New Powerlifting Program for Golf!

I’ve decided to write about the new strength training program I’ve started, and discuss what I have changed about it for the purpose of making it more golfcentric, and the reasons behind those changes. The program was created by a powerlifting gym in Texas called Brazos Valley Barbell.

The program was created for intermediate level lifters so if you’re looking to try it make sure you have at least a few years experience in the gym and preferably over 5 years. If you’re interested in it just google them you’ll find it. The google sheet they provide is very nice as it calculates everything for you, and they provide a video laying out how they have combined using RPE and percentage based training. If you don’t know much about either of those aspects of strength training I would suggest reading up on them before trying this out.

Today was the first day in the program which is overall an 8 week program focused on the 3 competition lifts, the squat, bench and deadlift. Week 1 day 1 (W1D1), was a squat and bench focused day. The main work of today was technique focused with working sets of tempo and paused squats along with a 3 count bench press. Day 1 will remain that way for the first three weeks before the deload. I like this method because it forces you to concentrate on some of the weaker parts of the movement and reinforces the fact that you need to maintain tightness throughout the lift. The day was finished off with some endurance movements by way of the leg press and triceps extensions. Today’s only modification came with some added low intensity steady state cardio. This is just some really light easy conditioning that kind of acts as a cool down.

I started this program with the following 1 rep maxes

Weighing in at 165lbs and having messed around with bodyweight training for the last year I consider these numbers to be good, and fully expect them to increase over the next 8 weeks considerably, as I’ve never done a powerlifting specific program where each competition lift is done more than once a week. Having messed around with bodyweight training for the last year I learned a lot, and also progressed a lot in those skills (still chasing that straddle planche), but I found that what I truly love to do is pick heavy things up and put them back down.

So where does strength training come into the golf world?

Now as stated in the first blog post, and by way of the name of this blog, golf is going to be a portion of my posts. Golf is a sport that requires immense strength and explosiveness combined with sensitive coordination and an innate ability to time all of these elements correctly. For the golfers reading this who aren’t largely involved in the strength community lets first define this explosiveness. Power or “explosiveness” can be broken down into a formula of (Power=force x distance) furthermore force can be broken down to more easily understand strength, which in turn helps us identify power, (The sum of forces=Mass x acceleration). So in an effort to simplify all of this scientific jumble it basically means your power or explosiveness equals the amount of force you put into the golf club multiplied by the length of your downswing. The force is broken down into the mass of the club multiplied by the acceleration your body applies to it from the top of your backswing up until impact.

I know that this may seem confusing and people are thinking “why do I care about this?”or “why does it matter?” Well one thing I’ve picked up on in most classes or books is you have to be able to define what you’re trying to teach in order to have somewhere to go back and say “again this is what we are trying to prove or improve.” In this case it’s what we are trying to improve, we are trying to increase the power of the golf swing. We all know with more club head speed (acceleration) comes more distance the golf ball will travel, you need to be able to control that speed and the club face at impact but that’s what a golf teaching professional is for, i.e not me.

As we can see in the above scientific formula that strength lies within power. It’s the same in the real world application. INCREASING your strength will INCREASE your power. For the fitness people still reading this means the easiest way to increase your power clean/hang clean/snatch/clean and jerk is to increase your strength. Yes you can increase these movements be advancing in the technical proficiency of it, and yes that must be practiced as well because it is a skilled movement. But the best way to increase the amount of weight lifted in these movements is to increase strength. Most of you involved in Olympic lifting know this, or should know this.

What’s the best way to increase your strength then? Which is what most golfers should be asking themselves right now. Well my most simple and what most, if not all, (well probably not all there are always two sides to an opinion) strength coaches will tell you is to start by linearly progressing in the BASIC COMPOUND BARBELL MOVEMENTS (that’s capitalized because they’re important fyi). The next logical question would be well what are those movements and this is the secret, very classified stuff here guys. THE SQUAT, DEADLIFT, BENCH PRESS, AND OVERHEAD PRESS. That’s it. That’s all. I could stop right here and tell 99.9% of general public golfers to start here. Don’t worry about all the other BS out there, the weight loss gimmicks/HIIT(you’ll come to find I hate that acronym)/circuit training/box jumps/everything else. Now circuit training and sprints (HIIT) have their place in fitness, but the point of this article was to define power or “explosiveness” and how to increase it, and the answer is through increasing your overall strength. At the very basis of power lies strength you NEED it, not just in golf but in life in everything you do no matter who you are.You increase strength by getting in the gym and doing 3 sets of 5 reps (we will get into sets and rep ranges another time) of each lift, then next time (here comes the linear progression part which is NECESSARY), increase the weight of the squat and deadlift by 5-10 pounds and each of the pressing movements by 5 pounds at most. Start with the bar for all I care.

Now some of you reading (if you’ve gotten to this point) will be screaming you can’t just do that you need correct form, some may even say you have to have x degrees of ankle dorsiflexion before you can deadlift (that’s BS). The form part is critical yes but there are THOUSANDS of videos out there on how to correctly execute these movements, if your reading this you can google them. My favorite teacher and someone who also has a FANTASTIC program for beginners that’s FREE is Mark Rippetoe, the author of starting strength. Google him watch his youtube videos on how to perform these movements. Read his articles he’s a very smart guy and you can learn a lot from him.

Even if you don’t golf, or play any sports at all, strength is something EVERYONE needs in their life, men and women. You owe it to yourself to put an hour of your day investing in your health and your body, ask anyone who’s older and came from being out of shape and got involved in strength training, each and every one of them will tell you they wish they had started sooner.

I saw a quote once I don’t remember who said it, but it said “we spend our whole lives wasting our health to gain money, and in our later years we use all our money to try to regain our health”

Why I started a Strength and Golf Blog

There are a few reasons I’ve decided to start this blog, the first being I feel I have enough experience in the fitness industry to make a notable contribution to it in the way of writing. I studied Athletic Training in college passed my boards to become an ATC (sports medicine for those unaware) and decided I wanted more. I studied for and passed the test to become a certified strength and conditioning specialist,  and have read extensively over the years since then on everything fitness related that I can find. I want to put my input out there whether anyone actually sees it or not. I have experience of testing strength programs not only on myself but on others as well. I have workout logs from programs that I’ve used on friends to increase their strength and overall fitness that objectively show incredible progress over weeks and months of consistent training, along with the countless hours of rehab I’ve done with student athletes at my current job.

I feel like I know enough to finally write about it and show what I can do to help others.

Second reason being my passion for golf. The intricacy’s of how the body has to move in order to make clean contact with the ball fascinates me. It’s so smooth yet powerful at the same time. Everything has to be done almost flawlessly, and in such a short amount of time it truly is amazing the level of control, and power required to be good at this sport. I want to examine how strength, mobility, and overall fitness tie into this sport, and how people can improve their level of fitness to improve their golf game and overall well being.  I’ve played several sports in my life, I absolutely love football and wish I could still play to this day, but since I no longer have that option golf has taken its place. I was taught at a young age of roughly 10 and never took it very seriously, playing occasionally over the years just for fun, until I graduated from college which is when I really started concentrating on it. I think I really enjoy it because it’s some what like strength training, I can work at it and objectively see my scores/number get better. Granted there are occasional bad days or weeks but just like in fitness if you are consistent in your approach to improving you will be able to look back on years and see your improvement.

Overall I hope to reach someone with this blog that will genuinely enjoy reading the content and hopefully learn something from it. If not then I guess I’ll have somewhere to go to look back on all of my thoughts.