Peak Health & Fitness - working on improving your swing with Matt Daley and Burstwick County Golf

Paul Crouch from Peak Health & Fitness, in Ryehill, explains how he wants to help golfers at Burstwick improve their golf.

We started Peak Health & Fitness back in January 2014. We have built relationships with local businesses and following an insightful visit to the Golf club recently and a interesting meeting with Alan I wanted to put together a small article coming from a ‘Golf virgin’ on how resistance training is helping improve many golf swings across the world!

As Alan took me on a tour of the club, he introduced me to Matt Daley the golf pro on site. I was so impressed with the studio area where Matt and Luke Bell (his fellow golf Pro) perform their lessons it got me intrigued before I even picked up a club! The Trackman Launch Monitor system which videos and analyses technique is a fantastic tool and the fact that you can open the shutters straight out onto the driving range impressed me so much and I don’t play golf! Yet….

I asked if any of the guys would mind me writing something saying how exercise away from the golf club can help your game. Promoting fitness but also showing how we can potentially work together at helping customers from both businesses.

So here I go …. Excuse me if some of the golf references are slightly off cue!

It was initially well publicised back in early 2000’s that Tiger woods includes lots of weight training and gym workouts within his training regime; by concentrating on core work along with lower body/posterior chain activity he developed more power in his game.

More recently we have seen more golf professional’s including a regular weight training program to accompany their season training schedules.

The ‘big hitting’ Bryson Dechambeau has been hitting 350 plus yard drives and even exceeded the 400-yard milestone. Technique plays a huge part but now it has becoming more apparent that the right training away from the golf course can make a world of difference!

So how do we develop our game in the gym??

The posterior chain refers to the kinetic movement of major muscle groups working from the ground up. Major muscle groups work together to develop power which promotes a faster more effective golf swing. The generation of power combined with the precision of a good golf swing will equal a longer, more effective game.

Which exercises are going to help increase my swing speed?

We want to develop and promote strength and movement in order to create more power. Squats are the fundamental lower body exercise. They increase muscle size and strength in the Quadriceps, hamstrings and Glute area. We also want to work on the deadlift as a fundamental exercise. This targets lower back, Hamstrings and again the glute and hip adductor muscle fibres.

Both exercises work the core directly along with the compound lower body muscles already mentioned.

Functionality is vitally important for any sport and golf is no exception. Functional exercises and whole-body movements that replicate a sporting activity (golf swing) or daily activity (digging a garden) also things you would do as a child (jumping a gate, pull-ups on a wall etc…). If we can learn to generate power and strength in relation to our body weight, we will be more efficient and all movements.

This explains why following the right training program will help improve your game along with overall fitness and strength.

If we were to try and measure power output without using any fancy equipment and new technology, we would simply use a static vertical jump test. This would show us what delivery of power is generated by the height of the jump. Now if we then look at a training program that incorporates the right frequency, time and intensity of a certain group of exercises we can improve that power.

Once we start to see improvements in your vertical jump, we would undoubtable start seeing improvements in your golf game.

Conclusion

We are simply trying to educate and demonstrate how combining a good gym routine will improve your golf. Some of you will undoubtedly already know what I’ve touched on in this short introduction and some of you may be completely new to the idea of resistance and functional training. Either way I guess I just want to make you aware we are here and if we can help compliment your golf, enjoy our fitness classes or take some ‘time out’ beside our outdoor pool area. Please give us a visit and see what we have to offer as a leisure club right on your doorstep! (New virtual tour available on our web page!) www.peak-health.co.uk

Oh and I have booked in for my first lesson with Matt so you may well see my trying desperately to become a golfer this summer!

Yours,
Paul Crouch
C/O Peak Health & Fitness