Building a Better Golfer

Building a Better Golfer
by Bill Hartman, PT, CSCS, ART
www.prperformance.com

When was the last time you truly prepared to play your
best golf game? Now I'm not talking about buying the
right shoes or the best clubs, I'm talking about preparing
yourself to play your best game. Chances are, if you~re
like most golfers, you never have. Sure you took lessons
from the best teacher you could find, but for some reason,
you continue to have good days and bad days on the course.
You still have that one simple fault in your swing that
forces you to hit inconsistently no matter how many lessons
you take. No matter how many balls you hit at the driving
range.

Now consider this. Does a football player just decide he
wants to play football and straps on the pads and takes to
the field? Does a baseball pitcher just head out to the
mound and throw 100 mile an hour fastballs? Of course
not. Then why would a golfer, regardless of his current
abilities, expect to go out and play his best game without
preparing his body first?

Some say, "Well, golf is game of technique and practice.
It's not an athletic event." I totally disagree. When you
swing a golf club, the club head speed can reach 100 miles
an hour. At the same time, the golfer's peak muscle
activity can reach 90% of his or her maximum. That is
equal to a weight lifter lifting a weight only four times
before he could not lift it again due to fatigue. Now if
you~re a pretty decent golfer you may have to generate that
same force up to 40 times a round. And you thought you
were tired on the 18th tee because of the all the walking
you were doing. Guess Again.

Let me give you two recent examples which most golfers will
be familiar with as to how some specific forms of training
can improve your game. First is Tiger Woods, arguably the
best golfer around. He just finished the longest winning
streak in professional golf in 52 years. An astounding
feat in itself until you look at how he won it. How many
times did he come from behind? How did he play his best
golf at the end of the round and hit so consistently when
the other golfers fought themselves to maintain their
game? The answer is he trained for it. The second example
is David Duvall. Has anyone noticed the new slimmed down
version of David Duvall? Why did he lose all that weight
and start working with a trainer to improve his game?
Because he understands that with all the advances in his
equipment and his competitor's equipment, golf scores have
essentially remained the same. So the difference then must
be the golfer himself. When asked why he underwent such a
physical transformation to improve his game Mr. Duvall
simply said, "Because Tiger did it, and I need to keep
up." 'Nuff said.

Now sure, these guys are the big time. They make a living
playing golf. Why should you care? Well, have you ever
spent a little extra money on a specific club in hopes of
increasing your driving distance, and you didn~t notice any
significant improvement? Maybe it~s not the club. Maybe
your body hasn~t been trained properly to produce the
appropriate force at contact with the ball to drive
farther. Have you ever taken a lesson with an experienced
teacher to identify a fault and no matter how much you
practiced, you just couldn~t produce the adjustment in your
swing that you desired? Maybe you lack flexibility in your
shoulders, back, or hips that prevent you from making the
adjustment. You see, it~s not your fault. You just
haven't been trained to produce the golf game you desire to
play.

Sport-Specific Training for the Average Golfer
Any one can improve their golf game without investing in
new equipment or hundreds of hours of lessons simply by
improving four basic physical qualities: flexibility,
stability, strength, and power. A deficiency in any of the
four will result in faulty swings and inconsistent play.

Flexibility

Lack of proper flexibility in the shoulder, back, and hips
can create restrictions in back swing, follow-through, as
well as a loss in your swing plane or create faulty
clubface angles on contact with the ball. Working
consistently toward ideal flexibility can eliminate many of
these swing faults.

Stability

Lack of stability in the trunk produces an inconsistent
address posture and alterations in the swing that can
produce an array of faults causing you to push on one swing
and pull on the next or hit fat then thin. Training for
proper static and dynamic stability produces consistency in
the golf swing from the beginning of a round to the end.

Strength

A lack of proper strengthening of the trunk results in the
most common injuries to the back, elbow, and wrist due to
overuse. Appropriate strength levels in the trunk
musculature allow the golfer to tolerate the tremendous
forces produced in the swing and prevents fatigue which can
reduce performance.

Power

Power is the generation of force per unit time. More power
means faster club head speed resulting in longer drives.
To develop power, you must train for it.

The Bottom Line

You can improve your golf game by training appropriately
regardless of your age or your current physical state.
It~s not about building huge muscles or the perfect body.
In fact, bodybuilding type training will inhibit your
progress. It's about selective strengthening and
increasing flexibility, then integrating those new
qualities with the proper timing within the golf swing.
It's about building a better golfer.

Bill Hartman, PT, CSCS, ART
"Your Golf Fitness Coach"
www.prperformance.com
prperformance1@yahoo.com
(317)507-4459
Ask for my FREE Report "The 8 Keys to Golf Fitness Succss"

This article courtesy of http://www.iprogolf.com.


Golf Blogs of interest that I've found...

How To Build Your Golf Swing
Golf Draw
The Most Important Golf Shot
Golf - how to get started?
Back To Golf
Are You Addicated to Golf?
Get your slice of Golf!
Building a Repeatable Golf Swing
Building a Better Golfer
Strength Your "Core" for Longer Drives
Developing the Right Attitude to Golf

Golf Club Repair
by Dave Lucas
http://www.golfclub-service.com

Golf club repair takes a certain amount of skill, a lot
of patience, and a fine touch with the club in hand. Once
you decided to become a craftsman, you'll also need to be
willing to try new methods and experiment with new tools,
epoxies, shafts, grips and all other general components
that may be pertinent for repairing or building golf clubs.

I recommend reading all the articles that are at your
disposal for tips and how-to-do techniques in accomplishing
your club building jobs. Experiment with several clubs that
are just lieing around. Remove the head from the shaft
without burning the head or damaging the shaft. Bore out
the hosel for those broken shafts inside the club head.

Learn how to save and reuse those expensive shafts and
grips. Try more than one type of epoxy. It's real simple,
just find a way to do a quality job without costing
yourself more than what the project may be worth in time
and money. There are a lot of component stores that offer
free illustration and instructions on the how-to-do
projects. Some of the component catalogs explain very
clearly on how to use or apply their product in conjunction
with another one of there products, which can be
interchangeable with other manufactured components. Having
the tools at hand will allow you make all the adjustments
that you'll need. Once again, the component companies
usually offer those tools that you need to do any job.

You'll notice that I did not go into specifics about how to
repair any particular golf club repair job. There are three
main reasons for that-one is, not every person has the
patience or tolerence for club repairing or building and
two is, not everyone has the time, tools or space to
dedicate golf club repair or building that is needed and
three, it would take more space than the editor is willing
to give to go into all the specific details per particular
incident that may need addressing. However, anyone that has
a simple question on how to repair or build a golf club, I
am willing to share my knowledge, just for the asking.

This article courtesy of http://www.iprogolf.com.

Strength Your "Core" for Longer Drives

Golf tips links:

Golf Draw - The Best Step-By-Step System

Golf Swing - Hit The Ball Longer!

Proper Golf Swing - Save Yourself Time and Money!

Correct Golf Swing - Increase your shot distance!

Golf Club Swing Speed - Approach Each Shot With Confidence!

Golf Swing - Hit Crisp, Powerful, Consistent, Controlled Draws

Golf Tip - Hit The Ball 17 Yards Longer!

Golf Instructions - How You Should Be Gripping The Club For The Best Results!

Golf Exercise - Improve Your Arm Movement

Golf Swing Tip - Here's The Best Way To Consistently Draw The Ball

Dave's Night Golf Experience
by David Humphrey
www.dave-and-maggie-world-of-golf-handicap.com

Have you ever played Night Golf? This really is a
different way to enjoy the game of golf. I can't say this
is the way everyone should play golf. You must be crazy
for the game of golf. Some people said I must be just
plain Crazy. Not only did we play golf at night, we did
this during the wintertime. Now you might see why some
people called me crazy. I agree, I am Crazy, Crazy for
Golf. We enjoyed it so that is all that mattered to us.

Let me tell you how I got started playing night golf. It
was back in 1989 and Christmas time at a friends place. I
still think he had a careful plan on how to get me to try
playing night golf. My friend Bill explained to me how he
was playing night golf with another friend of ours. He
told me how they used a special Night Golf Ball. He
explained that the night golf ball is clear with a hole
through the golf ball. He showed me everything he was
using. You use the hole with, what is called a night glow
stick. The night glow stick does glow in the dark, and hey
you can see it at night. He went on the tell me how you
use a flashlight to see the hole Once you are on the green
and some of the other tricks they used to play golf at
night. To make a long story short, a couple of weeks later
I found myself playing night golf. We would meet at
whatever time the sun went down and it was dark. This was
the winter in Ohio, so dark was quite early. There was
more to worry about than just hitting a golf ball and
hopefully finding it in the dark. You always had to be
concerned with the weather.

The weather never really bothered me so I had no problem
playing golf at night and in the winter. We played golf
twice a week for the rest of the night golf year, that
first year. We considered the Night Golf Season to start
with the clock change in late October and then run all the
way through the winter until the next clock change for
daylight savings time at the end of March. The night golf
season for us was 5 months.

Yes, there was night golf in the summer, but we never
tried it then. We chose the winter because first most
people put their golf clubs away in the basement for the
winter and never touched them again until the spring.
Well, we just loved to play golf and did not want to loose
5 months of golf every year, so we played what we called
Winter Night Golf.

I have seen some of the local golf courses during the
summer have a special summer night golf tournament. They
would advertise some kind of special lighting, but you
still used the same night golf balls. Summer night golf
just starts too late. It gets dark anywhere from 8:30pm to
9:30pm. That is really kind of late if you have to be up
by 6am to get going for work the next morning. Therefore
we played our own Winter Night Golf.

I would like to explain how we played winter night golf. I
guess the first thing we did was always be prepared prior
to even getting out of the car. I always had my golf bag
full of the essentials for night golf. This would include
an extra winter hat, an extra sweater, 2 or more pairs of
what we called winter golf gloves. Sure we had our
favorite beverage in there too. I also had one extra night
golf ball, just in case the worst would happen and plenty
of the night sticks. You just had to be prepared or find
yourself leaving the golf course early because of getting
cold or wet from whatever the weather gods had planned for
you. I personally never got fully dressed until I got to
the golf course. Bill on the other hand used to be fully
dressed and had his car heater turned up hot to get
himself as warm as possible. So we were different with
this preparation. I always started with just one pair of
gloves on and depending on the cold, I might I have to go
to 2 gloves on each hand. I am lucky in the fact that I
can handle cold better than most. My feet would never get
cold and all I wore were tennis shoes and nothing special
for socks. Bill had to have waterproof golf shoes with
very heavy socks to keep his feet warm.

The actual equipment we used to play Winter Night Golf:

Night Golf Ball
Special Golf Ball. Clear with a hole that runs through the
middle of the golf ball from side to side. This hole is
used to hold a night glow stick. When hitting the Night
Golf Ball, you must always first position the ball so the
face of your club is not hitting the holes of where the
night glow stick is located. You can knock the stick out
of the hole of the golf ball if you don't position the
ball right.

Night Stick
The night stick is plastic, as long as a golf ball is
wide. The stick will glow in the dark When cracked. The
color of the glow is usually green. The glow sticks will
start off very bright and slowly loose their brightness as
you hit the ball more times. The danger of the glow sticks
are they could be hit out of the ball if the ball is not
positioned correctly. The glow stick can actually crack
from the force of the club hitting the ball in the cold
weather.

Flashlight

The flashlight is used when either on the green or very
close to the green. Your golf partner will hold the
flashlight directly above the hole, aimed down lighting
the hole up for the person, putting or chipping.

Golf Tee

We used a golf tee like the kind you would find at the
driving range, when you are hitting off the mats. This was
always cut to the height we desired. We used this type of
tee because the ground was almost always frozen.

The rules and ways we played night golf were almost the
same as golf during the day. The rules are the same, we
just added one simple modification, and this had nothing
to do with night time or daylight. It was our winter golf
rule. If the green is covered with snow, then we applied
what we called a 2 putt rule. This means we could never
have anything higher than a 2 putt. If you have never
tried to putt with snow on the green, then you need to try
it sometime. No need to really aim, just get it started in
the right direction and the ball will go where it wants to
go. So we created the 2 putt maximum rule.

Now we always stood behind each other when we hit the
ball. This gave us the best chance to get a good direction
of the golf ball. The ball does light up, but it can be
very hard to see from off to the side. So, we always made
sure we did this. How often did we loose a ball at night
you must be asking yourself, we played night golf for I
think 7 years and yes we lost only one ball in that 7
years. We mainly only stood behind the other one when on
the tee. Most other shots you could follow easily for
yourself.

Hazards of Winter Night Golf:

Full Moon

The full moon was one of the worst nights of the year to
play night golf, this also includes all the nights the
moon is almost full. The moon can be just bright enough to
make it very difficult to follow the ball in the air and
also finding the ball on the ground. We always hoped for a
good cloudy week when the moon was due to be full.

Snow

Snow on the ground is probably the biggest danger of
loosing your golf ball. We never played when the snow was
too deep, so we never lost a ball because of snow. We had
trouble finding the ball because of snow, but never lost
one in the snow. Some snow was just unavoidable. Many
nights when we played it snowed after we started, and I
have to admit, we hardly ever left early because of the
weather.

Cold

Getting cold was probably the worst hazard we could have.
It is a must to keep your feet, hands, and head of your
body warm to keep from getting cold. If you could keep
these 3 areas warm then you simply would not get cold
enough to want to make you quit. I do not ever remember
quitting because of cold.

Intruders

You might be surprised how many different things can
intrude upon the golf course in the night while you are
playing that may you trouble. People stop just to mess
around at night on a golf course. This did not happen
often, but yes we had people just drive up and walk out
onto the golf course. You might be surprised by some of
the animals you might run across at night on a golf
course. The worst we ran across was a skunk a number of
times. No, we never got it by a skunk. Thrown golf clubs
is always a danger. We never threw any golf clubs on
purpose. But standing behind someone while they are
hitting the ball can be dangerous. With so many different
weather conditions from rain to snow to ice to freezing
rain, there were times when it was quite hard to hold onto
the club the way you are used to. Once again we were lucky
neither of us ever got hit by one. Last and most trouble
of all hazards was the police. Maybe this is a good time
to mention that getting approval from the golf course is a
good idea. We really did not have the approval of the golf
course so avoiding the police was priority number one. We
have so many funny stories where the police almost found
us. Funny now that we never did get caught.

We played over 5,000 holes of Winter Night Golf in those 7-
8 years. Oh yes we did keep track on paper. One year we
played over 1,000 holes during the one winter season. That
was our goal, 1,000 holes in one season. It might not
sound like a lot of holes, but most players will not play
1,000 holes of golf in one entire season during the
summer. If you played every Sunday 18 holes of golf from
spring time change all the way through till the fall time
change, we will say that is 30 weeks. You also played in
one league during the week during the summer. This would
give you a grand total of 712 holes of golf for your
summer season. So that really was a lot of holes to play
for us during a 20 period.

It really is a much different game at night. The biggest
difference really isn't the light or should I say lack of
light. The biggest difference for me at least, was the
golf ball. The night golf ball is a solid hard plastic
golf ball with dimples, of course, but it also has a hole
through the middle of it for the night glow stick. If the
ball flew over your head you would hear the familiar sound
of the whistle of the ball. The ball simply didn't travel
as far as you were used to. I don't remember just how much
distance you lost, but it was enough to make you think
about your club selection. The golf course is quite
different during the winter compared to the summer. The
ground was frozen many times giving you fits when
approaching a green. This is the same problem though as in
the daylight. Finding your golf ball is quite easier than
you might think at night, except on those clear nights
around the full moon. Other than the full moon and snow,
the ball was very easy to find. We even found the ball
stuck in a pine tree one night. It just glowed and was
very easy to spot. Oh yes I did go into the tree and get
it back.

We had so much fun playing winter night golf. We have so
many funny and crazy stories to tell. It is great for your
golf game too. Playing all year and in some of the worst
weather conditions. It really will toughen you up as a
golfer. You wouldn't believe just how many shooting stars
you can see if you keep your eyes open above. The sky is
just great on a clear night with so many stars above. My
Winter Night Golf experience was something I will never
forget. It might not be for everyone, and that is fine
too. You have to love the game of golf and you must be
willing try almost anything to enjoy Winter Night Golf.

We would love to hear from anyone that has tried Winter
Night Golf. If you have any questions or comments, please
write and let us know.

This article courtesy of http://www.iprogolf.com.