Whenever I step outside of the bubble of this great online community or the gyms I work out of this is probably the first reaction and most common question I get. Obviously there is lots of great research and data to explain why but research is pretty boring and people often fail to see the relevance to the real world or to their golf game in particular. This is where a good analogy comes in handy to help cut through the noise and fake news you get so much of on the internet these days and help people see the facts and engage with what we actually know works. One such analogy I find myself usi ..read more

Almost all golfers are aware of the importance of posture in the golf swing. Unfortunately, this oftentimes stops at the golf posture - they don’t consider that the postures they adopt throughout the rest of their lives are without doubt going to affect that golf posture and their golf swing characteristics. Further, my experience is that even those who do consider this are caught up in the same myths regards posture as the rest of the general public and have next to no clue how to actually go about changing it. This article will attempt to address that, detailing some of the theories and rese ..read more

The rule of 'make yourself look good' is something I came up with after doing some research into improv in an effort to improve my coaching and communication skills. It is particularly important for those designing their own programs as the biggest failings I usually see with self-directed programs are exercise selection issues - doing what you like to do or are good at rather than what you need to do or rushing into high force output or high co-ordination exercises the individual simply isn’t ready for - or load/ volume selection issues - either continually adding weight to the bar in an effo ..read more

Golf can be infuriating at the best of times. However, a golfer making steady progress is a happy golfer. If you reading this blog you’re likely a pretty committed golfer who is working on their fitness, swing technique and probably anything else you can think of to improve. This leads us to a critical question – How do you know that you’re getting better at golf? In my opinion as an S&C coach, we often lose sight of that fact that you golfers are above all else looking to improve your performance on the course. Whilst we provide sound rationale behind our exercise selection and track prog ..read more

The weather has finally broken, you can get back on the golf course and the season has started in earnest - as much as you love it, your life just got even busier! You need to find time to get in the practice and play as well as balance work and family commitments. One of the things that typically gets left behind then is your strength training. Alternatively as we head into golf season many will deliberately stop training, believing they have done that work over winter and it is now no longer necessary, or for fear of getting sore (SPOILER ALERT: more on this later but there are plenty of way ..read more

You’ve been convinced - after all, all the top guys are at it. You head to the gym with the intention of working on your fitness to improve your game, you sign-up, pay your membership fee, and head to the changing room. Quickly you change and stuff your clothes into a locker, eager to get out onto the gym floor. Once out there it hit’s you - "what am I actually going to do here?" Looking around and thinking back to your PE days you know you need to warm-up, increase blood flow - yarda, yarda, yarda - so you hop onto the treadmill. After a few minutes you decide cardio is important to golf (see ..read more

In the first part of this 'improving golf fitness' series I explained why golfers are left spinning there wheels, doing programs that leave them seeing little to no carryover to the golf course, due to not training properly for the needs of the sport. Based on the needs analysis from the previous article we know we need to focus, not on endurance, but on strength, speed, co-ordination and flexibility to improve for golf performance. However, this information alone isn't enough to ensure that we are training as efficiently and effectively as possible. In order to do that we must ascertain which ..read more

I’m lucky to have a small but dedicated following on social media, email, this site, etc (thank you!) and this affords me the ability to get out there, so to speak, and talk to golfers about their workouts and how they can make them more effective quite a bit. As a result of this, admittedly unscientific research, I believe there is often times a fundamental miss understanding of the physical qualities needed to play golf. Self directed programs typically result in the athlete doing the things in the gym they like and/ or are good at rather than what a proper needs analysis of the sport in que ..read more

Following on from my last post on building habits to get you towards your goals I wanted to address the concept of Key Performance Indicators (or KPI’s for short). KPI’s are how you know if the new habits you instilled are having the desired effect and getting you towards your goals. As the old adage goes “what gets measured gets improved", and KPI’s are the things you are tracking to measure progress. How do I know what my KPI’s are or what should I be tracking? If Rory were using his TrackMan drive data as a KPI I'm sure he'd be pretty happy with this! This will depend on your goals but as ..read more

If you’re anything like most people you probably set a few goals for the new year and if you’re anything like most people (statistically at least) you’re probably already struggling to stick to them. However, the problem doesn’t lie with your lack of motivation or willpower, it lies with those goals. You see, when it comes down to the battle in your head between future you - who wants to lose weight or get better at golf - and present you - who wants to sit on the sofa watching the golf channel eating bacon butties (sorry, British thing!) - present you will always win because the future is a ..read more