Disassociation of Motion

If you have ever read a golf magazine or paid much attention to golf commentators on TV, you have probably heard them talk about getting the golf club “in the slot.” This basically means that on your downswing the club is falling naturally from inside the target line, producing a nice solid draw. The problem with most golfers is that when they swing down, they swing from outside the target line and cut across the ball, producing a large slice. In many cases, this is as much caused by poor fitness as it is technique.

One of the key requirements of being able to find the “slot” is being able to separate the motion of your upper body and your lower body. This is what we call disassociation of motion. Most golfers have heard that you should start the downswing with the lower body. The problem is that if you are not in very good shape, you probably are not flexible enough to keep your upper body from going at the same time as your lower body. This means that if your hips are open to the target line at impact, so are your shoulders, which means that the clubface will be open and you will get a nice big banana curve on your golf shot. If you notice how the pros are at impact, you will see that their hips are turned towards the target, but their shoulders are still square to the target line. This means that, on the downswing, their shoulders are lagging behind their hips. They have disassociated the movement of the upper body with the movement of their lower body.

Here are a couple of quick fitness tests to check your flexibility and the separation of your upper and lower body.

1. Lie down on your left side, with your knees bent at 90 degrees. Hold your knees to the ground with your left hand and put your right arm to the square. While keeping your knees in contact with the ground, twist your upper body back and try to touch the ground behind you with your right forearm. Keep your right arm to the square so that you lead back with your shoulder and do not just reach behind with your hand. Test both sides.
   
2. Get in your golf posture without a club. Cross your arms across your chest. Try to turn your shoulders back and through without moving your hips. See if you can go back and forth at least ten times without your hips moving and without any tightness or strain in your lower back. Watch yourself in the mirror to make sure your hips are not moving. Now try to turn your hips back and through without moving your shoulders. Make sure you can do this easily without any strain or tightness.
   

Working on these movements and your flexibility will help you find the “slot” more easily and reduce the amount of strain on your back when you play.

If you have any questions about the information above, you may find the following videos helpful.

Disassociation of motion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-nT9V3wF70
Swinging inside the target line: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k0rfuNyXBM&feature=related

Anterior Pelvic Tilt

One of the most common effects of spending too much time sitting down is an anterior tilted pelvis. For those of you who spend most of your work week at a desk and do not spend a lot of time exercising, chances are you will have some degree of anterior pelvic tilt. This basically means that the front of your pelvis is lower than the back of your pelvis when you are standing upright. When you spend a lot of time sitting, you are not using your abdominals and glutes, so they get weaker and are no longer tight enough to hold your pelvis in a natural position. This causes your body to be out of balance and can be a major source of lower back pain. If you are a golfer, it can also be the cause of the following common swing faults:

• Loss of posture – causing you to stand up when you take the club back, resulting in either a blocked shot to the right or a hook to the left.
• Early extension – causing your waist and hips to shift closer to the ball on your downswing, resulting in the feeling of “getting stuck,” producing a blocked shot to the right or a hook to the left.
• Over the top – not being able to rotate around your spine properly, you will take the club too far to the inside creating an over the top swing, resulting in either a pull to the left or a slice to the right.
• Sway or Slide – because of the restricted hip mobility, you may sway on the backswing or slide your hips past your front foot on the downswing.

The easiest, but not necessarily the most accurate, way to evaluate if you have an anterior tilt problem is to look at your profile in the mirror. You can start by looking at your beltline. Does it seem to slope forward or is it level? You can also look at your overall body line from your shoulders down to your ankles. Is it a straight line down your torso, through your hips and thighs, or does the line curve backwards as it goes through your waist and hips? If it does curve, can you get the line to straighten out by sucking in your stomach and tightening your abs and glutes, tilting your pelvis more level? For a more accurate evaluation, consider going to a physical therapists or personal trainer.

Golf fitness is about getting your body back in balance so that you can swing properly and feel better. If your body is out of balance due to a forward tilting pelvis, you will need to do regular exercises to strengthen your abdominals, especially your lower abdominals, and your glute muscles. Doing this consistently for a month or two will get your pelvis in a more natural position and will help improve your golf swing.

Endurance and Conditioning

If the PGA Tour players who spend a couple of hours on the range and play 18 to 36 holes every day are worried about their conditioning, how much more should the average golfer who only plays 9 holes every other day and 18 on the weekend worry about his/her endurance level! Golfers are always striving to gain more consistency in their game. They want to avoid those blowup holes that come from one bad tee shot. They want their last full swing on the 18th hole to be as smooth and controlled as their swings on the 1st hole. They want to feel like they could go a few more holes after their round, instead of feeling glad that the round is over.

If you are the average golfer, improving your endurance and consistency is going to take more than playing a couple more rounds each week. If, like most golfers, you still have a day job, you probably cannot spend as much time as you would like on the course, but there are some simple things you can do away from the course that will help build your endurance level when you do play. Your ability to consistently repeat a good golf swing for an entire round is determined by two things: muscle endurance and aerobic endurance.

Muscle Endurance

The game of golf does not require you to push a 200lb boulder down the fairway, but to swing a one pound club consistently over a period of time. Therefore, when we workout for endurance we are not trying to "max out," but we want to make sure that we can do less weight for more reps without losing our form. A good ratio to work with is to take the weight you would use to do sets of 8 reps, then do sets of 25 reps with half of that weight. Trying to increase the amount of weight you lift in order to build muscle is good and can help you generate greater clubhead speed (as long as you keep your flexibility up), but throughout the year, take time to work on your muscle endurance as well. Not only will this help you on the course, it will also keep your muscles from getting “bored,” as your muscles need variety in a workout for continued improvement.

When looking at your muscle endurance, the most important muscles to consider are your thighs, buttocks, abs and back. These muscles keep your posture stable, which is important for a consistent golf swing. You need to make sure that these muscles stay strong swing after swing, so that you do not start slouching late in the round. This does not mean that you ignore the other areas. We do want to have a balanced workout head to toe. However, those muscle groups can have the largest effect on your game late in the round.

Aerobic Endurance

Being in aerobic shape will ensure that your heart and lungs can deliver the oxygen your muscles need to perform effectively over the course of a round of golf. Because golf is a game of stop and go, you want to make sure that your body can handle aerobic intervals, meaning raising and lower your heart rate consistently over a period of time. Your aerobic training can be as simple as jogging for 20 minutes, but every few minutes, running or sprinting for a minute to increase your heart rate for a short time. This will improve your cardiovascular conditioning, increasing your body’s ability to get your muscles the energy they need to be consistent.

Improving your muscle and aerobic endurance does not need to take a lot of time each day, but it is something that needs to be focused on if you want to reduce the number of mistakes you have late in the round.