Preface

The drastic increase in the popularity of golf over the past couple decades has spawned a revolution in the production of high-tech golf equipment and training devices. Everyone is seeking that magical new club, ball, or training aid that will help him hit the ball farther and score lower. However, in the past 30 years, even with all the improvements in ball and equipment technology, there has been no change in the average North American handicap. One major reason for this is that golfers, unlike other athletes, spend minimal time and energy improving their bodies’ ability to properly move within the golf swing. Without this key ingredient, a golfer will not only fall short of his potential but will also put himself at high risk of injury.

When attempting to improve their game, golfers spend endless time and money on clubs and lessons without first improving the most efficient tool available to them: their own bodies. All golfers are interested in increasing distance, accuracy, and consistency, but they always look to do that with an expensive new club or a new and improved ball. However, faster and more lasting gains in all three of these areas can be achieved by improving physical fitness to allow the body to perform the necessary movements for an effective, powerful golf swing. Once this fitness is achieved, swing lessons become more efficient, new clubs hit farther than ever, and golf ultimately becomes much more fun.

Fortunately, the importance of physical fitness for golf has begun to gain more attention. Tiger Woods’ incredible workout regimes and consistency on the course have helped the fitness aspect of the game to begin earning the respect it deserves. However, even with this heightened awareness, most golfers are still ultimately unsure of what muscles are actually used in golf and how these muscles affect each and every swing. This unfortunately leaves golfers with an incomplete knowledge base and does not allow for workouts executed with specific purpose and in direct relation to the golf swing itself.

In Golf Anatomy, all of these connections are easily made so that you can have a clear and concise understanding of how your body functions during the golf swing. You will also learn how to train specific areas and understand how each one will directly assist in improving your golf game. Never before has a book so clearly and easily linked the two worlds of fitness and golf. Having the ability to fully understand each step of the process makes the learning and training experience more fulfilling, more motivational, more effective, and much more fun.

This book has ultimately been designed for a few different reasons. First and foremost, every golfer should have a basic understanding of how a proper golf swing functions. This is why the first chapter is dedicated to improving your knowledge of the basic key elements of a good golf swing. These are many of the same things that golf instructors look for in their students and strive to improve upon to produce a better golfer. The true complexity of the golf swing could never be covered in one chapter, but grasping the main points mentioned in chapter 1 of Golf Anatomy will help you appreciate how forces are created in the golf swing and why it is so important to have a body fit for golf. Illustrations let you see what proper swing technique looks like as well as give you an inside view of what the muscles are doing at each point in the swing.

The second main reason for this book is to provide you with a clear and detailed picture of the muscles being used both during the golf swing and within various exercises. After all, the more you know, the better you can prepare. Detailed anatomical illustrations are provided for both the fitness section and golf swing section to show you exactly what is going on within the body during each movement, both on and off the course. The anatomical illustrations that accompany the exercises are color coded to indicate the primary and secondary muscles and connective tissues featured in each exercise and movement.

This intimate look into the body allows you to quickly understand not only which muscles are being worked in each exercise but also how those same muscles are utilized directly in the golf swing itself. This straightforward illustrated connection is unique to Golf Anatomy, and it is the easiest way to learn about both the body and the golf swing and how they so closely influence one another.

Third, this book was written to present you with numerous concise exercises that will help improve the mobility, stability, balance, strength, and power of the muscles that directly affect the accuracy, distance, and consistency of your golf swing. These will be presented through step-by-step instructions so that you can easily perform each exercise. Having these instructions combined with detailed anatomical illustrations allows you to train with a purpose and be able to understand how that training translates directly to your swing. Your own body is the most powerful and effective piece of equipment you can use on the golf course. The more knowledge and understanding you have of this tool, the more effectively you can use and improve upon it.

Another major benefit this book provides is information on preventing injuries. The golf swing is one of the most dynamic, explosive, and complex movements in all of sport. The golfer’s body produces and absorbs some of the highest forces seen in the athletic world. This is evident in the fact that up to 80 percent of all golfers will experience at least one injury during the course of their golfing careers. Considering that more than 35 million people play golf in the United States alone, that amounts to more than 28 million injuries. One reason for the high injury rate is that the forces created in the golf swing produce up to eight times a golfer’s body weight in compressive forces to the spine. To put that into perspective, running—which is considered a high-impact activity that causes stress to the body—produces only three to four times a runner’s body weight in compressive forces to the spine. The spine is just one of the many body parts that require both strength and mobility to endure the repeated high-velocity forces of each golf swing. Having to absorb all of these stresses with each swing is reason enough to keep your body as fit, strong, and active as possible. Inability to withstand such forces will lead to dangerous compensations, poor swing technique, and injury. Fitness helps prevent injury and promotes optimal performance on the golf course.

Although improving your physical fitness for better golf performance and reduced risk of injury is an important goal, it is not enough for us to just give you dozens of exercises and have you train at random. For this reason, the outline of Golf Anatomy was designed to help you understand the anatomy involved in the golf swing and how it can be used most effectively. Since you are training to improve fitness for a sport, not just to get bigger muscles, it only makes sense to arrange the chapters of Golf Anatomy in a functionally logical order. This unique approach to training was designed specifically with the golfer in mind and can be found only in this book.

Because of the dynamic nature of the golf swing, many parts of the body need to be stabilized while others are moving at high speeds. Golf definitely necessitates speed, strength, and power, but none of these can be effectively achieved without first having sufficient mobility, balance, and stability. These last three are the building blocks on which the first three depend. For this reason, the early chapters of this book focus on the mobility, stability, and balance of the golfer’s body, and we have left strength and power for the later chapters. There is no need to completely master each section before moving to the next, but do not train solely for power if your mobility and stability are greatly lacking. This progression of exercises and chapters is easy to understand and easy to follow, and it is just as easy to achieve results in both your fitness and golf performance.

Achieving a body fit for golf will definitely reduce your risk of injury, but it can never guarantee an injury-free golf career. Since the golf swing is so explosive, injuries are bound to occur. For this specific reason, we have dedicated a chapter to the five body parts most commonly injured in golf. You will learn unique exercises for each body part that will help rehabilitate the area or avoid that specific injury. Knowing and understanding the most common injuries that can occur while you are playing golf can help you avoid putting yourself in a painful and sidelining situation.

With all this useful information, Golf Anatomy is truly written for a few different audiences. First and foremost, it is for any golfer who wants to avoid injury; improve fitness; and hit the ball farther, more accurately, and with more consistency. Golf Anatomy will help you understand the anatomy behind the swing and the tools to train that anatomy effectively. The second group that will benefit greatly from the information found in this book is teaching professionals. They will gain a much greater understanding of the body mechanics found within the swing. Instructors often are not aware of or are unable to identify inefficiencies or physical limitations in their students’ bodies. This is due to no fault of their own as they are masters of the golf swing, not of the body. However, having a better grasp of the physical anatomy of a golfer’s body can help teaching professionals give lessons with greater effectiveness, better understand how to avoid injuries in their golfers, and provide sound advice as to how to improve areas of dysfunction. The third group that can use this book to further their knowledge is strength and conditioning specialists. Although they are experts in fitness training, they might not have enough understanding of golf swing mechanics to apply the correct training protocols. Golf Anatomy provides this in-depth detail of the golf swing and will shed light on how training programs can be designed to effectively target the important aspects needed for an efficient and powerful swing.