I wouldn’t consider golfers strength or power athletes, but rather elastic athletes.” -Dr. Stuart McGill on Episode #190 of the 18STRONG podcast. For the past month, I’ve been wearing my physical therapist hat, and digging really, really DEEP on the concept of elasticity, and how us golfers can use it add lots ‘o yards to our drives. Imagine a slingshot. When we draw it back, we create tension and stored energy. Then, when we release it, all of that energy is transferred to the projectile, sending it on its way through the sky. And the farther we draw back on the slingshot, the farther the projectile goes. Turns out, our bodies have a similar system that does just. It’s called our fascia (fa-shuh – short “a” sound like in “apple”). It’s kinda like a big spider web inside our bodies that connects and holds our bodies together. |
In addition to holding our bodies together and providing structure, our fascial system stores and releases energy – like during a golf swing. It’s the same elastic system that kangaroos and cheetahs use to effortlessly bounce around. Now, up until a few years ago, we didn’t have the technology in our imaging equipment to get a good look at the fascial system. So, it really is a newly understood organ in our bodies. Here’s the kicker… What we’ve found is that we can train the system to be more dynamic and explosive – exactly what we need to drive the ball farther. It’s kinda like discovering dynamite…while we originally thought we only had two systems to tap into for explosiveness – our nervous and muscular systems – we now have a third. Which, if you’re keeping track at home, means we’ve uncovered a 33% bigger opportunity for distance that’s been hiding under our noses the entire time. Not sure about you, but I’ll take those numbers. Alright, I don’t want your head to explode with all this science talk in one day, so tomorrow we’ll go even deeper down the rabbit hole. Your #1 Fan, Jeff Pelizzaro PS – If you can’t wait until tomorrow, you can click here for the episode I did with Dr. Stuart McGill where we dive deep into elasticity and fascia. Also, I don’t want to give it away, but on Friday, we may or may not be releasing a shiny, new training that may or may not have to do with the above…stay tuned. |