Instruction
Cameron Smith’s 3-month Covid-19 training block
Whilst Covid-19 has presented countless grave health and economic challenges to the world’s population, it has also provided opportunity for many people to focus their attention on projects that they normally wouldn’t have time for.
Turns out PGA Tour players are no different, and in the case of Cameron Smith, we used the enforced break from competitive golf to undertake a very rare, uninterrupted 3 month block of strength training.
Cam plays 25-30 events a year spread across 4 continents and this presents a number of challenges to overcome from a training and programming perspective:
– Varying facilities
– Travel fatigue and jet lag
– Concerns around muscle soreness affecting ability to perform on course
– Physical and mental cost of competing
When combined, these challenges can often render even the most carefully planned training programs redundant. So whilst many golf fans were coming to terms with a prolonged absence of PGA Tour events, I was getting stuck into designing programs that would hopefully elicit the following outcomes for Cam:
– More muscle mass
– More strength
– More power
In a normal season, I’m hesitant to prescribe programs that focus on muscle gain, because the nature of the training volume tends to tighten Cam up (reduce his range of motion), reduce his club-head speed and elicit a lot of muscle soreness…..not an ideal combination for short term performance! But I knew in this case, we could get stuck into some higher volume work because we would have plenty of time to recover from any lost mobility, reduced speed and increased soreness before tournaments started again.
Mid March – Program 1 – General Hypertrophy Focus
We decided with the global virus outlook looking dire and the PGA Tour promising to deliver a 30 day notice before resumption of play, we should focus on hypertrophy (increasing muscle size) until the 30 day notice period was delivered. At that point we would switch to a more familiar power based program in preparation for tournaments starting up again.
Program Breakdown:
– 4 weeks
– 3 sessions per week
– 1 x lower focus (legs, glutes, core)
– 1 x push focus (chest, shoulders, triceps, core)
– 1 x pull focus (back, biceps, core)
– Gradually increasing volume over 4 weeks (more reps and sets to failure)
Training Variables:
Sets: 3 to 4
Reps: 8 to 12
Tempo: 2-0-2 (2 seconds up, no pause, 2 seconds down)
Weight: around 70% of maximum
Rest: 60 seconds, but this can vary when pairing exercises together in supersets or mini circuits
Example Workout – Lower Body Focus (legs, glutes, core):
Example Exercises:
Mid April – Program 2 – Lower Body Hypertrophy Focus
As Cam was about to finish up his first hypertrophy program, there was a fairly clear indication that there would be no play until mid June at the earliest. Knowing that we had 2 more months of training, we decided to continue with another hypertrophy block. This time increasing the focus on the lower body by breaking down the leg work into 2 seperate sessions and ramping up the training volume.
Program Breakdown:
– 4 weeks
– 4 sessions per week
– 2 x lower body focus (1 x quad focused workout and 1 x hamstring / glute focused workout)
– 1 x push focus (chest, shoulders, triceps, core)
– 1 x pull focus (back, biceps, core)
– Gradually increasing volume over 4 weeks (more reps and sets)
Training Variables:
Sets: 3 to 4
Reps: 8 to 12
Tempo: 2-0-2 (2 seconds up, no pause, 2 seconds down)
Weight: around 70% of maximum
Rest: 60 seconds, but this can vary when pairing exercises together in supersets or mini circuits
Example Workout – Pull Focus (back, biceps, core):
Example Exercises:
Mid May – Program 3 – Power Focus
Once we received confirmation that play would be resuming 11th June at Colonial, we made the call to switch to a power focused program. Moving back to 3 days per week, lowering the volume and increasing the intensity (more weight and more speed in the main lifts).
The idea is to get the body used to moving fast again, reduce muscle soreness to allow better quality golf practice, and supplement the with more mobility work to re-gain any lost range of motion.
We also added some extra grip work because Cam discovered that with the muscle and strength gain, plus lifting increased weight, his grip was failing on key lifts…..not such a bad problem to have!
Program Breakdown:
– 4 weeks
– 3 sessions per week
– 1 x lower body focus (legs, glutes, core, grip)
– 1 x upper body focus (chest, back, biceps, triceps, core, grip)
– 1 x combined focus (legs, glutes, shoulders, core, grip)
– Volume remains constant (same sets and reps), aiming to increase intensity (either weight or speed) over the 4 weeks.
Training Variables:
Sets: 4 to 5
Reps: 3-5 for main exercises, 8-12 for accessory exercises.
Tempo: X-0-1 for main exercises (as fast as possible in up or effort phase, no pause, 1 second down). 2-0-2 for accessory exercises.
Weight: around 85% of maximum for main exercises, around 70% for accessory exercises.
Rest: 90 seconds, but this can vary when pairing exercises together in supersets or mini circuits
Example Workout – Combined (legs, glutes, core, shoulders, grip):
Example Exercises:
If you are interested in receiving some professional guidance for your training, then check out the services on offer from Nick at Golf Fit Pro
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Instruction
Clement: Laid-off or perfect fade? Across-the-line or perfect draw?
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
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.
More from the Wedge Guy
- The Wedge Guy: Golf mastery begins with your wedge game
- The Wedge Guy: Why golf is 20 times harder than brain surgery
- The Wedge Guy: Musings on the golf ball rollback
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Instruction
Clement: Stop ripping off your swing with this drill!
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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WR
Nov 19, 2020 at 9:05 am
I like Smith, but hey, those were some half-squats if I have ever seen some.
Delbert
Nov 18, 2020 at 8:53 pm
Wasn’t Cameron Smith in Tommy’s Honour?
John Wunder
Nov 18, 2020 at 12:26 pm
How does he look so bad on the course? He looks fine in these videos. Is it the hats?