Newsletter Subscriber-only Exclusive Q&A

The Q&A I did in last week’s newsletter was very well received, so I’ll be doing this more frequently.  Last week, I received a great question from an accomplished golfer from whom I am an online consultant, and it sparked a good ol’ fashioned Cressey tangent with plenty of rambling.  Hopefully, there will be something for everyone.

Q:

Having been lucky enough to spend time around some of the world’s best golfers (both pros and amateurs) over the years, the one question that comes up about conditioning for golf is “What gives you the biggest carryover to improving your performance?”  Over the years, I have talked to and asked many strength and performance specialist coaches and have gotten very different answers to what gives maximum results.  One well-known “guru” who has written a book on golf conditioning insists that because golf is a rotational movement, the best way to improve is to bang out lots of rotational movements.  I followed this with a trainer I had until he went and spent time with another world-renowned coach who told him that through his research with hundreds of athletes from multiple sports that rotational movements don’t carry over to rotational events.  I emailed this coach to ask about this and also what part Olympic lifts had for golf and he told me the carryover was not too good and that strong lats and a well integrated shoulder unit is what is required.  But then, to put another slant on this, a prominent Olympic lifting coach told me to snatch and clean, which made me curious to keep finding answers.

Now that I’m training with your programming, you have opened my eyes to a very complete way of training making sure to cure imbalances and develop all strength qualities as well as all factors of dynamic flexibility.  I am now convinced that this is the way to get max results when training for any sport and specializing is not the answer.  I hope you don’t mind me asking you about this, but what your opinions on so-called “sport-specific training?”

A:

Without going any further, the big answer will always be "biomechanically correct efficiency."  You can't have health and performance without it.  Teach the body to move efficiently, and you'll keep it healthy and performing at a high-level indefinitely.  My number one responsibility as a performance enhancement coach is to keep you healthy; you can’t perform if you’re injured.  If you’re inefficient, you’re asking for injury, so that needs to be addressed first and foremost.

However, that’s not to say that corrective training has to follow the lines of the foo-foo garbage so many personal trainers are promoting nowadays.  In fact, I’m speaking on “hardcore corrective training” at the Syracuse Strength Spectacular, and Mike Robertson and I will touch on the subject in great detail at our Building the Efficient Athlete seminar on July 22-23 in New York City.  Just because someone is a little out of kilter doesn’t mean that you have to treat him like he’s a geriatric hip replacement patient.  Here’s a quick example:

Let’s say that a right-handed golfer comes to me with an extension-rotation syndrome (very common) that’s giving him some left lower back pain.  I check him out and find that he’s got a super-tight right iliotibial band – tensor fascia latae complex, and his right rectus femoris is equally knotted up.  My knowledge of functional anatomy tells me that two of his hip flexors on that side are working crazy overtime, so there is a good chance that the psoas major (the only hip flexor active above 90-degrees of hip flexion – a range of motion that most people don’t encounter enough) might not be doing its job.  I test it, and there’s a deficit.  I know that the psoas major doesn’t just flex the femur; it also has the ability to rotate the lumbar spine.  If the right psoas is not firing, it’s not acting in rotation to counteract the rotational pull of the left psoas major.  Essentially, its stiffness relative to the opposite side is insufficient.  So, there’s my rotation.

I also know that the psoas major can pull the lumbar vertebrae anteriorly, so that can contribute to my extension problem.  Likewise, when I factor in the tightness and adhesions in the rectus femoris and TFL, it’s pretty clear that the pelvis is going to be anteriorly tilted (and rotated, most likely) and the gluteus maximus isn’t going to be firing due to reciprocal inhibition.  As such, the individual isn’t going to be able to get full hip extension – so he’ll have to hyperextend his lumbar spine to compensate for a lack of hip extension range of motion.  Likewise, with the overactive TFL, I can guarantee that his gluteus medius on that side isn’t going to be doing its job, so the hip will likely slip into adduction (think of the hip fallout you see in a newbie squatting).

This is really just a small piece of the puzzle in terms of what’s going on, as you’re going to have compensations up and down the entire the kinetic chain.  A knee could have gone first, or the individual might actually develop shoulder pain secondary to this lumbo-pelvis misalignment.  How do we treat it?  Well, definitely not with leg extensions, a little stationary cycling, and some unstable surface balancing!  Here’s what I’m going to do:

1. Really get after the TFL, rectus femoris, quadriceps, and adductors with a foam roller, “The Stick” and, if possible, Active Release®.

2. Static stretch the TFL and rectus femoris.

3. Do some activation work for the psoas major, gluteus medius, and gluteus maximus.

4. Progress to tightly supervised bodyweight-only mobility drills that don’t allow faulty compensation patterns.

5. Use a combination of bilateral and unilateral movements done CORRECTLY to teach proper initiation of the posterior chain.  In other words, I might do a rack pull or pull-through where I teach the individual to fire the glutes and pop the hips through at lockout instead of simply leaning back.  Controlled eccentrics and isometrics holds can be fantastic here.

6. We’re going to start with pure stabilization work for the lumbar spine, and over time, we’ll start to progress to rotational movements once I see that he can get the rotation in the right places.

7. I’ll discuss with the individual what can be done to avoid reinforcing this movement pattern in his daily life.  Maybe he’s always reaching to one side to answer the phone.  Or, more likely, he’s getting too much rotation at his spine with his golf swing because his hip rotators are too tight.

All this said, without a doubt, the single-most important thing I’m going to do with this golfer is continue to treat him like an athlete.  I’ll give him challenges and test him just as I would a healthy athlete – just in a more controlled environment and with slightly modified exercises.  None of that sissy crap needed; it’s just going to make him so soft that training him once he’s healthy (if he ever does get healthy with that garbage) will be like pulling teeth.

Anyway, the take-home message is that you have to understand functional anatomy first and foremost.  Otherwise, you have no place telling people that you’re using “functional training” – especially if you don’t even know the true origins of the term.  I’ll step off my soapbox and get to your questions now…

I think the rotational idea has merit, but the fundamental problem with this is that most people get rotation in all the wrong places.  If you're getting lumbar rotation, you're on the fast track to lower back pain.  Get it at your hips, thoracic spine, and scapulae, though, and you'll be in a good position.  In this regard, one needs to learn to stabilize the lumbar spine (think “Super Stiffness,” as per Stuart McGill) and mobilize the hips, thoracic spine, and shoulder girdle.  That's what you've been doing, and it's paying dividends.  If I just send Average Joe out to train rotation all day, he'd be booking an appointment with his orthopedic back specialist in a matter of weeks (it's the same reason that so many golfers have back pain...remember extension-rotation syndrome secondary to tight hip lateral rotators and hip flexors?)

Let’s just say that I would love to see the peer-reviewed journal in which that “extensive research” was published; lats are important, no doubt, but still somewhat of a stretch as “most” important.  My experience tells me that they're most valuable in sports where you're actually hitting the ground with your swing (e.g. hockey), but not as important as rotational power in the golfing motion.  The effective shoulder model is definitely important, though, so he’s on track in that regard.  You need a perfect balance of stability and mobility for optimal health and performance.

As far as the snatch and clean recommendations are concerned, go to an Olympic lifter, and he's going to tell you to Olympic lift, you know?  Olympic lifting has merits, but two lifts aren't a magic bullet.  The reason this coach’s ideas are valuable is because he made you realize that the value of simplicity is highly overlooked.  However, if you've got imbalances like most golfers do, doing two compound lifts is just going to reinforce those imbalances.

I'm a firm believer in what Vladimir Zatsiorsky termed delayed transmutation (of nonspecific motor potential into sport performance results); it's defined as "the time period needed to transform acquired motor potential into athletic performance."  Basically, this holds that you build an athletic up in a general sense, and then he takes those general qualities and adapts them to his specific sport.  You can think of the training as "generally specific.”

With your program, I'm not tinkering with your golf swing directly, but I'm tinkering with your neuromuscular system, which governs that golf swing.  If it moves efficiently (via constant ingraining of those activation and mobility patterns), you're going to integrate that efficiency into your golf swing without even knowing it.  It's the same reason I can make someone run faster without actually making him run.  Would you believe that in biomechanics lab analysis, the best golfers swing 50% as hard as their poorly performing counterparts?  As long as they've got efficiency and ROM, they can get the job done without overswinging - which also throws things off because transfer of energy through the core is out of whack.

We train mobility where we need that, and stability where we need that.

We train power at all points along the speed-strength continuum for obvious reasons.

We train maximal strength because it can have a ceiling effect on power, especially in naturally reactive individuals.

We do rep work to iron out imbalances and attend to your "aside" goal of being more solid.  As long as you don't put on so much muscle mass that you lose ROM, we're golden.

We do low-intensity recovery work to allow you to bounce back and training again sooner and at a higher level of strength and speed.  Plus, it helps to repeat mobility and activation work on a daily basis.

What we will NEVER do is have you mimic the golf swing under loaded conditions or while standing on an unstable surface.  Crap like this is what makes so many modern "sport-specific" and "functional" training programs so useless.  From my thesis defense presentation:

“Willardson (2004) observed that two problems arise when one attempts to mimic sports skills while on an unstable surface.

1) The individual may actually be mastering two separate motor patterns, as “the underlying neuromuscular recruitment patterns and proprioceptive feedback may be completely different” for the two exercises.

2) The incorporation of unfamiliar entities to a pre-existing neuromuscular recruitment pattern for a given activity may negatively impact performance of that skill.”

So, basically, trying too hard to mimic the golf swing will screw up your golf swing, but enhance your performance in this new environment.  If you want to add ten pounds to your clubs or play in the middle of an earthquake, you’ll be more than prepared.  Otherwise, I’d stick to “general specificity.”

Hopefully, all this makes sense.  I tend to ramble sometimes…

That’s all for this week; stay tuned for some great announcements and new material very shortly.  Have a great week!

EC