Getting Fit for Golf

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The seasons are shifting and warmer weather is fast approaching so it is time to dust off your clubs and prepare yourself to ìget fit for golfî. Golf specific fitness is comprised of six main components: balance, flexibility, core strength, muscular endurance, power, and cardiovascular endurance. Development in each of these areas will help improve your golf game and decrease the likelihood of a golf-related injury.

Balance is the first key component of a golf specific fitness program. Throughout our daily activities we become right or left side dominant where one side of the body becomes stronger than the other unless specific exercises that require equal strength and coordination are practiced on a regular basis. This side-dominance can lead to anatomical changes over time where certain structures shorten and others lengthen. A body that is unbalanced will typically exhibit faulty movement patterns therefore increasing the susceptibility to injury.

Flexibility is another crucial component of golf specific fitness as tremendous forces are placed on the shoulders, spine, and hips during the golf swing. Adequate flexibility allows those forces to travel through the body into the club head and finally through the ball. A lack of flexibility causes the force of the swing to remain trapped in the body altering the swing and potentially causing injury. Stretches that address all major muscle groups (neck, shoulders, chest, back, hip flexors, hip extensors, and calves) should be performed on a daily basis.

Golf is a sport that requires a great amount of core strength in order to play competitively and safely. The core musculature (abdominals, gluteals, hip flexors, and spinal extensors) must all share the load of stabilizing the body during the golf swing. These muscles must also be able to contract in the correct sequence to maximize power and control during all components of the swing. A strong core acts as an anchor from which the extremities can move more efficiently. Some basic core exercises include pushups, pull-ups, body weight squats, lunges, rotational exercises and hip bridges.

Every golfer needs to have sufficient muscular endurance in order to resist fatigue and continue to exhibit good technique from the first tee to the 18th green. Poor swing mechanics as a result of muscular fatigue can cause technique to degrade, increasing the likelihood of injury and affecting your performance. Your fitness program should include exercises that focus on muscular endurance (low weight, high repetitions) for all major muscle groups.

Another component of golf specific fitness is power. Power is defined as force multiplied by velocity. Strength will help you drive the ball, but power will help you drive the ball farther. Once you have developed an adequate amount of muscular strength and endurance the addition of speed work to some of your exercise program will help you put more power behind your swing.

Cardiovascular endurance is also important as the body must be efficient at delivering oxygen and nutrients to working muscles throughout the entire game or it will be forced to slow down. Just as muscular fatigue can be detrimental, cardiovascular fatigue can also lead to poor performance on the course.

A golf specific fitness program will allow you to play golf better and longer, reduce the risk of injury and ultimately improve your game and your life.

Empower’s Get Fit for Golf Clinic starts next Tuesday!

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Meet Mary Sampson

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Folks, all I can say is that she does it all. On any given day you may see Mary pushing around 300 pounds on the sled, pulling in 75 kilos of sandbags, or setting a new record in the Dynamax Ball Slam relay. All in a days work right? I’d say so! In fact, Mary’s hard work and will to succeed has made her our defending Decathlon Challenge Champion (back to back titles by the way). Look for her to start that title defense this October.

Mary Sampson has been training here at Empower for several years along with her husband John and their two children Ben and John Jr. She exercises for 1 hour, 3 times per week with her personal trainer (Michael on Mondays and Wednesdays and Aaron on Fridays). In addition to her resistance training routine, Mary enjoys playing tennis, and running the Duke trail. Just ask her to tell you about a round of “cardio tennis.” It’s pretty intense.

I would tell you more about Mary’s results over the years and her training goals, but I’ll let her do it for you. Check out this link of an interview with Mary with her trainer Aaron, along with a clip of her workout today.

Be forewarned, do not try this at home…

Mary\’s Killer Workout

Jamie Ives MA, CSCS, Master Trainer

Jamie has several years of experience in the fitness industry, working with clients of various ages, ability levels, and health conditions. He enjoys using his knowledge as well as his experience in exercise prescription and program design to help each of his clients reach their individual wellness goals and improve their quality of life. For more information about Empower Personal Training, please call (919) 401-8024.

Considering Buying a Home Gym?

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Are you thinking about starting a home gym? You can go as crazy as you want purchasing equipment but you can achieve almost any fitness goal with two things: a TRX strap (Link) and adjustable dumbbells (Link).

The TRX strap is a high quality piece of equipment that will last you for years even with heavy usage. It’s an adjustable strap that enables you to perform exercises for all body parts. You control the resistance by walking your feet closer or further away from the anchor point of the strap.

Dumbbells will complete your at home gym. Dumbbells give you more freedom isolating muscles in weak areas. They will also complete your exercise arsenal with a few exercises that you can’t perform with the TRX strap (dead-lifts and Turkish get-ups to name two).

Here is an example workout you could do with dumbbells and a TRX strap:

On TRX strap:

1. 20x squat to row
2. 10x lunge to fly each leg
3. 15x body pike to overhead raise
4. 10x lunge to overhead raise each leg
5. 20x pushups
6. 20x hamstring curls
7. 20x jackknifes
8. 30x floor wipers

With dumbbells:

1. 20x dead-lifts
2. 10x Turkish get-ups each side
3. 30x prone pull-in

If you enjoy pain do this circuit two times. If you’re feeling especially masochistic do the circuit three times.

If you need help planning exercises to do on your own call (919) 401-8024 to set up an appointment with a qualified professional.

Paul Piracci, CSCS Professional Trainer

Paul brings a background of athletics and education to the Empower team. He believes that wellness should be viewed as a blended lifestyle that balances nutrition, a healthy mind, and fitness which incorporates fun recreational activities. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024.

Epic

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Do you ever use this word to describe something? Have you ever said something like, “man, that was an epic workout” or “that movie was epic” Well I think I have something that helps to define’epic.’

Epic.

In case you hadn’t heard this was a tennis match to end all tennis matches. This was the EPIC of tennis matches. Somewhere close to 150 games were played to decide the outcome of this one match. It took approximately 11 hours to finish. 11 hours. Ironman triathletes do 11 hour races. You could fly from NY to England and drive to Wimbledon and still have about 3 hours to spare. Drive from NC to NY City and you’d still be able to take an hour off to catch an off-broadway play.

The endurace of these athletes (not to mention their strength) is phenomenal. Especially when you consider how often they had to serve the ball. How often the volleyed. How often they stared at each other and wished for everything in their being that either this was the last one or the guy across would just give up.

This was pretty amazing and by all rights epic.

You want motivation. The next time you do that 60 minute workout. Think of these guys and see if you can’t push that much energy into the hour you’ve got. Give it everything. Leave nothing on the plate. I guarantee when these guys were finally done they had nothing in their tanks. They were empty, spent, obliterated.

See if you can obliterate yourself, walk away and come back the next time that much stronger. That is what fitness is.

Mike Babbitt, M.F.A, M.A., CSCS, ACSM-HFI

USA Triathlon Level 1 Coach, Master Trainer

Mike is a Master Level trainer at Empower Personal Training. He has a unique approach to fitness that combines his scientific foundation of research and applied exercise physiology with his artistic experience as a professional stage actor. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024

Exercise “Faux Pas’”

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Here was an interesting article that ran recently in Shape Magazine.

So, shall we have a little round table discussion about these 10 ‘faux pas’?”

I’ll start. Number 6. “Letting your knees shoot ahead of your toes, lifting your heels, dropping your knees inward. These mistakes place excess pressure on the tendons and ligaments of the knee.”

I’m going to let you in on a little secret that won’t go over well with the ‘norm.’ The knee extending out past the toe is not a problem at all as long as the knee is TRACKING the toes. What you don’t want is the knee collapsing inward toward the center line of your body or, even worse, pulling out. It should extend right over the foot. As long as it does this, bio-mechanically it is doing what it was made to do.

Olympic weightlifters have the least amount of knee injuries of all olympic sports and if you look at their form as they squat or clean you’ll see that very often they’re knees go WAY past the toes but it always tracks the foot.

The main problem with most people’s squat form really isn’t the knees, it’s the ankles. Most people need to develop better ankle flexion in order to serve the full range of motion in the squat. If someone bends to far forward and can’t get their thighs to at least parallel in the squat, the primarily culprit is most likely the ankles. This is also going to cause the body to compensate in other ways – such as the aforementioned drop of the knees toward the center-line of the body taking them out of alignment with the foot.

So all that said, which faux pas are you into?

Mike Babbitt, M.F.A, M.A., CSCS, ACSM-HFI

USA Triathlon Level 1 Coach, Master Trainer

Mike is a Master Level trainer at Empower Personal Training. He has a unique approach to fitness that combines his scientific foundation of research and applied exercise physiology with his artistic experience as a professional stage actor. For more information about Empower Personal Training please call (919) 401-8024