Fitness Counts In Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles
Fitness Counts In Golf (Video) - by Pete Styles

You can't help but notice when you watch the world's best players and particularly the world's best drivers. That they are pretty physically fit and there're three key areas where these guys are generally, very, very fit. One is their flexibility and all of that differs a lot from the standard club golfer. Standard club golfer might work in an office, sit in the car for too many hours, have a bad posture. The guy is playing on TV in the gym quite often, getting first class hotels, first class flights and all of that sort of stuff. So physically their flexibility is very good, so if you have an opportunity to improve on your flexibility, that's going to be one great way to help you hit the golf ball further. Another area is simply the strength, the strength of these athletes is a lot higher than the general club golfer, man on the street in terms of the way he plays the game and specifically the hands and the forearms. You only have to see these guys, they're playing in tee shirts most of the year round, big old forearms holding onto the golf club and then particularly when you see a slow motion of through the impact phase, you can almost see every muscles or every sinew in the forearm really firing and battering the golf ball down there. And if you look at the average standard club golfer, he's probably got either quite skinny forearms or quite fat forearms but they aren't really in a good physical condition, there're not strong enough to produce the extra club head speed that you see from the tour golfers.

One other thing you see on the tour is generally speaking, few exceptions but generally speaking their balance is superb particularly through the golf ball, they're going to be very, very balanced as they finish their swing. So they can manage to swing this club head upwards of 120 miles an hour into the back of the ball. Fully committed with a spin and rotation of the hips, really driving through the golf ball and then stand perfectly still until that ball lands 300 yards away down the fairway. Whereas we see a standard club golfer to a lot of our cases, hit the ball with probably 80, 90 miles an hour of club head speed and move their body around quite a lot. Now either they're not trying to get into the correct position or when they do try and get into the right position, they loose their balance. So if you can work on your flexibility, your hand and forearm strength and your balance and stability through the ball, I think you'll stand to find you'll hit the golf ball a little bit further. Maybe not quite as far as Bubba Watson just yet, but you'll certainly be getting – catching them up a little bit.
2015-11-02

You can't help but notice when you watch the world's best players and particularly the world's best drivers. That they are pretty physically fit and there're three key areas where these guys are generally, very, very fit. One is their flexibility and all of that differs a lot from the standard club golfer. Standard club golfer might work in an office, sit in the car for too many hours, have a bad posture. The guy is playing on TV in the gym quite often, getting first class hotels, first class flights and all of that sort of stuff. So physically their flexibility is very good, so if you have an opportunity to improve on your flexibility, that's going to be one great way to help you hit the golf ball further. Another area is simply the strength, the strength of these athletes is a lot higher than the general club golfer, man on the street in terms of the way he plays the game and specifically the hands and the forearms. You only have to see these guys, they're playing in tee shirts most of the year round, big old forearms holding onto the golf club and then particularly when you see a slow motion of through the impact phase, you can almost see every muscles or every sinew in the forearm really firing and battering the golf ball down there. And if you look at the average standard club golfer, he's probably got either quite skinny forearms or quite fat forearms but they aren't really in a good physical condition, there're not strong enough to produce the extra club head speed that you see from the tour golfers.

One other thing you see on the tour is generally speaking, few exceptions but generally speaking their balance is superb particularly through the golf ball, they're going to be very, very balanced as they finish their swing. So they can manage to swing this club head upwards of 120 miles an hour into the back of the ball. Fully committed with a spin and rotation of the hips, really driving through the golf ball and then stand perfectly still until that ball lands 300 yards away down the fairway. Whereas we see a standard club golfer to a lot of our cases, hit the ball with probably 80, 90 miles an hour of club head speed and move their body around quite a lot. Now either they're not trying to get into the correct position or when they do try and get into the right position, they loose their balance. So if you can work on your flexibility, your hand and forearm strength and your balance and stability through the ball, I think you'll stand to find you'll hit the golf ball a little bit further. Maybe not quite as far as Bubba Watson just yet, but you'll certainly be getting – catching them up a little bit.