We are pleased to announce that Sean Cochran, a nationally renowned golf fitness instructor and the personal golf fitness trainer to 2005 PGA Champion Phil Mickelson, has joined PGA.com as a fitness advisor. Cochran, who also has served as strength and conditioning coach for the Milwaukee Brewers and San Diego Padres major league baseball teams, will write a weekly fitness blog that will appear exclusively on PGA.com. He'll update it a couple of times a week, telling you about how to achieve better fitness, life on the road -- and in the gym -- with Lefty, plus answer your questions about fitness and how it can help you play better golf. More of Cochran's articles and his acclaimed fitness aids are available at his web site, www.bioforcegolf.com.
Better Golf Exercises to Improve Your Swing
We just finished up a rain-soaked Wachovia Championship in Charlotte. The PGA Tour is now headed to the Dallas area and the Byron Nelson Championship.
This was a great tournament and golf course in Charlotte, tree-lined holes, small greens, heavy rough and water made this tournament a challenge. Many in the media were comparing this course to the likes of a U.S. Open set-up. We will just have to wait until June to see any true comparison.
Over the last few weeks, we have been discussing the basic components of your body and its affect on your golf swing. You might recall I spoke about that in order to support the biomechanics of the golf swing in an efficient manner, you need pretty high levels of flexibility, balance, muscular strength, endurance and power.
If your body is lacking in any of these areas, your ability to execute the biomechanics of the golf swing will be negatively affected in the long term, if not the short term.
Your goal for your golf fitness program should be simple. Use specific golf fitness training to improve your flexibility, balance, muscular strength, endurance, and power.
For you to be successful with your program, several training principles must be followed.
Cross specificity training is a key principle in golf fitness exercises and the development of the body around the golf swing.
Training cross specifically is really using training techniques and exercises to improve your body specific to the positions your body will be in and move during your activity.
The goal of cross specificity training is to develop a transfer of training effect.
"Transfer of training effect is the ability of the training program to have a direct benefit on the performance of the athlete during competition." -- Juan Carlos Santana, Institute of Performance, Boca Rotan, Fla.
The majority of off-the-shelf, generic and general fitness programs DO NOT address your needs relative to dramatically improving your flexibility, balance, strength, endurance and power for your golf swing.
You might see some modest improvement in your golf game with these generic fitness programs. But, for you to get the most out of the time you spend working out and improve your golf game, whatever your motivation, you need to fix the problems with your body before you see real gains in your game.
Make your workouts more golf specific.
Previous blog entries:
05/02/06 Developing a Repeatable Golf Swing and Your Body
04/26/06 Increasing the Clubhead Speed in Your Golf Swing
04/18/06 How To Prepare for Your Round
04/17/06 Swing Faults are Not Really Swing Faults
03/27/06 You can improve balance in your swing
03/24/06 Improve Your Flexibility and See Results in Your Swing
03/20/06 Your Body is the Foundation of Improving Your Golf Swing
