Golf Fitness Ain’t Body Building
Golf Fitness Ain’t Body Building!
“Golf Fitness” is a term that has been popularized over the past 13 years or so by the likes of the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI 2003) and Tiger Woods (2005?).
Recently, many professional golfers have taken golf fitness to another level in that they are creating (or their trainers are) weight training programs that involve heavier and heavier weights (Body Building?)
In the past few days (at the writing of this post) there has been a “controversy” over some comments that Golf Channel Analyst Brandel Chamblee made regarding Rory McIlroy and some of the videos he has posted. In the videos Rory is shown doing squats with what appears to be a huge amount of weight on a barbell on his shoulders. The exact weight was 265 pounds. He weighs 165 pounds. Rory said: “I am a golfer not a body builder”.
Rory Had A Back Injury At 19 Years Old
Brandel Chamblee gave his opinion that bulking up like that is what hurt Tiger Woods. Brandell thinks it will eventually hinder Rory from being as flexible as he needs to be in performing his golf swing.
Rory gave his explanation that he was doing more weight training to fend off injuries. He started in 2011 doing more muscle building exercises in order to strengthen his back. That’s because at age 19 he had already suffered a minor back injury.
Speed and flexibility are critical to performing a fast golf swing. A fast golf swing equates to longer distance. The ability to start and stop a movement pattern that takes only 1.5 seconds to perform does require strength as well. The question is how much…and…how much is too much. Frankly it seems to be working well from McIlroy right now.
Every golfer in the world would benefit from being more Fit For Golf. That doesn’t mean Body Building. It means working on developing more swing speed, more flexibility and more strength. We feel that the average golfer would benefit from resistance training with bands versus heavy weights or even weight machines.
Also, “Golf Fitness Is Not Measured By Your Waistline” is a blog post I wrote that will explain what I mean. Again, Golf Fitness Ain’t Body Building!
Check out some of the videos on the GolfGym site that will demonstrate the best ways to use resistance training to get stronger, faster and gain more distance with simple and effective routines.
PowerSwing Trainer
PowerSWING Plus
PowerBandz
Thanks for reading!
Ken Pierce
Creator, GolfGym