Speaker 1: All right, I'm Verne Coats from mary and Iowa. I
play golf at Indian Creek Country Club. And this is
Golf Smarter episode number nine hundred and seventy five. Think
of a pyramid. The most important part of the pyramid,
obviously is the foundation. If we don't have a wide
base and foundation, the top's not going to stay put.
So in any building, we want a solid foundation, and
then you always start with that. You can't start a
building by building the roof first, it just doesn't work.
So our foundation has to be rotary mobility. And golfers
they're like, oh, yeah, I know I need to be flexible.
But people don't like to do flexibility work because number one,
they may not know exactly what they need to do.
It's like, you know, I can stretch my quads, I
can stretch my hamstrings. I might do a few trunk
rotations like this, but is that really going to make
a measurable difference? And so what we found is that
number one, measure the areas where we need to rotate better.
And for a golfer, those are the four key areas
where we need to rotate all your neck so you
can actually turn and see the ball. If you just
do a trunk with your body and then you try
and backseling position, then I try and rotate my head
to look at the ball. I need a good amount
of neck rotation. And for people that if they start
to turn their head, or if you notice if you're
driving and you kind of have to turn your whole
body to check behind you, golfers would have to do
a shoulder check. They're finding that the next tighte that's
sure sign that your neck mobility is limited.
Speaker 2: Playing your best golf after turning fifty, sixty or even
seventy with Josh Lays. This is Golf Smarter, sharing stories,
tips and insights from great golf minds to help you
lower your score and raise your golf IQ.
Speaker 1: Here's your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 1: Josh, Hey, thanks for having me. Fred, appreciate being here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's excited about this conversation because you're from Par
for Success, which we've spoken to Chris Finn many times
on this podcast, and we talk talked about exercise fitness
for golf, and that's really what you guys specialize in,
is fitness for golf. But today our topic is something
very close to my heart, and that is fitness for
golfers over fifty, over sixty, over seven, or.
Speaker 1: Sent maybe even over eighty.
Speaker 2: Why not, you know, I would love to be able
to do that because the ultimate goal is to be
able to shoot your age. I think that is the
ultimate hole in one is a nice lucky thing to happen, yes,
but there is a way to really prepare yourself to
be able to shoot your aid. That should be the
goal for every golfer, right.
Speaker 1: I think when you're young, Fred, maybe shooting your age
for nine holes would be great. But yes, as we
get once we get into our sixties and beyond, And
I've talked to many people. I've had the pleasure of
being in conversation with many members here that are in
house and remote clients that are so thrilled to tell
us that thanks so much for helping me shoot my age,
like it never gets old. And that's one of the
throes of the game is being able to play as
long as you as long as you wish. So our
mission is simply to help golfer has achieved longevity. We
just define that as you being able to play at
whatever level you want for as long as you want
or whatever level you deem enjoyable. So that's that's what
we love doing here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love you know, shoot your age. He said,
what did you say? You said, shoot your age no
matter how old you get, Well, you know, like we
hope to be getting there.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: So I think what we knew need to do, Let's
not start at the at the older end. Let's start
at the younger end and talk about the things that
we can do. I think because for me, I remember
what I learned about turning forty, was that everything that
I did in playing sports growing up, you know, like,
oh I hurt myself, Yeah, I'll be fine in a
few minutes, and as you know, as you get older,
a few minutes becomes a couple of days. When I
hit forty, it just took a lot longer to recover
from from minor injuries than it did in the past.
And it was like I got to learn to be patient,
and is this what's going to be happening the rest
of my life?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's that that is the downside to bread
of obviously, of aging, and one ouside.
Speaker 2: Is, let me just say, the upside to aging is
your aging. Yeah, because you consider the alternative is.
Speaker 1: Not good exactly right where we're still operating, where we're breathing.
So that is every day we can do that, that's great.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: A funny story is one of the things that reminded
me of of getting older was when my daughter broke
her a cast. They said they had set it pin
in one of the one of the bones in her forearm,
and I said, oh, is she gonna have the cast?
He said, two weeks, She'll be fine. I said, two
weeks season that you should, like forty sixties, like she's
eight years old, she'll be She'll be fine. So when
when when you're really young the bones, the bones aren't
brittle yet. But yeah, what what what golfers can start
to do as they get older? What we typically see
for it? And this is based on our research, and
that's what we love to do here. We love to
compile research and data, physical data on every golfer that
we work with. So not only does that include swing data,
but we've got the physical metrics on what their mobility's
like and what their strength and power are like. So
we can tell you physically someone in their twenties, thirties, forties,
every decade through the seventies and eighties, what the relative
norms are, so golfers can know what to expect and
what the what's possible, and where they're at, so we
can set really realistic goals and say, hey, if you're
only at the thirtieth percentile for clubhead speed for your
age group, there's no reason to think that you can't
get it to the top twenty five percent with some heart,
with some work. So that's really encouraging the golfers. But
like you said, on the aches and pain side, you know,
golfers typically as they age, every decade we see not
only are the aches and pains going to take a
little bit longer to go away, but we can we
can mitigate that, and we can minimize that by doing
the right things. And we'll get into that. But every
about every decade we see after thirty, so once you
kind of like you said, start your forties, every decade
we see about a five mile on hour drop off
in club headsby So that's yeah, So that's that's the average.
Some golfers are more somewhere less, but the average is
about is about five miles an hour per decade, So
that amounts to you know, it's probably we're probably talking
fifteen yards every ten years.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: It it can be. So we get calls from people
all the time that are concerned, obviously because hey, I'm
in my mid sixties now and I've lost like thirty yards.
It didn't seem like that long ago, but from five
ten years ago, I'm down twenty five three yards. And
that's really really common.
Speaker 2: Really really frustrating for sure.
Speaker 1: Because golfers are used to playing, you know, a certain
part of the golf course with their buddies, they play
whatever it is, the Blue teas or the white teas,
And if everyone's playing from Montie Block and you're all
of a sudden finding it difficult to reach par fours
in regulation and you have no hope at reaching par
fives in two and maybe you know you're just lucky
to get a short club in your hands on your
third shot. That's where golfers can get frustrated, and that's
where we love to help them, because actually helping a
golfer realize that you don't need to do a lot
of crazy things to improve and get better and hit
the ball further and hurt less. You just have to
do a few simple things, really really consistent, and that's
what we love to do, and.
Speaker 2: That's what we want to talk about simple things too,
because you know a lot of golfers their whole warm
up is going out to the driving range before before
the round of golf, doing a couple of l arm up,
arm up, this, arms up, bend over once or twice.
Speaker 1: Sweep, touch your toes, maybe maybe.
Speaker 2: Try to touch your toes. And my favorite is swinging
two clubs at once. It's like, okay, I'm ready to
go and they pull out the driver. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And there's lots of things that we can
do to get golfers not only warmed up, but to
help them recover after they're playing. It's usually after a
golfer play is done playing, especially if you walk the course,
if you've got any more than a five minute drive home,
you know, the body starts to cool off, or maybe
you have a drink or two in the grow room,
and then you get in your car, and then you
get out of your car, and you take takes more
than thirty seconds to sort of get into an upright
position when you're trying to get out of your chair.
So that those are the things that we get a
lot of sort of complaints about golfers is that they're just, hey,
I'm starting to feel old and I don't really like
it anymore. And the what we really we try and
simplify it for people, and to take a very broad approach.
There's a couple we'd like to talk about how we're
going to help people get better. So I'd like to
share a little bit about that and just give you
the illustration of a think of a pyramid. Right, So
the most important part of the pyramid obviously is the foundation,
because if we don't have a wide base and foundation,
the top is it's not going to stay put. So
in any building, we want a solid foundation and then
you always start with that. You can't start a building
by building a roof first, it just doesn't work. So
our foundation has to be rotary mobility. And golfers they're like, oh, yeah,
I know I need to be flexible. But people don't
like to do flexibility work because number one, they may
not know exactly what they need to do. Right. It's like, well,
I you know, I can stretch my quads, I can
stretch my hamstrings. I might do a few trunk rotations
like this, but what is that really going to make
a measurable difference? Right? And so what we found is
that if we actually number one, measure the areas where
we need to rotate better, right, and that for a golfer,
those are the four key areas where we need to
rotate are your neck so you can actually turn and
see the ball. If you imagine me, you know, the
coffers are just listening. If you just do a trunk
turn and with your body and then you try and
into a baseline position, then I try and rotate my
head to look at the ball. I need a good
amount of neck rotation. And for people that actually if
they start to turn their head or if you notice,
if you're driving and you kind of have to turn
your whole body to check behind you. We have the
luxury of those backup cameras now, but before that golfers
would have to actually, you know, to do a shoulder check. There.
They're finding that the next type, that's a sure sign
that your your neck mobility is limited. So that's going
to limit one, your ability to make a big turn
and keep your eye on the ball. Number two, we
need to rotate your trunk and your spine, and then
number three is your shoulders, which are going to be
more in control of the club path. So golfers that
are top, if they want to be more consistent, they
want to eliminate a slice. We know that that right
shoulder trail shoulder. If we're talking about right handed golfers,
it's the right shoulder that needs good rotation. This way
external rotation. So if I take my arm in a
ninety degree position, I try and point my thumb way
back behind me. We want to see that form get
well behind you like that, and if it's only getting
to parallel to the or perpendicular to the ground, then
it's definitely limited. That's going to allow you to shallow
the club on the downswing. So for golfers that are
complaining of over the top move and if you feel like, oh,
you're trying to arch your back to do that, that's
probably a sure sign that, oh, my shoulder might not
rotate enough. So that's going to be a reason why
golfers come over the top, which is a distance killer
as well. And the last one is the hips. The
is you know happy, No, it wasn't happy. Gilmore's chuck
Peterson said, it's all in the hips, right, It's all
in the hips. Happy. So if our hips don't rotate,
the hips are essentially the connection between your lower body
and your upper body. But if our hips don't rotate
well enough, Fred, your body is not going to be
able to make a good weight shift and help you
get onto your lead side in the gulf, which is
essentially what's going to create a lot of your clubhead speed.
Is that that weight shift from trail side the lead side.
So we make sure from a mobility standpoint that that
foundation is really, really solid, and then we start to
build up.
Speaker 2: So as you're explaining each of these moves, I'm sitting
here trying to do them and you're watching me, and
it's like, ow right, I'm trying to make my arm
go you go straight back, and I can't get it
past forty five degrees and it hurts.
Speaker 1: It hurts my shoulder.
Speaker 2: It's like, wait a minute, I thought I was a
flexible person.
Speaker 1: You probably were at one time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks guy. And it's not going very well right now.
So I don't know where to begin here. Uh this
is this is we started about forty year old. But
I'm going right to close to seventy. Here, let's let's
do more shoulders and hips and I you know, I
do stretches pretty much five days a week. I'll spend
you know, half hour forty five minutes doing things. But
I guess I'm not doing enough, although well, yeah.
Speaker 1: It may not be that you're not doing enough. It's
just making sure that we're doing the right things. That is.
That is, that's the big key. So that's again why
we test those things. So we'll we'll test people, you know,
every two to four weeks on their mobility because you
can actually make significant measurable gains in your ability to
rotate in a couple of weeks, and that's that's usually
what we see, some like measurable progress. So hit the
hip tests. Actually we didn't get into that one, but
our hips need to internally rotate, so that would be
like me, I'll just for anybody that can see, if
I'm sitting and I try and rotate my thigh like this,
If you're sitting and you try and rotate so your
your shin actually moves outwards like that for golfers that
your shin only rotates a little bit and you're trying
to not lean to the side and you're just trying
to rotate your thigh and the inwards, so your foot
goes out. If we don't have close to forty five
degrees of rotation this way with the hip, that's a
significant limitation. Most golfers are like, oh, I'm getting a
cramp in my hip when I do that motion. That's
probably a sign that your hip rotation is limited. And
the lead side, the left side is actually for left
side for a right handed golfer, is going to be
where we need the most internal rotation because that rotation
is where you actually post up on this lead side,
so that's where we eat a lot of that internal rotation.
So if you're having trouble getting onto your lead side
and if you're having trouble posting up and shifting weight,
that is a real primary area that we usually target
with golfers. So that is really key. So we measure it,
we test it, and if golfers don't pass, you know,
in terms of how many degrees they're rotating, we just
give them a very specific targeted plan for hip rotation
where we can gain you know, five, ten, fifteen degrees
hip rotation in a month or two and that gets
them to a spot where not only will they see
improvements in how their swing feels and I'm able to
get onto my lead side, but we'll see that golfers
don't have this stiffle over back that they usually have
after playing golf, because if those hips don't rotate, If
you just think of a ball and socket joint, that
ball in socket's designed to rotate, which is your hip socket.
If they don't rotate and they're stuck, guess what's going
to compensate? Body goes up the chain and ask the
lower back, hey, can you move a little bit more
than you really should to help out these hips that
don't rotate. So the lower back typically side bends and
twists in an effort to kind of get through the swing,
and that's where the lower back takes a lot of
the stress. So all the parts are somewhat connected, but
it's really important for golfers to understand that rotary mobility
is that foundation to the pyramid. Usually golfers will look to,
you know, one of four places to try and improve
their performance. The first two places they'll usually look for
better technique, which makes sense, like taking lessons seeing a
pro is great and then equipment. Those would be the
first two places golfers will usually try and improve. If
you think of four pieces of the pie, we've got
our technique. So seeing a golf pro working on your skills,
that can be great. But if you can't physically move
into the positions where a teacher is trying to get
you to, it's going to be difficult for the instructor
to gate to see big improve It's because, well, if
this person can't rotate their trunk, they can't rotate their hips,
they're really stiff. I'm going to have to work around
these limitations. Whereas if we get the golfer to move correctly,
then all of a sudden, those technical issues in the
swing over the top or early extension or maybe they've
got a chicken wing finish, a lot of those technical
issues are actually they're because of a physical restriction. So
the tech the problem, it's not a technical issue in
this swing. It's just a physical restriction that's presenting as
a technical problem in the swing. Because your body will
just work within its within its physical limits.
Speaker 2: We just have to well, I'm curious, you should should
an instructor just like okay, I can see your physical limitations.
Let's make your swing. You know, I know you want
more consistency and you want more distance, but you can't
get there with the body you're working with. And if
you're not willing to work on that body, let's try
to figure that out.
Speaker 1: That definitely has to be a conversation between the pro
and the golfer. But most golfers, number one, they want
to hit it further, and they want to hit it straighter, obviously,
and they want to hurt less in the process. So
if the person's physical bodies and allowing them to make
any progress in the swing, you obviously are going to
have to I think at the bare minimum, the instructor
should be able to see that there's a restriction and
that they could refer out to someone like us to say, hey,
this person needs help rotating. Can you can you help them?
And then we definitely that's what we usually see with
people that are starting with this, is that my golf
pro is trying to get me to this position in
the backswing or to start my downswing with getting onto
my lead hip. And then we go and measure their
lead hip and it's only got fifteen degrees of rotation.
When that lead hip should get forty five degrees of rotation. Well,
it's it's actually not a surprise that you can't get
onto your lead hip. It's not that you're not trying.
It's not that you're The brain is saying, okay, get
onto your lead yep, come on, but the body is
if it's if there's a physical restriction, we just need
to work around that. So that's where often the yeah,
golfers will go to technique, they'll go to equipment, but
mobility and then strengthen power are the other two pieces
of that puzzle, and that's where you golfers will usually
look last. Obviously I'm biased. I think that we should
go there first because make sure your body can physically
handle the demands of what we're trying to get it
to do. Because physically, the golf swing is a daunting
task to actually place that club that sweet spot on
a golf the sweet spot's probably, you know, but the
size of a quarter, and you're trying to you're trying
to move a club head anywhere from probably eighty to
one hundred plus miles an hour in the span of
less than two seconds. It's a minor miracle that golfers
actually make contact with the ball.
Speaker 2: Well, you're a lot of help. Yeah, I just want
to let the podcast listeners know that, you know, it
sounded as if Josh kind of got far away from
the microphone, which he did because on video he had
to step, you know, move back so he can show
us and we were able to see his whole body.
So I just want you to know that I will
go ahead and put this entire interview on video on YouTube.
If you go to YouTube at golf Smarter, you'll be
able to see this interview and you'll see exactly what
Josh was doing. But for those listening, thank you, and
you know, let's carry on. Okay. So you're saying there's
four parts, the technique, then equipment, then three and four.
Speaker 1: Would be mobility, and then strengthen power. Okay, yeah, so mobility, Fred,
we want to think of mobility as essentially, if you
imagine a runway and an airplane. Okay, that's the simple
analogy is the runway needs to be long enough so
the plane can take off in land. And certain planes,
if they're bigger and have bigger engines and they're faster,
they're going to need a longer runway. The golf swing. Obviously,
depending on how fast you're going, we need enough runway
or rotary mobility, which is your space in your body
to swing freely without restrictions, so that you can get
into good positions in your swing and swing at speed.
You need rotary mobility to have that runway to swing
at speed. And if we don't have enough runway or
room to rotate, this is where we're going to see
those compensations in your swing. And if if you don't
have that room to rotate, your body just ends up
banging into brick walls every time you swing, which is
over time that someone doesn't address it, the aches and
pains get worse, and eventually we have an injury.
Speaker 2: You were just finishing up by saying that we're going
to have an injury if we go that direction. But
for people who who have had injuries, who are recovering
from injuries, whether it's a broken a broken arm, broken leg,
or maybe even had back surgery or something, they're going
to need to almost go to ground zero. They can't
just pick up where they left off right to get
back to a good place. They got to really kind
of start from the ground up, don't they.
Speaker 1: That's a great question, Fred for people, and this is
something that our physical therapists deal with on a day
to day basis is people that have had surgeries, knee surgeries,
hip surgeries.
Speaker 2: Hip replacements. I mean, I have a lot of times that.
Speaker 1: The ear that part of what super common as you
get into your sixties and above that we see giant replacements.
And if the rehab is done correctly, the joint should
be able to you should be able to actually access
more range of motion in that joint than prior to
because the reason that joint was replaced is that it
wasn't moving. There was bon on bone. So now that
you have a new joint, we should be able to
physically move that joint in a further range of motion.
And this is where people often may get a little
bit hesitant because they're afraid that they're going to reinjure
their hip. But once you get past the rehab phase,
which is anywhere from May to twelve weeks, and that
should be done, you know, to restore that full range
of motion. And the rehab part of it is, especially
with knees and hips, it's it's not comfortable. I'm not
going to lie to you but as you've probably heard
from your friends, but if you're willing to go through
that and have full range of motion in the joint,
we're not necessarily starting at ground zero. But a lot
of the time before people got into before people had
the surgery, their mobility was not in a great spot
to begin with, which ultimately, if we don't have good mobility,
that's where the joints are going to wear out prematurely
and going to have more wear and tear. So making
sure that number one, we just if someone has a surgery,
they get a joint replaced. We look at each person
and say, okay, well, let's let's test everything and see
where it is. Let's measure your mobility, and we also
measure strength and power too, but let's measure your mobility
and see where we're at, and then we know what
areas that we need to focus on. Because if someone's
trunk rotates really well, and someone doesn't need to improve
their trunk rotation, then we don't need to spend extra
time rotating on the trunk. We need to keep it
in a good spot and maintain it. But if their
hips don't rotate very well, then and that's the most
common I would say area of struggle for golfers is
internal hip rotation and that's the challenging one. So that's
where we would spend most of the time focusing on
improving that one area that needs the most attention and people.
You know, again, it doesn't take a lot of time
to make significant improvements in your rotation.
Speaker 2: As long as you're doing it correctly.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, So that's where we would you know, set
somebody up with a coach and make sure that you're
doing the exercises properly. We do a combination of soft
tissue releases, so we do we teach people where their
muscles are that they that are causing the restriction, and
we teach them how to do some manual therapy or
self mild fascil release or trigger point release for those
muscles so that the muscle can actually calm down and relax,
and then we'll give them two or three mobility exercises
to follow up on that soft tissue release working within
a healthy end range of motion, So we're trying to
basically re establish a new end range of motion for
that joint. So we're basically helping you find out where
your limit is and your end range of motion and
then gradually improve that with each workout so that someone
within two weeks they're usually seeing you know, you know,
about five degrees sometimes ten degrees increase in range of motion,
especially in the hips, because we want to see a
forty five degrees of internal rotation. And often people start
in the twenties, mostly guys in their sixties, they're probably
starting between fifteen and twenty five, sometimes around thirty. But
that extra fifteen degrees difference makes a big impact when
you're trying to get onto that lead side in your
golf swing.
Speaker 2: People who are trying to always increase the distance on
their drives, on their shots. Is it, am I end
of the false impression that you need to get stronger
to do that? Or is it really that you need
better mobility and flexibility to get through it to get
the greater distance or is it a combination of the two.
How would you assess that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you said it exactly right for it. It is
both mobility. As I said before, we think of that
pyramid of kind of golf performance, mobility is the base,
so that's where we start the the next level up
that we're going to try and build to make sure
your swing and your game can handle playing into your
seventies and eighties. Is strength and power. So that's the
next physical physical area we need to unlock for somebody.
So if you think about you know, as I said before,
the golf swing takes place in less than two seconds,
and we're swinging anywhere from probably eighty to one hundred
miles an hour plus depending on your age and ability
and skill. So the golf swing is a power sport.
It's a power event like it's it's just like doing
a throwing sport, pitching a baseball like it is. It
is power. So unfortunately, a lot of golfers when they're
thinking about training physically, you know, they might do forty
five minutes on treadmill or a cardio machine. I might
do some bicep curls and some light squats and they're
they're doing ten to fifteen reps times three sets at lightweight. Well,
that might help you walk the golf course a little better,
but when it comes to hitting the ball further, we
need to actually learn to move a We need to
move and implement really really fast and get good at that.
So to get good at that, we actually need to
build an engine that can handle creating force, and that's
you know, strength is simply how much force can you
apply to something, whether you're trying to pick something up
or push it. That's strength. Power or speed is power
is simply how fast you can do it. How fast
can you apply that force, And that's what we're looking
for on golf. So we need to train by making
sure that we can apply force and get stronger, and
then we train the golfer to apply that force relatively quickly.
So we need to train strength and power to increase
the size of that engine. If we don't increase the
size of somebody's engine, then they're going to continue swinging.
And mobility will probably prevent somebody from getting maybe some
major injuries and aches and pains. But if you do
not increase your ability to create power and apply like
I said, apply force, then and your clubhead speed is
not going to go up. It will go down as
you age. So now the upside is it doesn't take
you know, it doesn't take working out two hours a
day to get stronger. You know, we can we can
see results with somebody in ninety minutes a week. If
you're willing to do three times thirty minute workouts in
a week. You will get stronger if you're doing the
right things.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, so you know strength and speed, but there's also
lack of tension exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some I wouldn't say so much lack of tension
or but when you talk about I'm just thinking you're
assuming to you're referring to mobility and flexibility and that
lack of tension. We need to have the muscle strong,
but being able to rotate through a full range of motion. Right,
So having the ability to access mobility and or your
rotary mobility and rotate through the swing. That's the mobility piece,
that foundation, and then having the strength to add actually
move that implement that golf club really fast. And we're
doing that by you can you can create force against
the handle of the club, and you can create force
against the ground. Those are the only two things that
we have, you know, the ability to put force against
to create speed in your swing. The ground is a
lot bigger than the handle, so that is our best
low you know, best possibility to gain club head speed
is getting you better at pushing against the ground. So
that looks like squats, It looks like lunges. It looks
like hinging motions or deadlifts done properly. All those things
help you push against the ground, which ultimately is going
to give you the ability to create clubhead speed.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Interesting, now I find kind of amusing. Is you know,
we we tried to start talking, okay, at age forty,
do this age fifty, right, But I'm getting the sense
of what you're saying that it really doesn't matter how
old you are, whether you're forty, fifty, sixty, or beyond
seventy and beyond that, it's pretty much doing the same
type of thing consistently.
Speaker 1: It's going to help exactly. Fred. Yeah, well that's what
you know. What we see when we when we capture
the data and measurements on people that based on every
age category. Yes, we're going to see people in their
sixties swinging probably five miles an hour less than people
in their fifties. Like I said, every decade, you're going
to lose five miles an hour. But there is a
range of clubhead speed, so everybody can improve that at
any age. You can go from the fiftieth percentile in
your age category to the eightieth percentile. You can go
from the twentieth to the seventieth. And for those people
that are you know, they're already near the top for
their age category, they might want to they might be
in the eightieth percentile for speed, but they might say, hey,
I want I want to compete with guys that are
younger than me. And that's when it gets really fun.
Is golfer that's in their sixties is like I'm playing
with forty five fifty year olds. I want to keep
up with them, and yeah, and uh or well, scoring
scoring different, but scoring becomes easier when you can hit
it further, obviously. But but for those people, it's really
fun when they actually when we start to get stronger,
and we simply when we're measuring power, we just get
somebody to jump. We measure their vertical jump, and we
measure their ability to throw a medicine ball from a
seated position. We measure their chest pass how far you
can throw it. So those two simple tests really are
going to show us how much force you can put
down against the ground and how much force you can
exert with your upper body against an object. And as
simple as it sounds, we can pretty much tell when
somebody does those two tests what their clubheads. Beat is
going to be.
Speaker 2: At par for success. You guys are based in the Midwest,
if I remember.
Speaker 1: Correctly, actually on the eastern side of the state or
in the country. We're in a base at a North Carolina.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay. And do you work with people remotely
or just in person?
Speaker 1: Actually we do both. So we have our our facility
is about ten minutes from the Raleigh airport, and so
we have physical therapists in house full time as well
as strength and conditioning coaches. So we do we do
fitness and one on one strength training as well as
physical therapy for golfers. But actually the growth, the big
fastest growing part of our company has been the remote coaching.
So three quarters three quarters of our clients are outside
the building.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, great, great, And answer me why is it
the younger people? And it sure seems this way to
me when I'm playing that it's younger people who ride
and the more older guys are walking. Although yeah, they're
definitely older guys that are riding. And there's some course
that you can only ride, right, But do you advocate
walking a golf course? You know, from from the fitness
side of it.
Speaker 1: That's a good question, Fred, And again it's going to
depend on the golfer and where they play. Like you said,
some golf courses just aren't designed to walk be able
to walk, which I'm a walker. I love to walk
the golf course. I mean, obviously I ride probably twenty
percent of my rounds, but whenever I can, I walk,
and I just find it gives me time to think
between shots. I tend to play better when I walk.
But it depends on the person. So some people are
just like, hey, I just want to be able to
play and not have aches and pains, and I want
to hit the ball further. I don't. I don't feel
like I have. You know, I don't my golf course.
It's it's a really tough walk. Like you just need
to be able to If you ride all the time,
you need to be able to swing the club and
you still have to walk a certain distance, but you
may not be able to you you may not need
to walk up all these hills if you're riding a cart.
So the demands are going to be different. We you know,
if somebody wants to walk, that's great. Then we need
to make sure the golfer has the physical ability to
and the endurance to walk the golf course several times
a week depending on how many times they play, or
if they've got an upcoming trip like some of these places,
if you're going to go to Scotland or England or Island, like,
it's walking only, so there's not a choice. And if
you're going to play six, seven, eight days in a
row and it's walking only, we would definitely prepare somebody
for that if they're not used to walking on a
regular basis. And some of the courses in the in
the States now, the resorts like Abandon and the one
in the Sand Valley, a lot of those resorts now
are they're basically walking only.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chambers Bay. I played Chambers Bay this past summer
and the one of the guys that I was with
from Chicago never walks, and this was walking only. It
was about a seven point two miles and there was
elevation change all and so he was, you know, any
smoking cigars and he was pretty spent by the end
of the round. And I'm like, just keep drinking water, man,
keep drinking water. Nibble on on snacks, but don't have
a big meal in between, but just you know, sip
and nibble all the way through.
Speaker 1: So yeah, big difference. Yeah, I saw. I remember watching
the US Open when it was there, and I thought
that would be that would not be an easy walk.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but it was fun. It was beautiful day.
We got lucky. So what about complimentary activities? Can call
him sports if you want, but let's call complimentary activities
that you can do to help support your mobility throughout
your golf. And I'm thinking of things like hiking, biking, swimming.
People are playing pickleball these days, tennis, basketball, All right,
are those helpful or are they not taking advantage of
the same the same parts of your body that you
need to work on for golf.
Speaker 1: Great question, so, and let me make sure I'm understanding
the question correctly. Do those activities you just mentioned improve
your mobility for golf? Was that kind of the question. Yeah, yeah,
So the short answer would probably no. Unfortunately, So if
we think of if we think of hiking, biking, swimming,
a lot of those things, you're you're moving in one
direction where you kind of moving straightforwards. You know, maybe uh, swimming,
there might be there's there's very little rotation demands, especially
in hiking and biking swimming, there might be a little
bit pickleball, tennis. I would call all of those activities exercise, right,
So we're working on what we call capacity. So how
far can you walk, how far can you swim? You're biking,
we're testing the capacity of the bodies, maybe muscular endurance
to some degree. So when we're thinking about golf, like
I said, those four rotary centerspread the neck, the shoulders,
the spine, and the hips. They all need to be
able to rotate a certain amount for you to have
a you know, a biomechanically relatively sound, repeatable, powerful golf swing.
So if we don't have rotation around those areas, hiking
and biking aren't necessarily going to help those because we're
not addressing the problem, which is hip rotation. So I'm
not rotating my hip as much when I'm walking in
a straight line or when I'm biking in a straight line.
Pickleball and tennis, we're moving. But again that's a sort
of a fitness activity, and maybe it's better than doing
no movement, But you can spend ten minutes of doing
dedicated hip mobility work and that's going to get you
a lot farther than playing an hour of pickleball.
Speaker 2: So are there activities sports that complement golf in the
way that you're trying to elevate.
Speaker 1: From a performance standpoint, I wouldn't say any if there's,
And that would be a great study maybe to see
if there were people that played different played two sports,
or I played golf in one other sport, to see
if versus people that just played golf, to see how
much of a difference the multi sport athletes, you know,
if their performance is better, if their incidents of injury
is less, I know, if someone is on a dedicated
golf performance plan. So if we're addressing mobility and we're
addressing strength and power, those two fundamental building blocks. Okay,
of that pyramid that we talked about, we've got mobility
at the bottom, then strength and power. The top two
are basically technique or efficiency, and the very top one
is speed. Right, So we're not going to chase speed
unless we've got mobility and strength and power. So if so,
if we give somebody mobility and we give them strength
and strength and power, strength and power, they're they're going
to have the best ability to perform at golf. Uh
is playing pick a ball or tennis or hiking, is
it going to make them a better golfer? I think
the if your if your sole focus is getting better
at golf, there's you know, putting a little bit of
attention into another you know, making sure those those baseline things,
the mobility and the strength and power, making sure that
those aren't a great spot that is. It sounds it
sounds really simple. But and that's where most people. If
you can be consistent with those basics and making sure
you rotate well and that you're strong enough which means
I should say powerful enough so you can jump high
and you can throw far, uh, we can create speed,
then you're going to be in your best spot to
perform well on golf. Now, hiking, biking, those things are
great things to enjoy. Nothing nothing wrong with those at all,
But I don't know if they're going to translate to
an improve golf performance at all.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about balance and the importance of it, how
to make sure that you have it, and how to
increase it and probably goes with the base.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you hit it on the head. It is
most people, I would say, unless you've had a an
event like a like a stroke or something like that,
where there's there's there's been an event where your nervous
system is really affected. Balance is going to be more
of an ability for you. Like most golf ers, they say, yeah,
I can't I can't finish my swing and I don't
feel balanced when I'm trying to get get through my swing.
And again it sounds really simple, but if we tested
all those people, I guarantee you they would probably have
significant restrictions in rotary mobility, probably lead hip that for
right hand and golfer getting onto your lead hip and
probably being able to rotate your trunk at least fifty
sixty degrees in each direction. So that's where if someone
can't rotate, they're going to get to those spots when
they're at their end range of motion and they're fifteen
to twenty degrees short to where they need to be,
and that's where the arms kind of fling up when
they swing and they don't really get onto their lead side.
So most people, when they talk about having a lack
of balance, especially in their golf swing, when we improve
their ability to rotate, all of a sudden, four to
six months later, they're noticing, hey, I can actually hold
my finish now. Whereas six months ago I wasn't able
to do that. Those are those are the kinds of
things that we typically see with people that are having
balance issues, is that they can actually get through a
full range of motion, and it might take your brain
and your body a little bit of time to adopt
those new sort of i'd say default settings for your
body when you're golfing, because you've got your swing pattern
in your brain. Between your brain and your muscles, or
people call that muscle memory, it's not actually your muscles
don't remember anything. It's your brain that creates a sense
of software program for your body to create that golf swing.
So when we improve the hardware, and when I say hardware,
your ability to rotate. So if we improve the parts
and upgrade your shoulder, neck, trunk, and hip mobility, all
of a sudden we've upgraded the hardware, we kind of
have to do a software update based on the new
hardware that we have in your body so that you
can actually trust that your body can get into these
new positions in the swing. So that can take a
little bit of adjustment period. And people are like, wow,
I hit some really really good shots on the golf
course and I felt like I could swing through, and
then some of them were you know, in the first
couple of months, it's like I hit some that were
really long and straight, and then some of them kind
of went all over the place. But your body is
getting used to sort of those new default settings in
terms of that upgraded hardware.
Speaker 2: In the last few weeks, I started doing something that
I thought, oh, I'm on to something here. This is
really good because I had balance on my mind, and
so I use every night, I use my electric toothbrush,
and you know, it goes every thirty seconds at beeps,
and then you go to the next quadrant of your
mouth and then you you know, and you get four
different quadrants. So what I've been doing the last few weeks,
and I'm probably you're probably gonna be rolling your eyes
going it's useless for it. But I when for each
quadrant in each section that I'm I'm doing my I
stand on one foot and then on the next quadrant,
I switch to the other foot and I try to
maintain my balance through it. Now it's gotten to the
point where I use just one finger to tap on
the countertop to if I start losing my balance, I
can just tap on it instead of holding onto it
and you know, holding on But I'm trying to increase
my strength, my legs and my balance by doing that,
thinking that it's going to.
Speaker 1: Help my balance or probably get well. Number one, it's
not not sill at all. I mean, yeah, improving balance
is like you you can practice it. But if if
you're really restricted and you can't rotate, that's gonna limit.
That's probably gonna I would say, shorten your ceiling for
improving your balance. Right, So if we improve your mobility,
your ceiling for your balance will get higher. Whereas if
you just practice balance, you know you're gonna you're gonna
rise to the ceiling of where your mobility's at. But
if we can bring your mobility up, the ability for
you to increase your your balance is going to be
your ceiling will be higher. But there's no arm in
standing on one foot and practicing at all.
Speaker 2: Oh Josh, this has been really fascinating. You know, I
thought we were going to be talking about it each
age group, but it's clear doesn't really matter. You just
got to be working on it all the time for everybody.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, anybody at any age and you
know we've got We've got someone that I saw. I
saw Dennis yesterday. He's one of our arm memory in
the facility and he's he's going to be eighty two
in November, and he's he finishes his workout and then
he goes out and we have a basketball and that
in the back, and then he shoots hoops for thirty minutes.
So it doesn't matter what age you have or what
age you are, you can see improvements in your game
if you do the right things. Addresser mobility, address your
strength and power. I mean golfers that are listening to this,
they've probably already tinkered with equipment, they might take lessons
or you know, look at technical things on YouTube, but
make sure you're addressing those those physical limitations because ultimately
that's where I think the lowest hanging fruit is for
most people.
Speaker 2: Again, their website is par four Success. It's it sounds
like par for success, but it's par four the number four,
Par four success.
Speaker 1: Parfour success dot com. Yeah, or even P four s
golf that'll that will direct you to the same website
as well. P four s golf that makes it simply up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and on Instagram. Par four Success YouTube Facebook at
par four success Josh, great conversation, learned a lot. I
don't feel great about myself today. Thanks so much for
joining us.
Speaker 1: No problem, Fred is a pleasure.
Speaker 2: I'd like to thank Vern Coates of Mary and Iowa
for opening today's episode. Vern, Now that you're a Golf
Smarter Ambassador, I hope that you'll invite some of your
playing partners to join us next spring for three rounds
of golf on the Robert Trent Jones Trail. Always wanted
to play there, and I hope we get to play many,
many times. But for our twenty twenty five Golf Smarter Adventure,
it's not just for Golf Smarter Ambassadors. It's for golfers
of all skill levels who love to travel and explore
new courses, meet new friends who share common interests, and
for many of you, escape the winter cold for some
beautiful spring weather in Alabama. We'll be together from March
twenty twenty six to the thirtieth, twenty twenty five, and
it's going to be fun. It's going to be a blast.
We're keeping the group to only three foursomes, but there's
always some last minute changes, so to get all the
information pricing itinerary and reserve your space. Go to TMI
golf dot com slash golf Smarter. That's TMI golf dot
com slash golf Smarter. This week on golf Smarter, Mulligan's
We'll Hear Part two with Mark Sweeney of the aim
Point putting system. Does aim Point work? I'll let Mark
explain for himself.
Speaker 3: The first time I ever tested this, and I didn't
really know what I was doing at the time, but
I was giving a lesson and we were talking about
what makes the ball break more and what makes the
ball break lesson the guy looks at me and goes,
you know what, Yeah, I know what breaks more, but
what does that mean? Does that mean three feet or
two feet or twelve inches? So I basically use the
same computer software that does the line for TV, and
I just had to spit out all these numbers and
I took it out and tested it. I only did
one slope, so I just did a basic two percent slope,
and I went out and played eighteen holes and I
think I had eleven putts on the front and fourteen
putts on the back. And I had never ever been
below thirty putts and I never made anything outside ten feet.
I think I made two or three putts outside fifteen feet,
made a lot more five six, seven footers, and I
remember just thinking, Wow, there's really something to this. I
don't really understand it yet, I don't really know how
to use it yet, but just the first time I
ever tried it, I could not believe how much better
my putting was just knowing what the proper break was.
Speaker 2: That's Part two with Mark Sweeney this Friday, arriving right
here on the same feed you get each week for
Golf Smarter. Find all of our episodes at golf smarterpodcast
dot com, and if you have any questions about our adventure,
updates on your own game, or suggestions for an upcoming episode,
please write me directly golf Smarter Podcast at gmail dot com.