Instruction

The Quest for 300: The proper weight-lifting regimen (Part 4)

Published

10 years ago

Nov 6, 2013

Fresno-based long driver Danny Beckman and I recently had a training session in preparation for the REMAX World Long Drive Championship.

Danny has been working out pretty hard this year, and I noticed it right away in his handshake. But would this extra muscle translate into more club-head speed? What about more ball speed and distance?

Working out with various strength, power and flexibility exercises is the last bastion of driving distance. Previously in this series, I talked about several other ways to get distance off the tee that I would recommend you try first (the previous articles can be found here).

Start with efficient technique to allow you to make solid square contact. Swing within yourself. Get fitted on a good launch monitor like FlightScope or Trackman to perfect your flight and trajectory. Maintain normal range of motion in all joints via a comprehensive flexibility program. These are approaches you should try first before worrying about lifting weights at the gym.

Once you have tapped into all the more efficient ways of increasing club-head speed, then you may want to consider spending time working out. A gym is not necessary, however. At home you could utilize dumbbells, kettle bells, weighted bars and even various household objects to help with your training. Be creative!

To examine what some useful exercises are for gaining significant power in the golf swing, we must return to my story about Danny Beckman.

Last year, Danny was maxing out at around 137 mph club-head speed. He is around 6-foot-5, lanky and very explosive. This year, however, Beckman has put on about 10 to 15 pounds of muscle.

We put his new more powerful physique to the test on Trackman, where he was able to reach 144 mph and never drop below 142. Seven mph at this elite level is a spectacular improvement! It puts him in the upper echelon (perhaps the top 10 or 20) of all long drivers in terms of club-head speed. And with his solid swing and penchant for accuracy, it gave Beckman a legitimate shot to make the final eight this year.

Interestingly, Beckman attributes most of his speed gains this year to wrist and forearm exercises. Along with the triceps, I recommend you focus on these muscle groups before any other when seeking to gain distance off the tee by working out.

Freely throwing the club head through the ball is responsible for more clubhead speed than anything else. Former long drive champion and GolfWRX Featured Writer Monte Scheinblum also has stressed the importance of forearm strength in the role of hitting for power. In his prime, he believes he had nearly three times the grip strength of the average tour professional. And legendary long driver Mike Austin always stressed that the speed was in the hands.

I recommend that you perform a standard forearm routine:

Wrist curls
Reverse wrist curls
Crossovers (pronation/supination)
Triceps press

One more key exercise I like is ulnar deviation. The left wrist will be performing this motion early in the downswing to uncock the left wrist (for a right-handed golfer). Lying on the floor with a weighted bar (or broom), take a golf grip and press upwards toward the ceiling using just the wrist — the same motion you would use to hammer a nail. As you get stronger, move down closer to the end of the bar for more resistance.

For all these exercises, vary your weight a little each set and concentrate on maximum lift velocity to stimulate the type 2a and 2b muscle fibers. In other words, go pretty fast.

Weightlifting, especially for power, has an innate risk of injury, so consult the proper experts before you begin a program. Don’t expect to see results for a couple of months — weightlifting for golf is a long, hard slog.

Both Monte and Danny fell short of their goals of winning the REMAX World Long Drive Championship this year. Danny Beckman bowed out with a pulled hip flexor muscles deep in to the competition, just short of making the TV finals. With his new-found speed, he was dominating the competition in the early rounds. For him, 400-plus yard drives down the middle were routine! Overall, he made his best showing ever.

With some hard work in every distance building category, so will you! Let me know when you get that elusive first 300-yard drive!

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Instruction

Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?

Published

1 day ago

Apr 24, 2024

Shawn Clement

Some call the image on the left laid off, but if you are hitting a fade, this could be a perfect backswing for it! Same for across the line for a draw! Stop racking your brain with perceived mistakes and simply match backswing to shot shape!

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Instruction

The Wedge Guy: The easiest-to-learn golf basic

Published

4 weeks ago

Mar 29, 2024

Terry Koehler

My golf learning began with this simple fact – if you don’t have a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, it is practically impossible for your body to execute a fundamentally sound golf swing. I’m still a big believer that the golf swing is much easier to execute if you begin with the proper hold on the club.

As you might imagine, I come into contact with hundreds of golfers of all skill levels. And it is very rare to see a good player with a bad hold on the golf club. There are some exceptions, for sure, but they are very few and very far between, and they typically have beat so many balls with their poor grip that they’ve found a way to work around it.

The reality of biophysics is that the body moves only in certain ways – and the particulars of the way you hold the golf club can totally prevent a sound swing motion that allows the club to release properly through the impact zone. The wonderful thing is that anyone can learn how to put a fundamentally sound hold on the golf club, and you can practice it anywhere your hands are not otherwise engaged, like watching TV or just sitting and relaxing.

Whether you prefer an overlap, interlock or full-finger (not baseball!) grip on the club, the same fundamentals apply. Here are the major grip faults I see most often, in the order of the frequency:

Mis-aligned hands

By this I mean that the palms of the two hands are not parallel to each other. Too many golfers have a weak left hand and strong right, or vice versa. The easiest way to learn how to hold the club with your palms aligned properly is to grip a plain wooden ruler or yardstick. It forces the hands to align properly and shows you how that feels. If you grip and re-grip a yardstick several times, then grip a club, you’ll see that the learning curve is almost immediate.

The position of the grip in the upper/left hand

I also observe many golfers who have the butt of the grip too far into the heel pad of the upper hand (the left hand for right-handed players). It’s amazing how much easier it is to release the club through the ball if even 1/4-1/2″ of the butt is beyond the left heel pad. Try this yourself to see what I mean. Swing the club freely with just your left hand and notice the difference in its release from when you hold it at the end of the grip, versus gripping down even a half inch.

To help you really understand how this works, go to the range and hit shots with your five-iron gripped down a full inch to make the club the same length as your seven-iron. You will probably see an amazing shot shape difference, and likely not see as much distance loss as you would expect.

Too much lower (right) hand on the club

It seems like almost all golfers of 8-10 handicap or higher have the club too far into the palm of the lower hand, because that feels “good” if you are trying to control the path of the clubhead to the ball. But the golf swing is not an effort to hit at the ball – it is a swing of the club. The proper hold on the club has the grip underneath the pad at the base of the fingers. This will likely feel “weak” to you — like you cannot control the club like that. EXACTLY. You should not be trying to control the club with your lower/master hand.

Gripping too tightly

Nearly all golfers hold the club too tightly, which tenses up the forearms and prevents a proper release of the club through impact. In order for the club to move back and through properly, you must feel that the club is controlled by the last three fingers of the upper hand, and the middle two fingers of the lower hand. If you engage your thumbs and forefingers in “holding” the club, the result will almost always be a grip that is too tight. Try this for yourself. Hold the club in your upper hand only, and squeeze firmly with just the last three fingers, with the forefinger and thumb off the club entirely. You have good control, but your forearms are not tense. Then begin to squeeze down with your thumb and forefinger and observe the tensing of the entire forearm. This is the way we are made, so the key to preventing tenseness in the arms is to hold the club very lightly with the “pinchers” — the thumbs and forefingers.

So, those are what I believe are the four fundamentals of a good grip. Anyone can learn them in their home or office very quickly. There is no easier way to improve your ball striking consistency and add distance than giving more attention to the way you hold the golf club.

Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!

Published

2 months ago

Mar 4, 2024

Shawn Clement

Not the dreaded headcover under the armpit drill! As if your body is defective and can’t function by itself! Have you seen how incredible the human machine is with all the incredible feats of agility all kinds of athletes are accomplishing? You think your body is so defective (the good Lord is laughing his head off at you) that it needs a headcover tucked under the armpit so you can swing like T-Rex?

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