Winter Golf Training

Written by Craig Martin (Director of Golf), David Carter Albatross Golf Academy, Prague.

Smart Golfers Prepare for success
 
Winter is the perfect time to plan a positive practice and improvement program. Create along with your teacher specific goals for the new season and do not spend hours beating balls in the cold, wet winter days or worse still do nothing! In fact a lot of the ball beating we see is really harmful at worst and virtually useless at best.

What should you work on?

1.    Athletic Posture
This is vital in all sports, but many amateurs still have a weak starting point for their golf swings. Experts will call this “neuromuscular isolation to integration,” which is a smart term for training your brain to get you into your optimal, neutral posture.

2.    Dynamic Stability
To play golf successfully, depending on your level, you need to have good or reasonable athletic movement together with good stability. For example when your body turns properly, there must be stability in other areas to create torque (energy storage).  Developing core strength is key here and should be an important element of your workout routine along with some exercises to optimize both mobility and stability.

3.    Strength and Power
Focusing on strength and power can complete each workout session but not before the above areas are integrated properly. You need to develop strength before you can generate and control more power.

 
How to do it?

1.    General and Specific Golf Movement Training
This does not mean traditional fitness sessions but it can help your general fitness. These type of sessions can consist of improving flexibility, identifying weakness in your mobility and stability, practicing specific golf movements to improve your swing and developing basic strength.
 
A good golf gym should contain special equipment (see list below) which can help develop your golf technique and improve conditioning. Other practices like Yoga, Pilates, Body rolling etc, can also lay down an excellent foundation for general health and golf improvement.

TRX – uses  your own body weight and gravity to improve balance, strength and mobility
Acceleration training – Vibrostation,  Power plate etc, this works the body more on less repetitions.
Golf simulation Pulley systems
Orange whip core training clubs
Flowin
Explaner golf plane machine
Balance boards
Spikey ball trainers

2.    Technical work
Apart from the fact that it can be difficult, challenging or even very unpleasant weather you can along with the above style of training keep your game in shape or dramatically improve it. An understanding of the science which is actually needed to produce quality golf shots combined with sound mechanics is the way forward.  There is no need to hit many balls, it is much more about the laying down of solid biomechanical foundations.

 
3.    Mental work
Winter is also a great time to work on the mental game. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is very useful and many top sportsmen use HeartmathTM, a scientific way of teaching your mind and heart the importance of emotional coherence and alertness. In the past this was often referred to as being ‘in the zone´.
 

Review of previous Season
 
The first thing you and your teacher need to do is review what happened over the previous season. What worked and what did not work?  Create a new plan which is smarter, taking in and building on successes, discarding strategies and beliefs which either produced poor results or inconsistent play.
 
Setting  Goals

Winter is clearly a bad time for avid golfers, but you can make the most of this time of the year by setting goals and getting in shape. Getting off to a healthier, stronger start next season will have a profound effect on your life and your scores.
 
At our first class Academy we have an excellent heated golf movement room for conditioning work, heated bays on our range for swing work and top level coaches to help you make significant improvements during the ‘off season´.