I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about all the new golf energy bars and drinks that are flooding the market in the last 12 months. I’ll be doing a complete review of these nutritional supplements in an upcoming post.
In the meantime, I thought I’d highlight an older video clip showing a simple (yet VERY effective) way to tap into your body’s natural energy stores.
Of course, you do need to have a good handle on your golf nutrition; but assuming that you are fueling and hydrating yourself properly, the down and dirty 20 second routine in this video post can truly enhance your golf energy, stamina, concentration and focus.
We talk a lot about flexibility and range of motion because it’s vital for you in regards to your accuracy, power and injury prevention.
Stretching is one of the ways to improve your flexibility and range of motion.
BUT there are several different golf stretching methods – we use five here at the Institute.
And you should know that some types of stretching can be beneficial if performed at the right time, but actual can kill your power on the course if you do them at the wrong time.
Today I’d like to turn the blog over to a good friend and a GREAT coach, Craig Sigl.
Craig has been coaching as long as I have, and like myself, has a special affinity for working with dedicated junior golfers.
Craig’s unique and effective coaching protocols consistently impact his junior clients on the course, and even more importantly, in their life skills.
In today’s post, Craig shares the story (stories, btw, are a fantastic tool for teaching juniors) of his son’s introduction to positive golf mental game training, and the success that followed.
Traditionally, the sit-up and the crunch (a variation of the sit-up) have been the mainstay of core conditioning for everyone from the out-of-shape couch potato to elite athletes to the military physical entrance testing.
Now there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with these exercises, or any of the variations of trunk flexion movements.
By “trunk flexion”, I am simply referring to the action of curling your torso forward, toward your feet.
All things being equal, I want my golfers to have stability, range of motion and strength in ALL directions, including flexion.
But these days, all things are rarely equal… and the problem I see 99% of the time is that golfers come in for their first assessment already stuck in flexion!
This is caused by many factors, but is usually a result of poor postural habits in regards to the seated workplace, seated home-life, driving etc.
As discussed in this post on mobility – flexion kills rotation!
So if you are currently part of the 99%, then the last thing you need to be doing is to create more trunk flexion by performing sit-up or crunches.
Swiss Ball workouts for golf have many functional advantages over the machines you will find in most commercial gyms.
Also known as a “Physio-Ball”, Swiss Balls were originally used in the rehabilitative setting throughout Europe. Paul Chek was among the first in the US to incorporate them into healthy and athletic populations.
There are a couple of reasons why you should have a Swiss Ball and incorporate it into your golf workouts:
This is the second part of The Renegade Golf Wake Your Butt Up Series.
If you missed the first installment, Click Here to get up to speed.
Golf sway is a problem that approximately 40% of us struggle with, resulting in poor contact, limited consistency, and a lack of power.
Technically speaking, sway is any excessive lateral movement of the hips backwards from the ball on your backswing.
There can be several reasons that you might experience varying levels of sway in your golf swing. In todays post, I’ll be focusing on how your weak butt muscles should be your prime suspect.
Here at The Renegade Golf Training Institute, we take a slightly different path toward golf mind training and mental game mastery.
Big surprise, eh?
Sure, there are lots of the “traditional” sports psychology methods that work fine for golf, at least some of the time.
You know what I’m talking about – think positive, one shot at a time, target focus etc.
Nothing wrong with all that stuff, in fact, I encourage you to use any of it that works well for you.
But I would also suggest that you “take a walk on the wild side” with our techniques, because most of our golfers find that a combination of the traditional methods and the not-so-vanilla tactics yield the best results.
So on that note, todays video is a demonstration of one of our techniques for eliminating negative mental/emotional states… allowing you to then replace them with more productive ones.
We’ve already discussed the importance of having strong golf legs in order to provide consistency and power in your golf swing.
It’s also critical to make sure that all the muscles of your lower body are flexible enough to prevent limitations and cause unneccesary swing faults and over-use injuries.
Just how much hip and leg flexibility and mobility is needed for optimal golf?
Well, we don’t need to turn you into Gumby or Fred Astaire… although the video below is pretty damn cool:
