Now, I’m a fitness professional, and I know from experience that anyone can exercise, but the people who are successful at achieving their goals are those who maintain consistency in their healthy habits.

In fact, the people who succeed at just about anything have one quality in common: commitment to consistency and hard work.

Another difference between successful and unsuccessful people? How they respond to failure. Buried is that insight, of course, is that the way they respond to failure is with–you guessed it–consistency: trying again. Trying harder, trying differently, trying every day.

Okay, you might ask, how do they do that? What makes them different that they can pick themselves up and go again every time? They hold themselves accountable. They don’t just say, “I’ll try again later.” They say, “I’m going to try again for three hours, tomorrow, starting at one o’clock.” Procrastination is a temptation we all contend with, but successful people set deadlines for themselves, and build their lives around their priorities, rather than trying to squeeze them in on the side in between checking Facebook and catching up on Mad Men.

I want to share a video with you about consistency nd commitment. It’s from Marie Forleo, who is a business coach who has inspired me to be better. The video is called, “How To Be Consistent: 5 Steps to Get Things Done, All The Time”

I especially like her point about “catching the wagon.” Too many of us view our progress as an all-or-nothing proposition, where the consequences of one big decision, for example, “I’ll never eat refined sugar again” are the life-changing event we’ve been waiting for, and if it doesn’t work out, all is lost. But truly, those big decisions are enacted as a long series of small, every day decisions.

If you make the wrong decision one day, you CAN make the right one the next, and the day after that, and the day after that–as long as you keep your mind on your goal, and hold yourself accountable for commitments you make to yourself.

To help me keep my goal in mind, I often turn to inspirational quotes. I’d like to share them with you, so I’ll link to them at my blog, here.

Thanks again for subscribing. Be sure to check out Marie Forleo, and if you know anyone who could benefit from this information, please share it using the buttons on the left!

“Busy people are not procrastinators. They set deadlines and force themselves to establish priorities.”

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

“There are three ingredients to success: work hard, stick to it, and use common sense.” -Thomas Edison

“Always be one step ahead of your competition.”

“To be better than others, you must outwork them.”

“Notice what you’re getting from your actions. Review your progress regularly. Change your approach as needed.”

“The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is how they respond to failure.”

“When you have a big enough dream, you don’t need a crisis.”

“What are your core values, and what do they mean to you?”

“Three ingredients for success in physical rehab are, commitment, consistency, and convenience of exercise.”

“Demand more from yourself.”

“Anything worth achieving is worth working for.”

“Do you view exercise as a lifetime goal, or rather as a short term goal?”

“You can always better your personal best.”

“Visualize your fitness program.”

“We all have the same 24 hours per day. Why does one person get stuff done, while the other person procrastinates?  You can carve out five minutes to fifteen minutes, and you can cut back on five to fifteen minutes of activities that are not pointing you in the direction of your goals.”

The goal of a golf swing is to strike the ball with power and a high degree of accuracy.

A typical 18 hole practice round of golf will take six hours. The pro golfer will arrive one to two hours before tee time. They’ll spend the first hour with the fitness trainer, the second with the swing coach, then play 18 holes. If they are a right handed golfer, they will carry a left handed 7 iron in their bag. At some point they will play golf with the off club to create balance in the body.

Pro golfers don’t merely work harder than they once did; now they are working smarter, using science and technology to enhance the way they train and perform. It isn’t enough to eat right and put in the hours; you need to have the best PhDs, athletic trainers, stretch coaches, swing coaches, acupuncturists, massage therapists, holistic nutritionists, movement specialists, and psychologists on board as well.

Today’s athletes emphasize sport-specific training over generalized conditioning. There is an increasing use of biometric sensors. Equipped with heart-rate monitors, GPS, and gyroscopes to measure not just performance, but also fatigue level.

Golfers can bee hooked up to sensors to determine the efficiency of the golf swing, making sure that they are using the correct sequence to swing a golf club.

Today’s athletes spend the off-season working on their game in different training environments and sports, making sacrifices, and trying to do what their competition won’t.

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The leading cause of back pain is poor posture. Being mindful of your posture is always a good thing for your back. One good thing to do to make sure that your posture is engaged is to eliminate bad exercise and movement patterns that you perform in the gym.

If your job requires sitting or bending forward, then the exercise program at the gym should counterbalance that by providing more extension exercises. As you know, Golf is a flexion sport. More flexion at the gym is not good.

If you’re doing chest flies or chest presses or crunches on the floor, you could be shortening your pectoralis minor muscle in such a way that it causes a rounding of your shoulders and a muscle imbalance in your back.

The use of exercise machines does not help back pain either. Some machines, like the leg press, can cause you to hold your body in an unnatural position under load. Leg presses in particular can lead to herniated disks because of the way your hips are positioned while lifting heavy weight.

Something women in particular should be aware of is that during menstruation, your joints are actually looser. During this time, you need to be extra careful to maintain good posture and stability during exercise and during your golf swing. If you can’t decelerate the club slowly, you will hurt your body. Your looser joints can actually lead to what’s called “shearing” in your joints, and consequently to injury.

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As you know, I’m always trying to maintain my edge. This week, I took two steps to further that goal, to make sure that you, the client, get the best possible value for the trust you place in me as your personal trainer.

Obviously it’s important to exercise our bodies, but it’s also helpful to challenge our minds and be open to new ideas. To that end, I attended the 2015 Functional Training Summit in Providence, Rhode Island this past week. I learned new techniques for reducing pain and isolating its causes from renowned TPI director Dr. Greg Rose, who hosted a lecture called “Pain: Is it you or your environment?” I learned more about balance and posture from physical therapist and author Gray Cook, attended lectures on new workout planning techniques, movement efficiency, and other topics.

I got to meet with Mike Boyle, one of the top athletic trainers in the world, who works with college, Olympic, professional, and top amateur athletes:

I also got to meet Dr. Greg Rose, TPI director, who appears regularly on the Golf Channel:

Over a thousand fitness professionals attended.

Interestingly, I didn’t see any other trainers from the Capital District at the conference. Not everyone is as passionate as I am about maintaining their knowledge and techniques so they can serve their clients better than the next guy.

In addition to upgrading my knowledge, I’ve also decided to upgrade my practice with a new and promising therapy known as Cold Laser therapy. It’s designed to relieve pain and increase the rate that your body can heal itself after an injury. It can reduce pain related to inflammation by lowering the levels of prostaglandins in the affected cells, and by applying heat and increasing circulation to speed the healing process.

The FDA has approved this laser device for relieving muscle spasms and joint stiffness, and preliminary research indicates that its mechanisms of action have even more beneficial effects.

If you’d like to make an appointment, or just have questions about Cold Laser therapy, please give me a call at 518-281-3772.

If you found any of this information helpful, or think that someone you know could benefit from this new therapy, don’t hesitate to share this newsletter with them!

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In other newsletters, I’ve talked about the five pillars of the kinetic chain: flexibility, balance, strength, endurance, and power.  Now it’s time to talk about Power, the last, but not least, link in that chain.
Power is key for optimal performance, and to have it you need to develop two things: speed and strength.
In order to increase power, you must first have mobility of the joints and full range of motion in the muscles.  Power in the  golf swing is measured as club head speed.
Power is developed in stages.  Speed development begins with the lower body, progresses to the torso, and is completed with the wrist angle of the head arm.  It is a combination of all these body segments working together to develop club head speed.  It is necessary for each segment of the body to contain levels of strength.  If you’re going to increase your club speed from 95 mph to 100 mph, the distance you hit the golf ball would increase significantly.  The equipment you need are medicine balls, tubing, and TRX suspension.
With a partner or next to a wall, get in golf stance and mimic golf swing with a 2-4 pound medicine ball, ten times each side.  Then perform the same movement with resistance tubing ten times each side, then execute the TRX standing back pull 16 times.  After that, do five body-weight-only squats with a golf rotation, and do five more, this time rotating in the opposite direction.

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Client Spotlight: Morris M of Albany says: “I would highly recommend your services to anybody that is in my age bracket or younger to obtain your services as a personal trainer.  You have made a world of difference in my life, and I can’t begin to thank you for building up my body.”

It’s no secret that I advocate for fitness solutions with real-world applications. I emphasize the importance of the body as a holistic system that demands maintenance and movement in a natural context. There are lots of ways to train the body within these guidelines, but today I’m going to talk about what may be the easiest (and easiest to neglect) way to ensure that your musculoskeletal system stays healthy. I’m talking about posture.

Most of the time, people don’t notice their own posture. You have to call it to their attention. In today’s world, this problem is even more pronounced–we have a whole host of screens and devices that both keep us hunched over, and make us distracted so that we forget to be mindful of our body’s position in space.

The hunched-over, rounded-shoulder “texting position” can lead to what’s called “Upper Crossed Syndrome.” The term was coined by Dr. Vladimir Janda when he noticed many people showing up with certain sets of muscles in the upper-anterior part of the body–like the pecs and upper traps–were actually abnormally shortened, and their counterpart muscle groups in the back were abnormally weak. Obviously, this isn’t what you want if you’re trying to develop a great golf swing. Heck, it’s not what you want if you want to be able to throw a ball, pick up a basket of laundry, or age gracefully either.

The best way to prevent upper crossed syndrome is to be mindful of your body. You want to stand confidently, shoulders back, chest out. Click the video link below to check out some more tips on maintaining good posture.

Client Spotlight:

Louise H. of Menands says: “The program is well thought-out and gradually allows for better and more precise performance. I enjoy and look forward to working out every week.” Louise was voted most improved golfer at Wolfert’s Roost.

I always stress the importance of preparing for physical activity by stretching.  Golf is no exception.  Most people think of pectoralis muscles as something gym rats use to show off, but they are an important interface between your arms and your core.  As such, they are crucial to a good golf swing.

I’m going to outline a few stretches you can use to ensure that you have your pecs’ full range of motion.

This stretch works both your pectoralis minor muscle and the medial rotators in your shoulder:

• Stand in a doorway, next to a tree, or next to a golf cart, and place your arm in the same position as you would if you were about to throw a ball.
• Place your forearm and hand against your support (i.e. the doorjamb or similar) with the palm toward the support and your forearm vertical.
• Gently rotate your trunk forward around your arm as though your arm were a stationary object.
• Once you have reached a position in which you feel a stretch on the medial rotators of your shoulder (the front area), take a deep breath and press your hand into the doorjamb.
• Hold about one pound of pressure on the doorjamb for five seconds.
• Exhale and rotate the trunk around the arm, increasing the stretch.
• This should be repeated three to five times.

 This image is an example.

To stretch your pectoralis major, you can use a swiss ball (commonly known as a yoga or exercise ball.)

• With the forearm on the ball, keep the shoulders parallel to the ground as you allow the arm to be stretched back by dropping the body forward.
• Upon reaching the point of a comfortable stretch, inhale and press the forearm into the ball for five seconds.
• After five seconds, exhale as you relax and move immediately into a new stretch position.
• Perform this sequence three to five times on each side.

Example photo:

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Most people don’t consider golf a very fitness-intensive sport, and indeed it’s not very intense in the cardiovascular sense, but it does require a level of control over the body that can only be achieved through athletic training and functional fitness techniques.

The five pillars of golf’s kinetic chain–flexibility, balance, strength, endurance, and power—are at the heart of functional fitness training. What is functional fitness training? It’s athletic training with a focus on movements that emulate the natural motion of the body during sports and day-to-day activities. Our muscles and nervous systems are so delicately coordinated that training with the mechanical, one-dimensional motion provided by machines cannot prepare your body for real motion in space. It’s vital that your muscles learn to work all at once, supporting one another as they would in natural motion. Otherwise, it’s possible to develop a muscle imbalance and potentially set yourself up for an injury. Imagine a bridge built with heavy-weight, highly developed steel cable, but made with small, poorly-made bolts. That’s the kind of body you can get from limiting your training to gym machinery. Your kinetic chain will have weak links, and you won’t know they’re there until you get hurt.

That’s why I focus on training for stability, mobility, and quality of movement before I even introduce strength training. Stability training is so important that I recommend doing 5-10 minutes of it before any workout.

Bodyweight training is an excellent choice for strength training because it incorporates in itself aspects of stability training. It also allows me to assess a client’s imbalances, compensations, weaknesses, and symmetries. When you do bodyweight training, you’re engaging the whole of your body all the time, even if you’re only intending to work on a specific muscle group. This way, you develop better balance, and you also become more mindful of your body’s location in space; both of these are great skills to have whether you’re golfing or just leaning over to get something out of the fridge.

For cardiovascular performance, I recommend athletic training as opposed to steady-state cardio training, like you would get on a treadmill or exercise bike. Athletic training means any exercise where you move like an athlete—fast, agile, and powerful. It increases your cardiovascular fitness and your total-body balance, and it’s also much more fun than traditional cardio.

After your workout, it’s important to be able to return to a positive baseline state. Stretching, massage, foam rolling, and trigger-point techniques are tools that I can use to help my clients wind down and recuperate from the positive stress of exercise.

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I’ve talked about the five physical pillars of a good golf swing before: flexibility, balance, strength, endurance, and power. In previous weeks, I’ve talked about strength, balance, and flexibility, and this week I’ll address endurance, and what you can do to improve yours.

A thorough pre-golf warm-up is something many people ignore, being more interested in getting out on the course as quickly as possible. A golf-specific warm-up will lubricate your joints, warm your muscles and connective tissue, activate your nervous system, and sharpen your senses. All in all, it will help improve your golf game.

You can’t achieve great results using a muscle endurance warm-up routine. The golfer’s body will respond better to this type of exercise with people over 40, since the aging process produces degenerative change in joints, which decreases mobility.

Walking 18 holes can be up to a five mile walk on uneven terrain. So what endurance exercise movements can you do in between rounds? All successful golfers will make the time for this. Don’t invest as much time in TV, reading, or even the driving range, and spend more time on rhythmic walking: twenty minutes a day, five days a week, NOT on a treadmill or elliptical, as this doesn’t mimic life or golf movements. During the rhythmic walk, change directions. Walk backwards one minute, then walk sideways thirty seconds each leg. This will ensure proper balance in the legs and core to improve performance and decrease injuries. You can also add skipping in your walk for fifteen seconds.

Remember, to be better in golf endurance, you must be committed and be consistent. If you found this information helpful, please share it with a friend; it’s as easy as clicking the Facebook share button on this page!

Member Spotlight:

Tony C. of Albany separated his shoulder after a hard fall on ice.  He could barely move his arm and was in a lot of pain.  I taught him some exercises that he could use to help himself heal, and here’s what he says: “From following Jeff’s program, my range of motion and strength has increased.  As I continue to do the exercises, I keep seeing improvement and look forwards to regaining the full use of my arm.  I am very grateful for Jeff’s knowledge and expertise in helping me.”