less than a second,
call it point eight seconds, So I mean, yeah, I
mean that's crazy. It's more that's like a six hundred
to one work to rest to work ratio. Like typically
when you're doing like Olympic lifting or something like, you're
very explosive, you're looking you know, maybe ten to one
work to rest ratios. You're talking five hundred to one.
(04:55):
I mean that's a massively long time for the glycolytic
and the anaerobic systems to reap. The now, is there
aerobic capacity necessary when you're you know walking, well, yeah,
I mean you're gonna walk five six miles over the course,
But it's such the sub threshold, such aerobic capacity threshold,
that it's not really an endurance issue. And in fact,
(05:16):
if you're doing lots of low weight and high reps
and high reps being you know, ten, twelve, fifteen, twenty reps,
you're actually training your body and your systems to go slower.
You're not training the explosive, high level force outputs that
you want. And unfortunately, if you're doing a lot of
high rep work in season, it's the volume, the number
of reps you do that actually creates fatigue in season.
(05:38):
The actual the way that you want to be lifting
is going heavy and you know maybe three sets or
three reps and a set you know three by three's,
you know, three x five's really at most, and that
allows you to keep your nervous system primed and producing
a lot of power without having the fatiguing effects of
lots of volume. So that's misconception number two is that
you should only lift a light weights and high volume,
(06:01):
very high on the bs meters. So let's get to
the third here, and this is that strength training is
not even necessary for the game of golf. Now, this
was very evident if you look down the tour trailers,
you know, in the early two thousands, pretty much empty,
maybe a guy smoking a cigar on on a machine,
just kind of hanging out. Other than Tiger Woods, who
was in there. Gary Player, you know in the early
(06:21):
early days, is kind of the only guy in there
as well. Now there's two tour trailers out there. I
mean there's there's a workout trailers or rehab trailer, I
mean there's. It is so much a part and accepted
as a part of an important part, critical part of
the game of golf to be successful at the highest
levels that this is just asinine at this point. But
there's still a lot of old school kind of thought
(06:43):
out there in the golf for a particularly the amateur
side of things, that well, look at that guy, he
doesn't look he's skinny, and look how far he hits it,
or that guy, you know, I was a John Daly
camp full fat was another funny comment that that that's
been said. But at the end of the day, when
you're looking at what the sport golf is, it's a
sport where you need to produce a lot of power
(07:03):
repeatedly over a long period of time. The higher level
of strength that you have, the bigger you're I used
the analogy of jar of marbles. So the bigger your
jar of marbles is, every time you swing, you've got
to take a marble out. So the bigger that jar is,
the more marbles you can fit in, obviously, and so
what we're looking at is the stronger that you get,
it makes your jar bigger, and so you when you're
(07:26):
out of marbles, that's when you get hurt. That's when
bad things happen or be seen when that jar gets low.
So the bigger we can make that jar, the less
likely it is that you can't get hurt. Us like
is that you know there's going to be inconsistency issues,
all those things that goes awry from a golf side
of things. So really strength training is essential for golf.
It is one hundred percent necessary to play good golf.
(07:47):
And the stronger that you can get while maintaining your
mobility Chiostik there, just to make sure that that's not
missed from misconception number one. Getting stronger while maintaining your
mobility is how you actually stay healthy and how you
actually are able to, you know, play the game of
golf for as long as possible, at as high a
level as possible, so that it's fun for you. Hopefully
(08:09):
you know that helps kind of dispel those three big
misconceptions that I see about strength training and golf. Thank
you to my my friend this morning at the gym
who had that conversation with me. It inspired this for everyone.
But as always, I hope that hope that helped you
guys in terms of giving you some nuggets in terms
of what to think about when you're strength training. Obviously
gives you some targets to shoot for when you're thinking
(08:32):
about how much should I be able to lift? And
you know, at the end of the day, the goal
here is to try to prevent all you ticking time
bombs from exploding, and so hopefully this is another step
in that direction. So thanks always for hanging out with
me here at the golf in this bound squad. We'll
catch you next time.
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