Speaker 1: Hi, This is Paul Parvidus from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I
play a game that has a four letter name, but
they called it golf instead. I play various courses about
an hour's drive outside of the city. This is Golf
Smarter number.
Speaker 2: Four hundred and seventy nine, published on March ten, twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction never gets old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 4: Every great player with no exception, and trust me, I've
been inside their heads. They see things differently. They're so
focused on the target. Their visualization is dramatic. Arnold told
me the first time I work with him that the
only thing that he tried to do in his golf
was with his right hand. Feel like he's shaking hands
and touching the target because he convects his wrists and
really cleared deep, almost shaking hands with the target with
his right hand. I mean, I've been at Nicholas's house
when he displained how he plays the Masters, which is phenomal.
Talks about looking at the trees, see where the wind's
blowing in the trees, and the ripples down in the pond.
Where's the flagstick on eleven, and what's the flagstick doing
over on twelve? And he said, quote, Guys, it's almost
like I'm in a fairy land. It's almost like I'm
in this imaginary world. I just kind of feel my
way along seeing the targets and the shape of the
shots with the wind. And again, the average high handicapper
just stands up there and hits it out there somewhere
in hopes it ends up good.
Speaker 2: Your twenty seven point plan for better shot making with
fitness expert Roger Fredericks.
Speaker 3: This is Golf Smarter Premium.
Speaker 2: Here's your host, Fred Green. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast. Roger, Hey, Fred,
how you doing.
Speaker 4: It's been many moods. It's good to talk to you again.
Speaker 2: It is great to talk to you again. We met
years ago doing a piece for the Golf Channel with
Catherine Roberts Swing Flaws and what was that swing?
Speaker 4: I think it was an eight part series. Catherine and
I get on the golf channels called Swing Fault Solutions.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was, and I was the guinea pig on
one of them.
Speaker 4: You were the star of one of our episodes.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, it was the guinea pig. You were
the star. It's a lot of fun though, and it
was great to meet you. You've got a phenomenal history
with the people that you've worked with. I want to
you know, established who you are, what you do, who
you've who you've helped, and then we'll get into how
you can help us. Okay, So are you a PGA
certified golf instructor? Yes, I am, okay, and but you are.
Now what came first, the fitness flexibility part or the
PGA teaching pro.
Speaker 4: Well, what happened was, I'll make this real quick. I
had a pro golf career cut short a long time ago,
back in nineteen seventy two, and I shattered a real
complicated bone in my wrist, and I consequently ended up
having two surgeries on that, very serious surgeries where they
took bone graph ticke a bone out of my hip
and transplanted that in my wrist. That didn't work. Then
they put a prosthetic in there which is still in
there today. And over the next maybe eight years, you know,
I ended up with even more problems. I had two
knee surgeries on my left knee, which is not on common.
If you look at most golf injuries, most of them
and the surgeries are on the left side for right
handers because the less stable you know, side usually takes
the brunn of and finny wears out. But anyway, I
went through that probably got out of the golf business.
But I had a guy look at me. And by
the way, I went to countless and I mean countless
orthopedic surgeons, physical trainers, rawfice herabologists helped practitions mainly for
my knee, and nothing worked. And one day a guy
looked at me. He was gutting Rick McDonald. He was
the head trainer for the San Diego Chargers, and he
just I never told him anything about myself. And he
looked at me and he said, you just watched my
gate And he said, hey, you must have one heck
of a sore left ankle when you hit a lot
of golf balls, and my ankle would swell up and
my knee was history. They won't to have another surgery
on my knee, but anyway, and I said, how do
you know that? And he diagnosed my posture to me,
and he said, your posture is horrible. At the time,
I was thirty three years old, and he diagnosed my
posture and then he got me completely out of pain.
And guess what my golf game, which had been at
one time pro tour material. Then I got injured, and
then it went up to about an eight handicap. It
was fifty to fifty whether I'd break eighty or not.
Then I got my bat by body back in shape
and I started playing great golf again, and soon after
I set two course records in San Diego. And I think,
wait a minute. You know I used to play. I
used to be young, and you know, in a good
shape and played really good golf. Then I got myself
into real horrible shape, surgeries and all that, and I
played bad golf. Then I get myself back into good shape,
and I played great golf again. I've been playing decent
ever since. It's like, hey, eventually I got into it.
I made my career out of it. And right around
that time, a lot of research was coming out on
the biomechanics and the physiology of the golf swing, and
we learned that good golf demands it has to have
ample flexibility, especially in the upper trunk and anyway, So
I got into that movement, got myself really flexible, and
then started my own golf schools, and I used to
put in besides the normal half day one day school's,
private lessons, beginner schools and all that, I put in
golf fitness schools. For this is back in now we're
back in nineteen eighty eight, and I couldn't pay people
to take them. But eventually I learned the right way,
I think to market it and sell it. And I've
been doing that ever since. So one thing led to another,
and I started working with a bunch of tour players,
mainly the senior tour guys, and you know, Arnold Palmer
came across a lot of people referred Arnold to me,
and so I got together with him, and then you know,
he bought into it, and we really helped him a lot,
and he and I he funded an infomercial for me
which went on the air, him being Gary player Donica Pone,
and it was called Roger Fredericks Reveals the Secrets to
Golf Swing Flexibility. And the rest is kind of history.
So I've been, you know, I've been mainly I asked
you a question in my long winded fashion, the golf,
the golf plane, and instruction came first. Then I learned
that the golf swing is a demanding athletic endeavor, and
then i'd you know, taken off from there. So that's
kind of the story of my life in twenty five
words or less.
Speaker 2: With an asterisk. It's amazing that you have helped define
for everybody. Is golf a sport? I guess when it
comes to injuries, Yeah, it's a sport, right, There's so
many people who just be, oh, you're not. It's not
just because it has a ball doesn't mean it's a sport.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I mean we're pro golfers, and just about
all good golfers are really great athletes in that we
all have super tremendous strong legs. Why because we all
started the game and we're kids, and think about around
the golf is about a five to seven mile walk,
and we're walking eighteen twenty seven thirty six sols a
day since we're little kids, you know. Plus we're in
a semi squat position doing a semi lunch. We're walking
on average around maybe ten to fourteen miles a day,
bending over and all that. So we do this, you know,
day after week after month after year after decade. We
end up with incredible leg strength without even knowing it.
And then we're doing this gymnastic uh you know, rotation
of the spine we end up with. We're doing that
millions literally of times. We end up with superb upper
body flexibility, almost gymnastic, you know. So we have the
super strong legs to stabilize our body and provide the
power and support. We have an incredible upper body flexibility.
So you know, yeah, I mean it is a sport.
And you look at so many great athletes that turn
to golf, and you know what do they have. They
have super strong legs strength for you know, running around
in their individual sport. They have great upper body flexibility,
and most good athletes you know, don't have that part
of a time on playing good golf. And then you
have the other side of the coin where you have
the average person who grew up with a real job,
you know, and you know they go to work every
and they're sitting down. They don't have the leg strength
they don't have the upper body flexibility because they're forward
rounded shoulders all that, and they come out and they
really have a hard time of playing golf. So, yeah,
the golf swring is a very demanding athletic endefforent. It
does look like it because we're not jumping and sprinting
and you know, doing a lot of burst burst speed
type of stuff and all that. But it's a you
got to be You have to have pretty good function
in your body to play the game, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah you're not you're not doing any of those activities,
but you are wringing your body like it's a wet
rag and you're trying to get all the water out.
You're just twisting it and doing things to it. You
mentioned needing to have strong legs. You were saying that
pro and good golfers have great strong legs, but you
also just talked about having terrible posture and that that
ruined your golf. So now we've got both halves of
the body that are working against us as amateur golfers.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, And even though over all these years, you know,
I've gotten a reputation as the golf flexibility guy with
Catherine and I always kid ourselves because a lot of
people call us the King and Queen of golf yoga.
Speaker 2: But you have one. Roberts will fight you on that one.
But that's good.
Speaker 4: But like you're saying, but the truth of the matter is, yes,
the good golf swing demands flexibility and I've I've gone
that route. The whole thing is I have. My whole
thing is just about it's really been to get people
back into proper posture. And I am one hundred percent convinced,
and you can hold me to this right now on
your show. A posture will be and is becoming the
next big movement in health and fitness. Years ago we've
seen that. We've seen jogging, we've seen AEROBICX, we've seen
pilates and yoga. Last ten years it's been core. I
guarantee you posture is the next thing. It is, without question,
in my experience, the most neglected and a misunderstood aspect
of health and fitness, and in the golf swing too.
The body has one design for all of us. We're
all created equal. We have the same amount of muscles
and joints and the same design, and the giant design
is simply this is all on my website. But design
is simply to have the ear over the shoulder, over
the hip, over the knee, over the ankle. And you
look at little kids when you guys, when we're done
at this show, I want everybody to go out and
look at little children, especially up until maybe five or
seven years old. They're perfect little machines. Their feet are
straight ahead, their head sit right top, run on top
of their clavicles, and you can drop them, throw them,
you kick them. They don't break. What happens though.
Speaker 2: He can't do that anymore are.
Speaker 4: Our hunters and gatherers. We don't do that anymore. We
sit down at cars and desks and computers and do golf,
smarter radio shows. Sitting down, we end up out a
proper posture, and we see rowdy shoulders, forward head, especially
the most common one. You know. You know right off
the bat. You don't need to be a rocket scientists
to figure this out. When you see a person with
roundy shoulder, forward head, all that means is, in layman's terms,
the muscles on the front side of their body have shortened.
It's tightened, and it's pulled the person forward, and then
the back muscles restrict too. So when that person comes
out to play golf, they try to make a shoulder turn,
no comprehenitive. They can't do it because the muscles just
will not expand, and then they end up compensating, and
then that usually creates compensations for compensations, and then it's
you know, we're in trouble. But again, I'm now verver.
I'm not to say veering off, but I'm going more
into the posture reconstruction restoration programs to really get people
not only flexible, but get their bodies back into proper
design so they can function better, not only in the
golf but in their life.
Speaker 2: I would love to be able to make a living
out of working out on my golf game. And but
I know, of all the professional golf people that I
speak to, none of them get to play golf anymore.
They're too busy. But I'm a desk jockey. I've been
a desk jockey for most of my thirty plus year career,
so I'm sitting most of the day. Now, I'm sitting
in front of computer screens. And I found that chairs
and sitting at a desk has been the worst thing
for my back. Of everything that's bad about my pasture
and my lifestyle as far as how I hold myself.
I've learned how to sleep differently, which has helped my back.
But so many people use like one of those inflated
balls that the big rubber balls to use as chairs, right,
And I have found a chair that kind of mimics
that but in it so it does engage my core
and it has really helped my back. But I'm fairly
certain my posture sucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, what happens when you and I are talking
right now and we're sitting down the most powerful muscles
in our body, the upper part of the legs, and
what's called the hip flexors ILLEO sos in particular our hips.
Now there, right now, you and I are actually working out.
We're actually exercising because our hip flexor muscles are actually
in contraction, just like if I were to you can
see that if I'm going to flex my arm here,
my bicyple up here in the top part is contracting,
and that's what our hips are doing. And we do
this again all the time, for hours a day and
for years. Those muscles find me shortened, and when they shorten,
they pull the pelvists forward and then what's the pelvis
attached to the spine, and the spine finally starts to
wear out. And what you're doing, you're on the right
track because the Swiss balls are definitely they definitely help.
And the best thing, though, are these stand up desks,
and they're becoming more and more popular, and for good reason.
You have those desks now that stand up and you
put your computer up there. You don't have to sit down,
and almost assuredly with most people, the bad problems will
go away.
Speaker 2: Is it okay? I've got a physical coming up in
a couple of weeks. Is it okay if I tell
my doctor that you told me that I'm exercising all
day along at my desk?
Speaker 4: Sure, okay, hips, But you don't know one more thing.
When when we're sitting down, all of their weight, the
entire all of our upper body weight is going right
down where on our organs, and the organs are getting squished.
Our organs in our pelvis were not designed to bear
the weight our feet and legs were, and now our
organs are getting squished. So when we be all that
weight now plus we get one sided. You know, almost everybody,
you know, most most people in our culture the world
for that matter, is right handed, so you know, you
over use one side of the body. Tennis players get
tennis elbow, Baseball pitchers blow out the rotator cuffs, and
Tommy John the golfer's milu is a tight right hit
for most of us, and then that it dominates the
left side. But now we're sitting down and our pilvis
is out of position, and then you know, eventually our
prostate for us guys starts wearing down as we get older.
Women they get real tight in there. Many many women
now are forced to have cea sections because the birth
canal gets squished and the seed can't go up the
pillopian tubes and urinary infections, you know, the urine pools
and there. It goes on and on and on, and mainly,
I really i'd love the statement. We don't love it,
but I mean it's accurate in that I know that
sitting down is really the new cigarette smoking. It's it's
this is destroying our health. And we're seeing more and
more and more hip and knee replacements, back surgeries, carpal
tunnel I mean, shoulder surgeries that's becoming epidemic by the way,
and plant our fascy eyed, his bunions falling ours all
because the body's out of its design. And again it's
just we're just not getting the proper motion that we should. Beginning.
Speaker 2: Is running a bad thing?
Speaker 4: Long is a wonderful thing. If your body is in line,
if you if you're if your hip, knee and ankle
are lined up and you're walking, you're landing heel ball tow.
You can run to your heart's content. But most people have.
When you see duck feet, when a person has feet
that are inverted, the feet, the feet and knees tell
you what's going on in your hips. And when you
see a person who's running duck footed the media, the
inside part of the knee now is getting you know,
is getting the brunt of it. It's called joint centration.
So yeah, I mean you're gonna blow out your knees
and your hips tighten up and you get back problems
and on and on and on and on. So I
get asked all the time, what do I think of
this exercise, this machine, this new exercise, workout or whatever.
And my standard answer is are all exercise is good?
And my answer is, well, pretty much, yes, Are all
exercise is good for all people, no way. More and
more and more people fred are coming to me, you know, Roger,
I don't get it. I work out all the time,
I take care of myself, and I'm still I'm still injured.
My back still kills me, my knees still going out
and again because their body is out of proper alignment.
You see, we're seeing this on the pro golf tour.
I mean, the Pro Golf Tour is becoming a mass unit.
And I've written a couple of articles and done some
interviews recently, be coming out pretty soon. Guy called it
the dark side of the golf fitness movement. And you
look at these pros out there, and everybody say in ah,
what great shape they are, and they are, most of them.
But you know, how about all the injuries. I mean,
Tiger is the poster boys had four knee surgeries, back surgeries,
I mean Achilles problems, shoulder problems, and he's only one
of many. And these think about it. These kids, since
they're little children, infants are hitting golf balls, you know,
millions of times, and they get one sided, just like
I mentioned the tennis players and baseball pitchers, and they
get one sided in the right side dominant. And now
they go and they get workout ors. They're trying to
keep up with Tiger, and you know the rest of
the guys, and what do they do. They go out
and some of these guys overdo it and they work
out too strenuously, a lot of them. And as I say,
they're putting Ferrari engine on weak internal Volkswagen frames and
you put that kind of stress on there. They're getting
injured too. So you got to watch it. You've got
to watch your workouts, make sure you're doing the right
stuff for you.
Speaker 2: That is so interesting that for years we've been talking
about the Tiger effect on the industry and now it's coming,
you know, it's coming around to where the industry is
struggling and courses are closing and people are leaving the game.
And they're still blaming Tiger for all this. But the
fact that you're bringing up the exercise element, which he
changed the business, He changed the golf world by coming
out being such a fine physical specimen, and now that
he's deteriorating at a young age, it's like, oh wait,
we didn't really sit back and watch what's happening before
we get you know, and try to be exactly like him.
And right now look at him. Oh wow.
Speaker 4: And even though I'm I've been propagating the golf fitness
movement for mid nineteen eighties, you know, to me, it's
good news bad news. And the good news is, yeah,
more and more people are getting fit. They're increasing their
bone density and muscle mass and flexibility, and they feel
better and they're more confident, and cardio and all that.
It's all good. It's wonderful. But the bad news is,
you know, like I said, more and more people are
getting injured. So, and I hate to be contradictory, but
if you look at some of the greatest players some
probably almost all of the great players in previous generations,
you know, the Hogans and Sneeds and Trevinos and Nicholas's
and play I mean players like Gary's an exception, but
Johnny Miller, I mean, go on break down. None of
those guys worked out, you know, but they got their workouts.
They got their function by growing up naturally. They did
grow up playing Nintendo and Xbox and you know, sitting
in video and all this kind. I mean, I have
a teenage son and he comes up every night. Guess
where he gets his homework. It's online and they have
computers in the classrooms, so we're producing I believe the
sickest generation I think in this in the history of
the industrialized world. I really believe that. And you can
see it. And what are we seeing? More and more
back surgeries? Like I said a minute ago, I mean,
it's really it's really kind of scary.
Speaker 2: I think very interesting. Would you mind talking for a
moment about your relationship and how where it started and
how it evolved with the big three, which is obviously Arnie,
Gary and Jack.
Speaker 4: Well, first it was, you know, my mentor in all
this is a guy you probably heard of named p. D. Goscu,
and p as far as I'm concerned, is the most
knowledgeable person on the planet, you know, as far as
physiology and the design of the body and all that.
But anyway, I became fright. I kind of played a
pretty big part in Pete's career and I got him
off the road. In the old days, he just had
house calls. But bottom line was, he came into our
clinic and started doing his stuff and we weren't even
open like I think thirty days and Phil Rogers had
referred Jack to come E, Pete, and you know, so
he came in there and then they were it was
our second meeting. I believe their second session, and I'm like, an, awe.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to be stupid. I don't I've not heard
of p D Goscue.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's right. I want to look him up. It's
uh find him at egoscue dot com. But he's been
Jack's trainer for so.
Speaker 2: He's a physical he's not a he's not a golf instructure.
He's a physical.
Speaker 4: He's a physical trainer. But as far as I was
above that, but he's uh, he has now he has clinics.
I think he has close to thirty clinics all over
the world called the Egoscue Pain Centers.
Speaker 2: And how do you spell goscue E E G O
S c U E.
Speaker 4: Okay, But anyway, we were. I think it was Jack's
second session with Pete. And Jack comes walking in there,
and you know, Pete had completely gotten Jack out of
pain like he does most people, and and Jack said something.
Jack asked him a question. He said, Pete, why do
I have this flying right elbow? And Pete doesn't even
play golf and wasn't had no experience in golf, said
what's the flying right elbow? And he said, well, my
elbow by backswing, when flies like this, it lifts up.
It doesn't fold and stay, you know, close to my site.
It lifts up, and then I seem to come out
of by shot. My heel comes up too high off
the ground and then it slams down too hard, and
I'm prone to hit pull hooks. And Pete goes, well,
you know that makes sense, he said, But you don't
have a flying right elbow. You have a frozen rhomboid
and trap your scapula, doesn't you know, you're thick. People
with thick chest up in here like Jack had and
still has, thick like that don't have the range of
motion and their shoulder blades. So Jack would lift up
like that, he said. Now Frederick's over here, he's a
more rounded shoulder, you know in those days, and so
my elbow will come under my left arm. He said,
it's perfectly okay. That's how you that's how you're built, Jack,
and that's how Rogers built. The whole thing is basically
weight shift in rotation. So you know, and those my wife,
my ex wife or my wife at the time was nutritionists,
and Pete would always send all of his clients to
her for nutrition. So then Terry, my ex became They
were still really great friends. She became Jack's nutritionist and
for their family, and then so I got a really
great relationship going with Jack ever since those days. Then
periodically I'd run into him from time to time on
the tour and then I'd videotape his golf swing and
we'd look at me because he knew I understood the
body so and he wanted to know that. But back
to that first, I got to share this. Back to
that first that session when Jack was, you know, asking
Pete about his body. Jack looked at him and said,
boy he said, you're telling me, then, Pete, that I
physically can it's not good for me to keep my
red elbow in like that. And then Pete says, correct,
because you're built. You're built differently then, and Jack said,
boyd he see all these years I've been criticized for that.
I used to put head covers underneath my left arm pit.
I'd put straps around my arm to keep more connected.
And you're telling me that it doesn't matter. And Pete says,
that's correct, and I'll never forget this because Jack looked
at piece of boy, this is really powerful stuff. We
got to get this out there and I can help you, Pete.
And at that moment, right then I knew where my
career was going. And we had the biggest fish in
the sea out propagating the golf fitness movement, and he
helped us a lot, for sure. So I have a
really nice relationship with him and have for years. If
Arnold out, I was on Golf Academy Live. Then was
this two thousand and three, I think alother with Tommy
Jacobs and John Jacobs who had just won the Senior
of two thousand and three Senior PGA Championship, And I
was on national television explaining how the body functions in
the golf swing. And some of Arnold Palmer's people saw
that I was imitating what happens to so many seniors,
you know, the round his shoulder, forward head. And I guess,
as a story goes, somebody Artell. He's at the Tradition
Golf Club and some of the guys are said, Arnold,
that's you, that's you. And then they turned to my friend,
they said, can this guy help Arnold? And then he said,
I'll call him. So that's how Arlie got together. And
then he Arnol really bought into it. And I go
down to bay Hill all the time and spend a
lot of time with them where I beat him over
in the desert, and then we did that infomercial together
with Gary and Donna and then it was great. But
he's just I learned a lot from him being in
his kingdom, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Oh, I bet the way he.
Speaker 4: Treats people, being on the inside, the way he treats
people is absolutely it's nothing short of amazing.
Speaker 2: It's legendary.
Speaker 4: It is he in an age where most celebrities are
ducking the crowds and trying to get away, he's the opposite.
He literally will go out of his way at bay
Hill or any place and walk over to strangers and
buy him a drink or sit down with them. And
because he knows, he knows that when he does that,
he's making those people happy, because those people are going
to go home and say, wow, Arnold Palmer came over
and bought me a drink, and this and that, and
he knows he's helping those people in the sense, and
he loves it. I mean, he loves you know, everybody
loves Arnold. I can tell you something. Arnold loves them,
I think even more. And it's really it's really a
and I learned a lot from that about how to
how to treat people. And he's an incredible guy, that's
for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I had an opportunity in the early mid eighties.
I was doing some work around Major League Baseball and
I was in a conversation with who was a hero
at the time, later become vilified, Mark McGuire. And Mark
would talk about how he would sign autographs at the
ballpark all day long until the last kid was done.
But if he's sitting at dinner in a restaurant with
his family or friend, whatever, If he's a restaurant and
somebody walks up to him and asks for an autograph,
he says, you know, I'm really sorry, but this is
my private time. And if you catch me the ballpark,
no problem, but I'm not going to do that here.
And he knows that people go, well, Mirke McGuire's a
jerk man, you you know, So you tell the story.
Arnie just loves everybody at any time, and everyone walks
away going he is awesome. Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 4: I did a special show on the Golf Channel. It
was Golf Academy Live. This was a two thousand and
eight I think, and Arnold and I did that. It
was all about, you know, the flexibility program I put
him on. And anyway, the day before the show, I
had to go down to the Golf Channel and kind
of go over the script and the segment. There probably
seven segments on that show, and I had to go
over with Jerry Foltz and Jerry was the host of
that show. And we sat down and Jerry starts to
asking me all these questions about Arnold. Jerry said something
that I'll never forget. He said, you know, somebody wrote
he said, everybody I know has an Arnold Palmer story.
I went, wow, I never thought about that. And the
thing is, I mean every single like you just mentioned,
every time Arnold's name gets mentioned to me, or they
asked me how what he's like, or all that, they'll
they'll go off without a story.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: I was in a bar one time in ames Iowa
and it was a pro am and Arnold came in
and he came over. I mean, every single person almost
has a story about him, about how well you know
the king traded him. It's a it's amazing.
Speaker 2: So well, I am one of those that still does
not have an Arnie story. But I'm waiting. Okay, Well,
someday something.
Speaker 4: Schedule us and then you can go up to him yours.
Speaker 2: Well, we'll talk about that later. And now Gary player
must be a hero of yours as well of all
of us. But I mean, for how old is he
in his eighties yet?
Speaker 4: No, it's funny because he and I Gary and I
have the same birthday. Oh do you really met him?
I owned the golf school and I owned the driving
range over Atapouli, Maui between let's say where nineteen ninety
five and two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm playing there next week.
Speaker 4: Oh really, you lucky dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, I forgot to tell you that my fee for
this interview is a tu over there with you.
Speaker 2: Hey, listen, you're coming. I got. I got from calif
from Oakland to Maui three hundred and sixty seven dollars
round trip. How can I not go?
Speaker 4: But you gotta go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a friend who lives there and he
lungs to Mali country. And so we'll get some interviews.
About that in the next couple of weeks. But yeah,
I'm really fired up to go to White my golf
for three or four days.
Speaker 4: This cold weather over here.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm miserable. Yeah here in California. Yeah. Anyway,
So Gary.
Speaker 4: I was I got because my golf school and my
video stuff was right in the middle of the driving range.
So the first Conna poly scene that they hated. They
had the seniors there every year, and all the pros
that started coming over to me and wanted me to
film their swings, and then I started doing that, and
then years went by that I became Every year I
would work with a lot of these guys, like the
Hill over seventy of them, and one of the guys
was Graham, Marsh and Swampy. So anyhow, Graham had played
with Gary this is nowhere in nineteen ninety seven, and
they had played Gary played really bad. So they after
the round, they brought him over to me and Graham said, hey,
would you look at Gary, And I'm like, oh my god.
You know, Gary was really the first, you know, great
player that I really worked with, and so we sat
down with him, and then we got into the fitness
thing and I explained some stuff to him, and then
we went down and then it's been a wonderful relationship
ever since. But he's we had the same birthday both
November first, and so we talked about that a lot.
But he Gary Player is without question, the most inspirational
human being I've ever been around. I mean, he's just
so upbeat and positive. It's it's just contagious.
Speaker 2: And in phenomenal shape.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, he's incredible. He's a little bit four with
his shoulders, but he's.
Speaker 2: I asked, we won't tell him that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I asked him what he does for his workout
and then he goes raja. You see, he goes every
other day is my weight training day. It's I go
look the heavy iron, blab blah blahdy. He gave me
his whole schedule. But he does, like I think, what
do you tell me? I don't remember now, but I
think he does something like two hundred and seventy five
push ups every other day. Oh it's something crazy like that,
like five hundred sit ups, lifts weights. I mean, he's
he's phenomenal to me. I mean, all these guys that
were mentioning, I'm out a roll now. But all these guys.
The one thing they all have in common, all of them,
and they're all different, but the one thing they all
have in common is how positive they're looks are. I mean,
they're all so focused and positive. It's it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Well that's a life lesson for you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all of them, I mean, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: Awesome. Thank you so much for all that history. But
that's not why we're here, Okay. We're here to talk
to guys like the average golfer, like me, Like you know,
it's like I'm here with all this needle gear so
I can ask questions of people like you. I've been
following your and everybody should follow your email weekly regular
email blasts, and you had one a couple of weeks
ago which cracked me up, and I couldn't. I had
to watch this moon Moon over my hammies. I just
love that. What and that's just a stretching exercise. Why
didn't you walk us through that? And what the benefits are?
Moo over Miami?
Speaker 4: Okay, number one. I have to give credit to that
to Tom House and.
Speaker 2: Tom Tom House the former pitcher.
Speaker 4: Yeah, former pitching he was Henry Aaron hit the seven
hundred run you beat me to it.
Speaker 2: He caught he caught this home run that Henry Aaron
hit to break Babe Ruth's record. He was the pitching
coach at the time, or he was in the bullpen
for the Dodgers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, anyway, I think it was it was it was Atlanta,
mm hmm. But regardless, but he had Tom is that
we're both on the TPI, the Titlist Performance Institute Board.
I've gotten to know Tom real well. But anyway, he's
a great biomechanist and a great physical trainer. I mean
they're all going to him now, all the baseball pitchers
and Hayton Manning, Archie and Aaron Rodgers, I mean on
and on. But anyway, I prefer generally, I prefer whole
body strength, extra sizes and stretching exercises rather than just
to isolate a certain muscle group. The whole body is
one big working unit. But anyway, because as we've been
talking about, so many of us are forward all the time.
That simply means that our front sides will get tighter
and the backsides get weaker. But like the moon over
my hammies, when we lie in your back, you know,
in the so my newsletter, you dig your heels in
the ground and you pike up, and that really strengthens
your entire posterior chains, your calves, hamstrings, blutes, lower back up,
er back, shoulders, so it really helps balance out, you know,
the sedentary lifestyle. And by the way, I have to
give even more credit. Tom told me because he came
up with that. He stole that off of a Denny's.
Denny's restaurant, a Denny's menu, there's like there's a there's
a ham and eggs special. They have a dent so
on that's where a moon over my handies.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good. That's pretty good. Well, now that Denny's
has gotten credit, we don't have to worry about anybody
coming after us. You know the the video that you
did for that exercise, is that available on YouTube as well?
Speaker 4: It is?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, So what I'm going to do in the
show notes for today's program, I'm going to put the
link to that so everyone can get a chance to
see that. You can go and click on the link
in the show notes. Absolutely, we do it.
Speaker 4: My whole website, so it's gonna be much more interactive
where people can ask me questions, I'll interact with them.
I'll be some more videos and newsletters a week and
so it should be up real soon.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, Well it's fredericksgolf dot com. Fredericks is f
R E D E R I c K S golf
dot com. Fredericksgolf dot com. People should check that out.
All right, Well, this has been an amazing lesson, but
you your your last newsletter is really what I would
like to focus on for our free audience here today.
That would be the twenty seven point plan that you
learned from somebody. This was a fascinating story with some
great advice as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that most people would do this,
but I don't think I know their golf games would
improve incredibly. But I'll make this real quick there. When
I was a kid, one of the greatest players I
had ever played with, and I mean this literally and frankly,
I think I've worked with over seventy tour players, seven
Hall of famers, but honest to God, one of the
greatest players I ever saw was a guy named Ted Richards,
and nobody ever heard of him because he never turned pro.
He was the nineteen fifty three US Public Links champion.
He won the Southern California Amateur a bunch of times.
He won the Bellair Club Championship, I think nineteen times.
I mean, he was a great player. And what was
so unique about him is that he never played. And
I'm not exaggerating. He would he would take two months off,
three months off and go out there and shoot sixty seven,
sixty eight, sixty six. I mean, it was uncanny. And
he always would beat me by a stroke. I mean
it didn't matter where we played, he'd always find a
way to beat me. And I was playing pretty good
then and one day he beats me again and we're
sitting there in the grill room afterwards. I said, ted,
how in the world do you do it? How do
you play such great golf and never play? And he said,
because I have a great program. It's called the twenty
seven point program. And I going like, what, what in
the world is that? And he said, well, how many
stances are there in a golf swing? He said about
three open square clothes. How many ball positions are there, well,
basic generally three forward, middle back. How many golf swing
paths are there, well, three outside in, straight along and
inside out. He said, if you. So he says, that's
three cubed, So that that's told. That's a twenty seven
different types of shots that are possible generally, I said, correct.
He says, start with position. He said, everybody would do this.
Go out to the range, Start in position one, which
he calls open stance, ball forward outside in swing path.
What kind of shot you're going to hit? So well?
High slice? He said, correct? What if you do if
what happens if you put the same thing open stance,
put the ball back in the middle ofer stance outside
in swing I said, won't be as high as a slice?
He said, correct. What happens if you put the ball
way back wait outside and you're I said, you're going
to hit a low, big, bad or slice? He said correct.
He said, if a person would go and practice all
all positions, so finally you end up with the closed stance,
you know, ball forward, inside out swing path, you're going
to be hitting a high hook, you know, add infinitum,
and he said, Now the truth is, of the twenty
seven possibilities of shots, the average person will probably only
hit maybe used maybe five or six. He said, So
a person should go out there and find their bread
and butter, what are the shots that they're that's easiest
for them to do? And go play that way? I said,
Now you go out in the course and you stand,
you know, as you ask yourself, I mean non verbally
or even verbally, ask yourself. Okay, I'm on a dog
leg right here? What kind of shot do I want
to hit? Well? You want to hit a medium fade?
And he said when he said, you do that, and
he said, you will start playing golf rather than start
playing swing and he feels, And I've been on that
lesson te giving a lot of lessons for a lot
of years. And it's amazing to me how many it
happens to me too, how many how many golfers don't
even aim, don't even visualize. And you know, I started
playing and tend and I would go out in the afternoons.
I finally talked them into it. We'd go out every
afternoon at the club in la And he said, okay,
R what kind of shot you want to get here?
I say, well, I've got a big, sweepy long par five,
no trouble on the left. I want to hit a
good hard hook. You say, hit it, and I'll tell you.
I mean I played that summer, and I played probably
the most consistent golf of my life. But like everybody else,
you know, I start thinking about my swing and put
my mind and my energy back there rather than out there.
And they'll tell you if the average person would do that,
it sounds hard because the average you know, the high
handicapp or so many of them have a hard time
even hitting them, you know, the ball solidly. But if
they would start doing that, start visualizing the shot and
executing it, it's amazing. It's amazing how how much they'll improve.
And the smaller the target and the more your energy
is focused on the target, when you miss it, I mean,
you'll still end up usually with a much better miss.
I love that saying that. You know, if you shoot
for the moon and your miss, you'll still land upon
the stars, so you'll still have a pretty good you know,
dispense that you're.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had. I remember someone on the show years
ago was talking about if if you focus on a
target and you miss it by ten yards, that's still
a pretty good shot. But if you don't have a
target that you're aiming at, if you're just looking out
there and not even folks on where it goes and
you miss it by ten yards. That's an awful shot,
That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: An old friend was one of the guys that owned
our first golf school. Has got hi Ken Blanchard, doctor
Ken Blanchard, the One Minute Manager, and he used to
have a saying that I always love. He said, if
you don't know where you're going, any road will take
you there. I was like that. But back back to
the thing I was talking about. All the positive attitudes
and great champions and players and business people have all
successful people for that. Now they're thinking the way they
see things is different. But every great player, and trust me,
I've been inside their heads, every great player, with no exception,
all of them, they see things differently. They're so focused
on the target. It's and they all do it different,
but they're all so focused on the target. Their visualization
is dramatic. Arnold told me the first time I worked
with him that the only thing that he tried to
do in his golf swing was with his right hand
feel like he's shaking hands and touching the target, because
you know, he convexed his wrists and really cleared deep
and he was just you know, almost shaking hands. With
the target with his right hand. I mean, I've been
at Nicholas's house when he displained how he plays the Masters,
which is normal. I mean he talks about, you know,
looking at the trees, see where the wind's blowing in
the trees and the ripples down in the pond. Where's
the flagstick on eleven and what's the what's the flagstick
doing over on twelve? And he said, quote they said, guys,
it's almost like they'm in a fairy land. It's almost
like I'm in this imaginary world. I just kind of
feel my way along seeing you know, the targets and
the shape of the shots with the wind. But honestly, Godfred,
they're all like that. I mean they all see it different.
And again, you know, we're talking about the average high
handicapper just stands up there and hits it out there
somewhere and hope and hopes it ends up good.
Speaker 2: The mid to high handicapper who has just heard your
description about the twenty seven point program shouldn't just go
out and start doing that. I mean, this is these
are shots that you have to practice, and this is
these are I would think for shots for people who
are comfortable with their swing and not tinkering all the
time too. Right, Well, most high handicappers and mid to
high handicappers are constantly tweaking and trying to adjust their
swing even during a round, thinking they know what they
did wrong in the lasting is supposed to just try
to get the same swing, you know, every single time out,
be consistent with the swing. They keep tweaking and thinking, oh, well,
the ball went right that time, so this time I'm
gonna have to do this, or last time I played
this hole the ball went in the water, so I'm
gonna have to do a different kind of shot. And
they don't know how because they don't practice that shot.
Speaker 4: That's right, that's right. But if they go to the
driving range, that's what Ted told me to do. And
I was already a good player, and when he told me,
he says, go to the driving range and just start
carving it out. And the thing is, even for high handicappers,
believe it or not, it's not that hard. It's not
that hard to do. To me. What's hard is you're
trying to perfect a golf swing. And you know, frankly,
like I was saying earlier, on the average the average
guy who really has no flexibility, no leg strength or
no you know, hand eye coordination. You know they're gonna
have a hard They can't do most a lot of
them can't do the things that their instructors try to
teach them to do. They can't physically do it. But
what happens is when you even those people, when you
when they visualize a shot, you believe it or not.
You know you can your body will obey your mind
rather than try to get your mind to obey your body,
if you know what I mean, you know, I mean
it's like the old like the old Buddha. You know,
the Buddha used to say, all we are is a
sum total of our thoughts. That's all we are. So
we can if we can think differently, we can change
our behavior. And we change we change our behavior physically,
then you know, we start changing our outcome, our destiny.
Speaker 2: Interesting, but when you're going out and practicing this twenty
seven point program, you shouldn't try to do all twenty
seven and now, well, you should just focus on a
couple each time you go out and feel comfortable with
it before you start taking it out to the golf course.
Speaker 4: Definitely, yeah, definitely, obviously the better point. That's a good point.
But I think most people should say, you know, start
with position one and start hitting some really high slight
until you have that down right, and then and it
won't take long. Then, like you said, move back and
then go real slow. A good player can go a
little bit faster because they pretty much know how to
hit these shots anyway.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, but most of us don't. Yeah, most of
us don't even know how to don't understand shot selection.
I think, you know, it's like you see him talk
about it on the tour, you see him talk about
it on TV and instructors, But when it comes right
down to it, you know, and then you go, even
if you do practice it at a driving range on
a mat, then you get out on the golf course
and all of a sudden, the ball is six inches
above your you know, above your feet, and you've got
to make this nice high slicing shot. And it's like, yeah, right,
I practice that, but not this way.
Speaker 4: It makes it very art of shot making. It's almost
becoming a lost art. Yeah. The equipment today is so good,
you know, and you can you can look at the
club faces now on the drivers, I mean they're gigantic,
you can miss it all over the club base and
still hit decent shots. So you know, but I love
watching guys like Bubba Watson, guys who are still shot makers,
who still you know, try to work the ball almost
every time. That's these guys who are just like robots
and just drill it dead straight every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he hits it far. He hits it far.
To close off this episode, can you give us a
tip on how to increase our flexibility?
Speaker 4: Okay, it's hard to do sitting down, but everybody, I mean,
the overwhelming majority that people of people who stretch don't
get flexible. And I start most of my seminars on saying,
if you don't want to get flexible, if you don't
want to gave improve your range of motion, if you
want to stay stiff, then just get on a stretching program,
And that usually gets their attention. But it's really true
because if I'm going like like I'm really trying to stretch,
there am I doing? I'm holding my breath and all
all flexibility is is is relaxing the muscle that comes
from breathing. So if I breathe like you ever been
in your car and you drop your keys and you're
grinding to try to reach over there and get it,
you camp. But if you let go, you can actually,
you know, go another who knows eight inches a foot longer.
So breathing is what gets you flexible, not stretching, and
when you the reason most people don't breathe is because
they don't. There's a lot of reasons for that, but
one is because there they breathe from up here. It's
like they breathe from up here in their lungs, and
the breathing has to come from your lower diaphragm. So
I tell people to get fat. So if you can
try to stand up here, if you get somebody to
put their fingertips right on your love handles or even
tie a belt or something around on your abdomen here
and when you watch when I inhale, now watch what happens.
And I do this all the time in front of
my audience. As I say, okay, everybody, stand up, grab
a partner and have the partner behind you put their
hands beyond on the love handles of the person there,
and take a two thirds deeper inhalation with their nose.
Here's what I see. They breathe with their traps. So
again I encourage everything, everybody. And as simple as the sounds,
I can't tell you how dramatic it is if people
would start to learn to breathe from their lower diaphragm
down in here. So when you inhale, it goes out.
When you exhale, it comes in. And when people get
on a stretching program, they should not try to stretch.
They should breathe into the stretch, or as we say it,
relax into stretch. And if they would do that, they
will increase their range of motion dramatically. Not to mention
that they will start getting oxygen up into their head.
It permeates throughout the body, and their body then starts
to breathe properly. And guess what, when they breathe properly
and they're breathing from the lower diaphragm, they get back
into perfect posture with their shoulders over the hips, over
the knees, over the feet, straight ahead. So, as simple
as it may sound, breathe and breathe from the diaphragm
in here and practice that. You know, most guys try
to look cool down there at muscle beach, you know,
And we tuck it in, and that's exactly what you
don't want to do. So breathing is the key. I
have a lot of videos and tips on my website
that teach people how to breathe. So that's the best
thing I could teach people what to do, is breathe, babe.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. And you know it's true because like when
you're talking about leaning down and reaching to pick something up,
most people or even stretching, they're going to hold their
breath as supposed to breathe through it, right, They'll like,
and then they'll try to reach it over and it's like,
that's the worst thing you can possibly do.
Speaker 4: Right if you see that in golf too, I mean,
now that's one of the biggest.
Speaker 2: People take a big breath and hold their breath.
Speaker 4: I get people in their setup, I said, okay, and
when they're when they're addressing the ball, like here, I'll
go put my hand right on their under underbelly button.
I said, okay, now right, be pray, take it back,
just let go, just let it not just relax. You
watch a free throw shooter, what does he do you know?
Or the tennis player they bounce it. I mean almost
every baseball pitcher. Almost every sport, they will automatically intuitively
exhale gently right before they started back. And most golfers
are you know, they suck it in and tense up.
So golfing will not allow tension or for life of
that matter,