168: 7 Ways to Fix Your Body.

I have yet to meet anyone, especially a golfer that doesn’t have some sort of lingering injury, imbalances in strength, lack of mobility, or some other issue going on that is in one way or another limiting their golf game. Thus it is likely that in one way or another, you need to Fix Your Body if you want to escalate your game.

It seems that most of the mistakes we make on the golf course that cost us the most strokes are not so much technique issues, but are simply due to sloppiness and stupid mistakes.  In my opinion, if we can cut down the unforced errors that we make because of fatigue, limited mobility, and compensations that our body has to make throughout the rounds, we can drop some serious strokes.

So in this week’s episode, I decided we need to break down some concrete tactics that you can use to help get your body more balanced out and fix some of those physical discrepancies.

1. Find out where you struggle and do more of it

   1. What are areas you already have difficulties with or don’t like? You might just not be good because you never do it!
   2. Program in more ways to work on that or a broken-down version of that. (ex. Pullups, leg exercises, nonfun stuff)
   3. Bigger exercises (you’ll be surprised at what else gets stronger)

2. Upper body vs lower body (more lower than upper)

   1. Rarely do guys do an equal amount of lower to upper body work.  If anything you should include more lower body work in your weekly routine than upper body work.
   2. Most lowerbody ex’s use some sort of upper body strength
   3. Chicken Legs (Look at Koepka, Spieth, Johnson, Jack, Arnie, etc.)

3. Push/pull and front/back

   1. Most individuals are more front-side dominant due to being desk jockies, sitting in a car all of the time and being on our phones.
   2. Make sure you have equal pulls to pushes (if not more) in your programs
   3. Most grown men I know cant do a pullup.  Why is this? Because we rarely work on our pulling movements in comparison to our pushing movements

4. Unilateral exercises (ever noticed 1 side stronger than the other?)

   1. Start with weaker side
   2. Let weaker side dictate the amount of weight
   3. Do an extra set on the weaker side
   4. Unilateral exercises work the core and stabilization in a completely different way than bilateral exercises.
   5. Favorite unilateral exercise:
      1. Split squats, 1-leg squats, lunges, variations of esp. bulgarians
      2. Single leg deadlifts, single leg bridges
      3. 1 arm presses (hang half-off, 1-arm cable presses
      4. 1-arm rows, plank rows, pulldowns
      5. 1-arm deadlifts (KB)

1. Stick to it/Consistency:

   1. Give it a few weeks. Stick with your program for 3-6 weeks.  You will notice an improvement based on
      1. Adaptations from your nervous system
      2. As well as an increase in actual muscle strength
   2. Maintain main components (5 big guns) and they will have carryover (golf fitness roller coaster: Push, Pull, Hinge, Squat, rotation)

2. Variety (but don’t stray too far)

   1. Simple things to mix up that will bring variety to your workout:
      1. change grips (p, s, n)
      2. change stance (wide, staggered, FFE, RFE),
      3. Change resistance (DB, KB, mace, steel clubs),
      4. change angles,
      5. change tempos,
   2. Book EASY STRENGTH by Dan John: not just making tweaks to your workout program
      1. Change environment, new gym, new pieces of equipment
      2. Learn new skills, methodologies
      3. Try new things (sports, activities, hiking, etc)
   3. Follow @pfsgolf, @ando_pfs, @brandon_pfs for some great examples of ceating unique ways of bringing variety into your training.

7. Extra Stuff:

   1. Isolation and Isometrics
   2. Limited ROM and unstable positions
   3. Find your sticky spot and do some isometric contractions (law of specificity : overlap of 15* )
   4. FRC- CARs and PAILs/RAILs (follow @FrankDuffyfitness and @JoeGambinoDPT, @KirkAdamsGolf Par4Performance)
   5. Extras
      1. External rotation shoulders
      2. More hip mobility
      3. Curls (Zottman Curls) yes curls.

Conclusion (7 ways to Fix Your Body)

The bottom line is that in order to get closer to your full potential, you really should figure out ways to fix your body, create more balance, and improve your ability to minimize the stupid mistakes.

Rather than figuring out the perfect way to go about doing this, the more important thing is to simply start doing something.  Start taking the initiative to get better and work on these things consistently.  You’ll never get it 100% right and your body will always need work.  It’s the consistency, dedication, and patience that will pay off in the long run.

So take these 7 tips and start your quest to fix your body, and ultimately, become an entirely different golfer.

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