Golfers: Get Stronger!
In general, I would rather all of my athletes have more strength than less.
And, to pair with that, you very rarely will come across a training session without strength based exercises.
But, neither of those two things mean that strength is the only movement ability we should train.
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Furthermore, I think the word “strength” has many misconceptions because athletes and coaches post videos of themselves squatting, bench pressing, and deadlifting, declaring themselves “strong.”
But guess what... that’s not strength.
Strength means being resilient and robust. It means being able to produce tons of force out of a variety of positions.
A large part of strength is being ADAPTABLE!
That same dude squatting, sure he has clearly done a lot of work perfecting the skill of squatting and can move a lot of weight within the confines of that movement pattern, but, what if you told him to do a split squat?
Could he even get to the bottom of it?
Could he even balance in the position?
Maybe, maybe not.
Point being, our view of strength needs to change.
It’s not about the weight on the bar when we squat, deadlift or bench press. It's about our ability to produce force in many positions. It's about building resilience into our movement abilities!
As golfers (and humans), we don’t need narrow strength, we need broad strength - we need adaptable strength!
For powerlifters, it’s the opposite. They need narrow strength. They need to be strong in 3 movements.
Golfers and athletes need to be strong in a wide ranging breadth of movements. Don’t fall into the trap of strengthening the same movements over and over.
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On the flip side, we can’t simply have all variability all the time because we wouldn’t ever tap into progressive overload.
There needs to be a balance here between completing the same exercises and continually pushing them harder, while at the same time fitting in new exercises and movements to expand our breadth of strength.
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Here’s a few strength exercises, none of which require a barbell, all of which will get you stronger if you load them up and push the intensity!
Band Resisted SA BO Row
DB Step Ups
Suitcase Carry
Coach Carter Schmitz, TPI, CSCS
