Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the golf in this Bomb Squad, I'm your host,
Chris Finn, and today I want to talk about springing
into golf a little a little fun play on words there,
because I know it's the time of year where a
lot of us in the United States are coming out
of the winter kind of trying to get the rust
off and defrost our bodies, especially as we approach the Masters.
(00:34):
So we're gonna talk about how to shift your training,
uh as we get into the season for peak performance.
So you know, I think the probably the easiest way
to think about getting ready for the season. I really
like the the de thawing so and I think it
works in all cases if you have been training over
(00:54):
the off season or if you have not. So in
both cases, if you have, you know, in the first case,
if you have been training, if you're doing it correctly
in the off season, you're going to be doing a
lot more volume you're trying to build up. I always
talk about the goal of the off season is being
to build as big of a jar of marbles as
humanly possible, because every time you go play, a marble
comes out, So the bigger the jar is to start
(01:17):
the season the less likely you are to run out
of marbles and you know, basically lose your marbles and
get hurt. So the bigger jar that you can have
going into the season, the more durable that you're going
to be, more more speed, you're going to have, less
injury prone, you're going to be all those good things.
(01:37):
So that's the one shift is as if you've been
working out, you're going to go from doing lots of
volume trying to build up big of as big of
a bucket as possible, to starting to decrease the reps,
decrease the sets, and basically getting to the point where
after you work out, you're not like sore to go
play golf because you're gonna you want to go perform
on the golf course. So really you're shifting to you know,
(01:59):
maintaining max power output strength outputs, but really starting to
shift into you know, training the specific speed so that
you can be explosive through the season. Here. Now case two,
you didn't do anything during the off season. Uh. In
those cases, uh, you know this is about I use
the d thawing. Uh in terms of we got to
(02:21):
get the rust off, we gotta we gotta loosen you up.
I think the number one focus is really going to be, uh,
you know, really be about getting mobile, and that comes
obviously in the four roadary centers hip, particularly speaking hip
internal rotation, shoulder external rotation. Uh, you got neck rotation,
then you have spinal rotation or thrastic spine rotation. The
(02:44):
way you can think of if your arms crossed on
your shoulders, being able to you know, make a good
turn into your back swing and then come through through
follow through, impact and follow through. So that's always the
first place to start when you're coming out of an
off season that you haven't really done anything, and then
you're obviously you know, then just you're gonna try to
almost do a micro cycle of the off season. So
(03:07):
if I was starting today and I had maybe you know,
eight weeks till peak season, right summertime, and I may
have a golf trip coming up, I may do like
two weeks heavy focused on mobility, then try to transition
to do a little less mobility, just maintain it. I'm
gonna do maybe a four week phase of just trying
to get you know, get a little bit stronger, and
(03:28):
then those last two weeks going into the season, I'm
just trying to kind of maintain the strength outputs and mobility,
and maybe I decrease like the number of days that
I'm that I'm working on stuff so very high level.
That's just kind of the you know, without getting into
the nitty gritty of it being super specific, but I
think that the common mistake that people make when they're
ramping up their training is they do it too quickly.
(03:50):
So for those of you coming out of the winner
and you're like, crap, golf's coming, I should do something.
Probably the worst thing you could do is try to
just you know, go from not doing anything to jacking
up till you know, five times a week, trying to
go to the gym, like you're just going to be
so sore, it's not going to go well, your swing's
going to suck because your body's sore. I think the
(04:12):
key is, you know, as always, is trying to have
a sustainable plan that is going to stay with you
throughout the year. And I think this is a big
part that people miss is that they think, oh, I'm
going to work on my golf workouts in the off season,
and then once it gets warm and I start playing.
Thanks for the results, Thanks for the gains. I'll be
back next year, right, And that's kind of what you're
saying to the gym and the problem with that, And
(04:35):
we have data to back this up based on all
the internal stuff that we've looked at as we look
at people who do that. For the last ten years,
we've looked at people who gain. How much would people
gain in the off season, And then there's always a
handful of people despite our advice and please with them
to please don't stop, don't stop, Please continue to do
(04:57):
the an nd season program, which is less time, it's
it's less reps. You will not be sore, you'll actually
play better, but not I'm good. I'll be back next
I'll be back in the falling seasons done or the
winter time. Inevitably, without fail, when those people come back,
they are best case, at the same spot they were
(05:17):
at the beginning of the off season, right. So they've
lost all the games that they made in the off season.
So you've put in all that time, effort, money, sweat, tears, soreness,
you've put all that time in and net when you
get back to the start of the season, it's all gone.
That's best case, worst case and average. What we typically
see is that you're actually going to probably be somewhere
(05:39):
in the realm of two to five percent worse than
when you started the last off season. So that's no boy,
you know, and that's assuming that you didn't get hurt.
A lot of times we call August and September duct
tape season. This is the time of year when the
guys and girls who have stopped working out their bodies
start breaking down because now they're going on twelve sixteen
(06:02):
weeks of a lot of golf with no maintenance of mobility,
with no maintenance of strength, and so now their sports
specific skill of swinging a golf club is really primed.
So they're going fast because neurologically, that's all they've been
doing for twelve to sixteen weeks. And obviously fast is relative,
you know for some of you and maybe ninety miles
an hour for others of you at maybe one hundred
(06:24):
and thirty miles an hour. But that has now become
the prime training adaptions just swinging a golf club. As
you're going really really fast, but you've now lost the strength,
which is the breaks and the armor to keep you healthy.
You've probably tightened up and lost mobility. If you haven't
been maintaining that not probably you have, there's no question
(06:45):
on that. And so now you're starting to just take
that speed and run it into walls, and that ultimately
leads to elbow tweaks, back tweaks, you know, whatever you
name it, neck shoulder, the injury or the tweak curs.
You know, it's hard to play two days in a row.
You're you're dealing with these nagging things, all avoidable if
(07:06):
you just shift to an NDASON program. So that's kind
of that's why it's so important that we're making adjustments
throughout the year. And I think there's a couple of
key adjustments throughout the year, but particularly for the springtime here,
and number one is mobilities first, and that's just making
sure that you know, if you're listening to this today,
within the next four weeks, make sure you can pass
(07:28):
all four of the rotary mobilities tests your hips, your shoulders,
your spine, your neck. If you can do that, then
you know that fundamentally you are able to get from
any point A to point B and your golf swing
that your golf coach or that you are trying to
get to, and that from a mobility standpoint, there is
zero limitation. The other benefit of this is we've looked
at this on three D kinematic data. All the little
(07:49):
balls kind of attached to your body, and you like,
you look like a like a video game character. If
you have full mobility, the consistency in which you start
with your hips and then your tour so then your
hands and then the club, you know, all this ground
up sequencing. That consistency is like double right. You go
(08:09):
from if you take ten swings instead of four out
of ten, you know, being the same, Now you go
to eight out of ten being the same. So there's
a consistency in your body movement that occurs that you know. Shocker. Yeah.
If you're thinking, oh, if my body moves more consistently,
would my swing be more consistent, yes, answer is yes, yes, yes.
So mobility first, So when we're talking about kind of
(08:30):
the key adjustments, that's the number one thing. Number two
is looking at your speed and power development. And this
is the shift away from a lot of high volume.
I'm going to get specific here in tactical for all
of you. So high volume is basically more than eight
reps at this point in the year. So if you're
doing more than eight reps in a set that is
(08:51):
high volume, so you want to be shifting generally down
to three to five. I typically will have our players
in kind of the five three sets of five range
right now, and that's when you get to your fifth rep,
you probably got two reps left in the tank, so
that you're not you know, maxing out your you know,
basically your force production, which will lead you to be
a little bit more sore at that rate. At that level.
(09:14):
As we get to the end season, which we're going
to do this throughout the year to kind of as
the season's changed to hopefully give you guys some context
of what you should be doing, those volumes will actually
drop even more down to sets of threes. But you know,
three sets of five is solid right now. Uh. And
then you're you're also looking at you know, hopefully in
the off season you were working on your aerobic capacity.
(09:36):
That is going to help your ability to recover maintain
energy levels. Uh. You know for multiple rounds, maybe you
got thirty six holes in a day coming up recovery
after you got to play two days in a row. Uh,
if you didn't do any of that very simply if
you're not working out, you're not playing, try to even
just build in you know, where you go walk on
an incline on a treadmill for you know, thirty minutes
(09:59):
or so, you know at the threshold that you want
to get to for this as you ideally like to
go as hard as you can or as fast as
you can at as high of an incline as you
can while being able to still breathe through your nose.
So kind of pushing yourself to that threat, that threshold
where you have to start breathing through your mouth, that's
(10:22):
just generally correlates to the correct heart rate zone for
you guys, to build that aerobic capacity up. So that'll
help to very simple crude if you're an xcise physiologist,
I know that's not actually accurate, but trying to do
this for the for the general people listening, Uh, it's
a it's close enough for the amateur golfer who's trying
to kind of cram here as we get into the
(10:45):
into the spring. So the big three key adjustments make
sure the mobility is good in the four road rey centers. Uh,
you know, shifting your speed and power development away from
the kind of end you know, high volume strength focused,
so it's really more max strength. Then you're starting to
maybe build some speed training in. We had a recent
episode coming up or maybe prior to this, I'm not sure.
(11:10):
With one of the top number four world long drive
competitors in the world at the time of the recording,
likely I'm going to make a prediction will he'll make
a good run for the World championship this year. And
so he talks about speed training and how he does
it and how the best and the fastest in the
world do it. This is the time of year we're
kind of getting into that. It's not a bad idea
to start getting that body primed up. Assuming you number
(11:32):
one pass all your road re centers, and number two
are strong enough to support faster speed than you're currently doing.
That's we also have the I always mentioned the home
assessment for the four road re centers to check your mobility.
We also actually have, you know, we do offer you know,
a free with that assessment, you know, a free consultation.
We'll actually tell you what it all means. We can
(11:53):
on those calls even tell you. We have what's called
our safe Swing speed calculator based on your physical metrics.
What is the safe speed for you at your age
and your physical capabilities at this point. That helps to
give you some some some optics into should I be
doing speed training or is that asking for injury? So
that hopefully kind of you know mobility, first, change up
(12:14):
your strength work, start adding in some speed work, and
then obviously making sure we're doing something to prep for
playing multiple days in a row, helping your recovery in
those longer summer days. So if you didn't already start
that in the off season, you know, very simply walking
on some inclines to the point where you know you're
still able to breathe through your nose, but if you
want any harder, you'd have to start breathing through your
(12:34):
mouth is generally a good guideline a of the correct
heart rate zone for you. Now, the next thing I
want to get into before we wrap this is kind
of last thing. Is the number one mistake that you
need to avoid the spring, and this is this is
a big one. I think the number one mistake that
most of you either historically have made or will make
(12:59):
is that you see the ads for the Masters and
you immediately want to go bang. Hundreds and hundreds of
balls when you haven't hit anything. Just as we're talking
in the gym, you want to ramp up. You don't
want to go all out as hard as you can.
So many people will go out to the range and
just beat hundreds and hundreds of balls when you haven't
hit balls in months. And I think also you want
(13:21):
to be careful hitting on mats. We see lots of
risk and elbow injuries starting to come in this time
of year because you go from doing nothing to banging
a couple hundred balls on a mat, and the vibration
that comes up on the mat that's sitting on the
concrete up through that shaft first enters through your wrist
and your elbow, and that's why we get golfers and
you know in tennis elbow mediu not all elbow issues.
(13:42):
So I think the simplest thing is ramp ups. You know,
have a purpose when you go practice. Don't just say,
you know, just beat the same club one hundred thousand times.
Have a purpose of what you're doing, and then really
make sure you're ramping up track. If you're gonna do
fifty balls today, you know way today, then go back,
maybe you try seventy five or one hundred and listen
(14:03):
to your body ultimately is the number one piece of
advice here. If you're sore after hitting balls yesterday, don't
hit more the next time, hit the same amount and
see if you feel better. And if you had been
working out all winter, these this sort of an issue
should be a bit mitigated for you. So so obviously
kind of just to wrap up, the number one thing
(14:24):
that I would love for you guys to do is
grab the home assessment see where you're at coming into
this spring. I remember the three adjustments sort are three
key pieces for you to spring or Number one is
your mobility good? That home assessment tool will give you
the answer immediately within less than five minutes if you
are or if you are not. The other thing from
that is I would really strongly encourage you guys jump
on a call. It's free with our team, and we're
(14:47):
going to be able to tell you on the speed
side of things, how fast can you safely go right now?
And should you start doing some speed training because if
you should, this is a great time you're to do it.
And then obviously give you some insights into how to
ramp those and all those sorts of things and kind
of the most important thing for you to do to
play the best golf you possibly can this year. So,
(15:08):
as always, thank you for hanging out with me here
on the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad podcast and I look
forward to catching you the next episode