Last week, we talked a little bit about TPI golf fitness assessments and how they can predict your specific golfing abilities and weaknesses.  This week, I want to show you one of these assessments and talk a little bit about corrective exercise.

There are 16 basic physical screenings that can determine your weaknesses as a golfer, and the first one I’d like to share is called the “Pelvic Tilt Test.”

Let me show you:

The objective here is to test the mobility of your hips and lumbar spine, and your ability to control the position of the pelvic posture.  The ability to move and control the position of the pelvis is important for optimizing power transfer from your lower body to your upper body during the golf swing.

If you can’t perform this test without shaking, and with minimal knee and leg movement, here are some corrective exercises:

Quadruped Pelvic Tilt (Cats and Dogs):
Get down on your hands and knees with your thighs and arms perpendicular to the floor.  Without bending your elbows, try to bend your spine so that your stomach gets closer to the floor, making yourself sway-backed like a dog.  Then, lift your spine up into an arch, like a cat.  Repeat this back and forth and then find the middle or neutral position.  Hold this neutral position for two breaths.

Supine Pelvic Tilts to Neutral:
Lie flat on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.  Try to tilt the pelvis back and forth (arch the back and flatten the back), trying to simultaneously limit any chest or upper body movement.  Make sure when flattening the back, the abdominals are braced.

Torso Backswing:
For a right-handed player, stand facing the mirror.  Cross your hands across your chest like I do in the video.  Get into a good golf posture.  Rotate the shoulders in a clockwise direction and resist hip rotation.  Reach maximum rotation but don’t force a stretch.  Hold the position for one second.  Rotate the shoulders back to neutral position.

These are just a few exercises you can do to increase pelvic mobility.  It’s important not only to do this on your own, but also to have a TPI certified trainer help you with them.  There are some posture quirks that this test can reveal to the trained eye, and we can get much more specific in terms of what can be corrected.

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I always try to keep up with the latest knowledge available to fitness professionals.  This past week, I traveled across the country to upgrade my knowledge and check out the cutting edge of golf fitness.

I visited golf’s premiere trade show, the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, Florida.  While I was there, I attended a TPI fitness professional certification class in order to keep my knowledge fresh.

Dr. Greg Rose, founder of TPI

When I first got my TPI certification, I was one of only 4,000 TPI-certified golf fitness pros in the world.  Now there are more than 18,000 of us.  It’s become the standard in golf fitness.  Touring golf pros travel with an entourage of experts, from swing coaches to doctors to nannies.  Nowadays, 23 of the top 30 tour players travel with a TPI fitness pro.  16 of the last 18 major tournament winners have a TPI pro in their stable.  The job of the TPI fitness pro is to assess the body as a continuous chain of kinetic energy.

TPI’s philosophy is that every there isn’t one perfect way to swing a club, but there is one correct way for each golfer, and that is determined by the golfer’s body and how it moves most efficiently.  To achieve an efficient swing, a golfer has to be screened by a TPI pro, who can give a detailed assessment of biomechanics, physical fitness, movement quality, current health, and history.

In Orlando, I was able to refine my assessment techniques.  Because the body is an interconnected system, some of the techniques are not that obvious.  For example, if you cannot perform a squat with good form, you will most likely have a swing fault called “reverse spine angle.”  By observing and correcting subtle links between your mobility and your golf game, I can consistently improve your score.

If you would like a COMPLEMENTARY assessment by a TPI certified fitness pro, contact me at (518) 281-3772

Once we’ve completed the screening, we’ll use the results to create a unique plan for you, including fitness training, corrective exercise, stretches, and movement patterns.

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Even people who consistently stick to an effective health and fitness routine can sometimes fall out of the habit. Getting back on track can be challenging – unless you find ways to rebuild a strong desire to start exercising again.

Here are some ways to give yourself the mental kick in the pants that you need to stop procrastinating and get up off the couch:

1. Use it as an excuse to get me time. If you lead a life of chaos where it seems like every moment of your time is consumed with obligations, use a consistent exercise routine as an excuse to spend some much needed time to yourself.
2. Put away your fat clothes. It’s a lot easier to put off exercising when you can hide underneath clothes that make you feel like you’re not as out of shape as you really are. Take all of the clothes that allow you to hide your extra pounds and put them in a box.
3. Make yourself an irresistible offer. If you want to crank up your motivation to get in shape, promise yourself an entire weekend of frivolity, a shopping spree, or maybe even a new toy like a flat screen TV, or a new dining room set.
4. Turn it into a social experience. It is likely that you have a friend, a neighbor, a coworker, or a family member who also needs to lose weight. Grab a partner and make a solemn pact to force each other to stick to it.
5. Take a good look in the mirror. When all else fails, get undressed and stand in front of a full length mirror. Take a good look from the front, turn to the side, and even turn around and look back over your shoulder at your backside. If you need to lose even 10 pounds, the mirror will be more than happy to show them to you.

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As many of you know, I’ve worked in fitness for two decades. Over that time, I’ve accumulated some wonderful quotes that I return to over and over again whenever I need inspiration to get up and do what needs to be done to stay healthy. Here are a few of them:
* “Don’t let an old person move into your body.” -Dr. Wayne Dyer
* “Exercise is not just for healthy people. Exercise can improve back pain, arthritis, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, vascular disease, asthma, parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, angina, and heart attacks.” -American Medical Association.
* “You are never too old to get in shape. At different times, I have engaged in many different activities. I value staying active.” -Senator John Glenn
* “Exercise, improves energy, self esteem, heart, and lungs. It will improve muscle tone and greater function of bones and joints.” – American Physical Therapy Association
* “Research has confirmed that even moderate exercise performed regularly helps protect us from disease and prolong life expectancy.” -James Todd, MD, VP of American Medical Association
* “Regular exercise can help prevent coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, depression, and some cancer, and fitness reduces the lifestyle-limiting effects of osteoporosis and arthritis.”-Mayo Clinic
* “Exercise helps elevate a person’s mood, even short workouts. 8 minutes was all it took to help reduce a persons feeling of sadness, tension, fatigue, and anger.” -Duke University
* “Get off the couch.” -Theo Ratliff, Detroit Pistons
* “Turning off the television and getting the family physically active are the best ways to keep off the unwanted pounds and for everyone to stay healthy.”-Dr. Barbara J. Moore, President of Shape Up America
* “Exercise can improve your mood, relieve moderate depression, and help delay the onset of disabilities and life threatening disease.”-Terrie Wetle of the National Institute on Aging
* “Scientists found that together, lack of exercise and poor dietary habits were the second largest underlying cause of death.”-National Institute on Aging

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Your core muscles are important for your golf swing, but they’re also important for your resistance to injury and balance.  Also, let’s face it, for a lot of people the “six-pack” abs look is the holy grail of fitness for a lot of people.

Unfortunately, many popular exercises for your core can actually be damaging, and almost none of them offer the fat loss and increased definition promised by so-called experts.

Here are six exercises that can damage your posture and aren’t the best way to strengthen your core:

Number one:
Crunches.
Yes, the classic, simple crunch.  It does strengthen your abs, no doubt about that, but it only works one muscle group (the rectus abdominis).  As a functional fitness trainer, I’m not a fan of any exercise that works one muscle group in isolation.  Exercises like these can lead to imbalances that result in a hunched-over posture and an injured back.

Number two:
Supine leg raises.
I’m sure you’ve done these before.  This exercise is where you lie on your back and repeatedly raise your extended legs, kind of like a reverse sit-up where you lift the bottom half of your body rather than the top.  This exercise works the hip flexors more than the abs.  As I mentioned before, so much of your life is spent with these muscles in flexion that this doesn’t help your body balance and strengthen the core muscles you need for golf and life.

Number three:
The Ab Roller.
This is an infomercial stand-by that advertises amazing results on your abs, but it actually works your hip flexors and arms more.  It doesn’t provide enough resistance to truly build strength, and supporting your body with a rigid piece of equipment like this won’t build muscle balance or agility.

Number four:
V-sits.
These punishing exercises are a staple of sports training, but here’s the thing: this is another exercise where you’re actually doing more work with your hip flexors than your abs.  It also pulls on your lower back without actually strengthening it.

Number five:
Russian twists.
This exercise is where you sit on your bottom, lift your feet slightly off the ground, and then twist left and right, tapping the ground on either side of you with two hands.  They’re a real grind…literally!  Your limber spine is not meant to rotate in this fashion, and repeatedly doing this exercise actually damages the facet joints in your spine, leading to back pain.

Number six:
Bicycles.
No, not the two-wheeled kind.  The kind where you rest your lower back on the ground, strain your neck to lift up your head, and twist your body back and forth and kick your legs in the air like you’re either riding a bicycle or throwing a temper tantrum.

Many of your day-to-day activities involve flexion of the abdominal muscles.  In fact, while you are sitting down your abs are in flexion, and that constant flexion can lead to a shortening of the ab muscles and an imbalance that puts you at risk for injury.  What these no-no exercises have in common is that they worsen the problems people often have with their posture.  If you contact me, I can show you how to strengthen your core without worsening your posture or creating imbalances that can hurt your golf swing, and even worse, hurt you.

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The thoracic spine is a section of twelve vertebrae in between your lumbar spine and cervical spine. (“Thoracic” comes from the ancient Greek word thorax, for “chest.”) The lumbar and cervical spines get a lot of attention, as they cause people a lot of pain.

However, the thoracic spine is just as important to pay attention to as the neck and lower back, since the mobility of your thoracic spine is related to your ability to prevent pain in the cervical and lumbar regions.

As you get older, your thoracic spine gets stiffer. Because of that, we tend to turn the head at the neck (cervical spine) or rotate at the lower back (lumbar spine). A thoracic spine with good mobility can help to avoid or relieve both low back and neck pain by allowing more rotation in the mid-back.

There are a lot of warm-up exercises, like hip crossovers and scorpions, that focus on rotating the lumbar spine to limber up before golf. But actually, good motion in golf is about turning the hips and shoulders, not the lumbar spine.

The best way to get hip and shoulder motion is to focus on the thoracic spine, not the lower back. One great exercise to increase your thoracic spine mobility is this simple tennis ball exercise I got from another TPI Certified instructor, Mike Boyle:
“What you are going to do to mobilize the thoracic spine is to perform a series of simple crunch type exercises while lying on two tennis balls taped together with masking tape or your can even put them in a sock. It’s a simple exercise that you can do at the gym or even in front of the TV. Place the tennis balls under your back with one ball on either side of the spine. Begin at just above bellybutton level. With the balls in position do five crunches. You should feel the balls pushing into your spinal erectors (the big muscles on either side of the spine). The balls are actually pushing the vertebrae slightly forward, in effect creating motion (mobility) at the level of that segment. A series of these crunches can be done all the way to the top of the shoulder blades. The end result is often a large increase in shoulder turn.”
-From Mike Boyle

Doing exercises like this can not only increase your ability to swing a club efficiently, it may also help alleviate pain in the lower back and neck. It’s important to remember that your body is a linked system, and what hurts isn’t always the part that needs treating.
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When people think about their golf swing, they rarely think about the actual foundation of their bodies: the feet. We tend to think on a more macro level–are you taking the right stance, keeping your arm straight, etc.

Just as important, it turns out, is what your feet are doing inside your shoes when you swing. Having curled toes or tight arches can lead to loss of posture, over-rotation, or swaying and sliding.

If you’re curling your toes when you’re taking a swing, you can lose power by not being able to transfer your weight from your back leg to your fron leg. Next time you’re at the driving range, do an experiment and take off your shoes, never mind the crazy looks you might get. Notice what your feet do in your set up and swing; can you absorb the weight into the ground with responsive ankles or are you holding them too tight? Are you rolling the back foot onto the outside in the backswing and your knee becomes unstable?

Try this: stand straight up with your feet together and turn your whole body like you want to see what is behind you. If you feel any discomfort in your knees, back, or hips, you are most likely not turning in the feet. Pay attention to the whole sole of your foot: the weight should be evenly distributed from the heels to the toes. Your ankles should be soft so they can slightly turn as you rotate. If your feet are too stiff, it can result in an overuse of your knees, back, and hips, and over time cause problems in those areas.

Here is an exercise to limber up your feet:

• Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor.
• Put two fists between your knees.
• Roll the feet in and out and see how easy or how hard it is.
• Are there any differences from left to right?

Now perform this sequence of movements, and try to isolate the movement to the ankles, keeping the hips and knees still.

1. Lift all ten toes off the floor and flex your feet several times.
2. Lift the heels high and bend at the ankles several times.
3. Lift the instep of both feet, the knees can open several times.
4. Lift the outside of both feet, the knees can come closer several times.
5. Fan the toes open like a windshield wiper several times.
6. Fan the heels open like a windshield wiper several times.
7. Make circles with both heels, keep the front of your toes on the ground. Keep the knees in place. Move them in both directions.

Repeat all of these with the leat effort possible. If one side is tighter than the other, try to mirror the lightness of movement from the looser side. Walk around and feel how grounded you are to the floor.

If these exercises cause you any pain, stop immediately. By performing these movements, you should be able to improve your posture, and therefore your power, from the bottom up.

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Even though you’re not playing golf in the winter months in the Capital District doesn’t mean you should neglect your body and hope that when you swing a club in the spring, your muscles and posture will be the same. The saying, “If you don’t use it, you lose it,” applies in golf’s offseason. It’s important to fine-tune your golf skills, but in the off months it’s more important to fine-tune your golf body. Here are some simple, functional, golf-specific exercises to perform better at your golf game:

1. Moving your body will lubricate the joints, muscles, nervous system, and brain. Take a nice rhythmic walk outdoors, weather permitting, or on a treadmill (without holding on to the treadmill). Incorporate walking backwards and sideways to create balance in your legs, hips, and back; this can decrease your risk of injury.
2. Mobility work before stability work, meaning rotate your joints in a circular manner, in both directions: ankles, hips , shoulders, upper back. Move them forward and backward, side to side. Your body moves in multiple directions so it’s best to train in multiple directions.
3. Find tight muscles and make sure they get movement. Allowing tight muscles to remain tight will restrict normal joint movement, which can result in injury and poor golf performance. Common areas that are known to be tight are calf muscles, hamstrings, quads, lats, pecs, hands, neck, and shoulder muscles. When stretching, hold for 10 to 30 seconds with proper posture and alignment. An example is a standing hamstring stretch on the stairs. Stand in front of the stairs, toes forward, raise the right leg to the third step, keeping your toe pointed to the ceiling, never reach your fingers to your toes, as that can hurt your back. Lean forward into the stretch with you back straight. Remember, a rounded back hurts your golf swing, so don’t stretch with a rounded back. Repeat on both sides.
4.  Strength training will add power and speed to your golf swing. Get out your exercise tubing, wrap it around a pole. Hold both handles, and while standing, pull your elbows back to the wall. Generally, golfers need pulling exercises more than pushing, especially if you have rounded shoulders and bad posture. Push-ups, for example, can tighten the pecs, making rounded shoulders worse.
5. You should also exercise using the tubing in a rotational, diagonal chop. Since golf is rotation, you should incorporate that motion into your routine.

Keep in mind that we all have limitations and tolerance to load and movement. If you exceed that, something will break. Be gentle with yourself. These winter workouts will make you a better golfer, but they can also make you a safer and better snow-shoveler.

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I was recently asked by a reporter at The Active Times what workouts I always avoid.  All of you know by now that I advocate functional training over the typical grinding away at the gym, so my answers shouldn’t come as a surprise.  That said, I’d like to share them with you.

Bench Presses and Lay-down Pec Flies
The reason I avoid bench presses is that you do the exercise while you’re lying on your back on a bench.  Unlike pushups, for example, bench presses don’t engage your core at all.  Both bench presses and lay-down pec flies can also create a muscle imbalance that leads to rounded shoulders.  The motion and resistance supplied don’t mimic anything a person would do in real life, and I can’t think of any sports that you play lying down, except maybe luge, and those guys aren’t known for their huge pecs.

Overhead Presses
Many, many people have less-than-optimal range of motion in their shoulders.  If you have a shoulder issue and you can’t have full range of motion without any weights, it doesn’t make sense to put resistance on already poor posture.  That will just exacerbate dysfunction.  If you happen not to have a shoulder issue (although most people do, even if they don’t know it) overhead presses won’t hurt, but athletes who make a living raising their hands over their head like pitchers, golfers, and tennis players, don’t do this exercise because it doesn’t resemble their actual motion in play, and it carries with it a substantial risk of injury.

Machine training
Machines only work muscles in one plane, while our body works in three planes.  Building muscle the way that machines do, it’s very easy to get a muscle imbalance.  In functional training, we emphasize stability and balance.  You can’t build stability and balance if you don’t exercise the companion muscles that your body requires to stabilize itself.  I also avoid the treadmill and the ellipticals as they do not mimic the movements that you actually perform while running and jogging.  Again, functional training emphasizes the body’s own ability to stabilize itself and maintain good posture, and machines do nothing to help you develop that.

Crunches on the floor
I avoid crunches on the floor, because they only exercise your core in one direction: flexion.  Most people already spend too much time with their abs under flexion from sitting and standing with bad posture.  The body needs to extend as well as flex the core muscles to remain in balance.

There you have it.  It’s not an exhaustive list, and only your fitness professional can tell you what it’s okay for you to do, but it’s important to keep in mind that there’s no use in taking one step forward only to take two steps back.

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Today’s team approach to player development has changed from what it was in the past. In the early 1990’s, most instructors believed there were three components to address in building the ultimate golfer.
1. Instruction – teaching all aspects of the game: short game, basic fundamentals, specialty shots, etc
2. Mental – Dealing with how to handle the mental stress placed on great players.
3. Equipment – Making sure the golfer is fit properly and has the appropriate set make up.

Later on, as amateur golfers deepened their understanding of how great pro golfers train, golf instructors broke these three ideas down further, making instruction into four parts: course management, shot making skills, basic instruction, and physical conditioning. As the field was refined, in became clear that training was the result of multiple interdependent factors, each relying upon the other to create success.

Similarly, the body itself is composed of multiple interdependent parts, each of which relies upon the others for success. In fact, the golf swing relies on eleven separate body zones, alternating between stable segments and mobile joints. Here they are:

That’s a lot to keep track of. No surprise, then, that TPI found, in a survey of amateur golfers, that 64.3% lose their posture during a swing, 64% early extend, 56% cast or early release, 45% of players have a flat shoulder plane, and many other swing defects are prevalent as well.

If you want to keep improving, you have to keep finding new ways to break your problem down. Maybe there’s just one link in your chain holding you back. You won’t know until you have an understanding of all the interconnected parts of your golf swing.