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.
Guidelines for Your Golf Flexibility Program
The Tour moved just down the road to Fort Worth last week for the Colonial. While the PGA Tour was in Texas, I am guessing New York was on the minds of many. The second major of the year is four weeks away. I know Phil is already preparing for it, and sectional qualifiers for the U.S. Open begin this next week.
Reading through this column the last few weeks, you are probably well aware of how important flexibility is in relation to executing an efficient golf swing. It's like leaving your putter at home. If you don't have it, the game gets a little harder. As does the golf swing, if your muscles are "tight" and your joints stiff.
Knowing what we know in relation to flexibility and the golf swing it can be agreed upon that flexibility exercises should be a part of a golf swing improvement program. In order to get the greatest benefit from our flexibility exercises there are a few guidelines to follow when performing your flexibility exercises. This will help give you the "biggest bang for your buck."
We know the goal of flexibility training is to "stretch" (i.e. lengthen) muscle and connective tissue that are "tight" (i.e. shortened).
The easiest way to picture this is to visualize a rubber band. Muscles and connective tissue act like rubber bands. When you stretch a rubber band it gets longer, and once you stop stretching it. It gets shorter, and if you continue to stretch a rubber band, over and over again. Eventually it will get bigger.
Knowing muscles and connective tissues act like rubber bands there a few guidelines to follow with your flexibility exercises. Number one is the principle of consistency. Muscles and connective tissue will return to their original length after a stretch is completed (much like a rubber band). If a stretch is performed on a muscle over and over again for a long period of time, the muscle will remain in a more lengthened position (much like a rubber band that is stretched over and over again). Bottom line is flexibility exercises must be performed consistently over a long period of time to benefit the golf swing.
Our second principle to guide our flexibility training is termed, "the tissue tension point." The tissue tension point is an individual point in every stretch. It is an actual position within a stretch where if you go beyond this point, you can easily cause a strain to the muscle, and if you do not go to this point the benefits of the stretch will be minimal.
The tissue tension point is the position within a flexibility exercise that you first feel a "stretch" in the muscle. This is the position which you should hold your stretch for the prescribed amount of time. Let's use a toe touch stretch as an example. If you're performing a toe touch stretch, where you reach your hands down towards your toes. At some point in the reaching of your hands towards your toes, you will begin to feel tension (i.e. a stretch) in your hamstrings. The first point at which you feel the "stretch" in your hamstring is your tissue tension point. This is where you should stop and hold the stretch. Going beyond this position increases the chances of "pulling" or "straining" a hamstring. Not going to this position limits the benefits of the flexibility exercise.
So remember, muscles and connective tissue are like rubber bands. You must be consistent with your flexibility training, and remember the tissue tension point is your friend.
Previous blog entries:
05/16/06 Assess Your Flexibility First
05/09/06 Better Golf Exercises to Improve Your Swing
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
