Although a long-time traditional part of the pre-round warm up routine, I suggest that you ditch your weighted golf club or the practice of swinging two clubs together.
There are two main issues that I have with this practice:
Number One:
It doesn’t actually help you swing the club any faster. As a matter of fact, science seems to indicate just the opposite – despite what it may feel like to us.
A study was done with baseball players using weighted bats for warm ups. Upon measuring the swing speeds it was found that the players actually swung slower after five weighted warm ups than when they warmed up with normal bats, despite their subjective feelings to the contrary! I certainly believe there are enough biomechanical similarities between baseball and golf to apply this information to our warm ups.
Number Two:
As I learned from the late world renowned exercise scientist Mel Siff, warming up with a weighted implement simulating your sporting motion (in this case the golf swing) changes the mechanical recruitment of muscles and alters the path of the implement. In other words, you swing differently with a weighted club, which will alter your swing path and likely confuse your brain and Central Nervous System (CNS). Each person has an engram, a code, which correlates to “golf swing”. By changing your swing during the warm up due to the extra weight, you can “dilute” this engram and negatively affect your ability to reproduce your normal swing.
As you know, the golf swing is dependent on fine motor skills and precise muscle recruitment and timing. You simply cannot reproduce that when you have a weighted club or implement.
So you might be wondering why it is OK to throw Medicine Balls and swing the Tornado Ball, like we do here at the Renegade Golf Fitness Institute.
Great question – you guys are so damn smart!
Here’s the deal – although we are using most of the same muscles in these exercises, we are NOT attempting to duplicate the golf swing. Instead, we are building strength or power in rotational movements. These movements are more gross in nature, and are not dependent on fine motor skills and timing. This way they do not interfere with your motor engram for your golf swing.
Click on this link for The Best 5-Minute Golf Warm Up
So drop the weight, warm up properly, and Get After Old Man Par!
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