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Learn how to design a program to improve your overall endurance in golf this season.
By: Dr. Mark Smith & Rob Mottram
Titleist Performance Institute
As you flip through the pages of the latest golf magazines, it's hard to find one that isn't addressing fitness in golf. The recognition that a fitter golfer is a better golfer is now accepted by golf professionals and high handicap golfers alike. Consequently, the golf industry is becoming a target market for fitness professionals and golfers are beginning a myriad of conditioning programs. Since the general population is bombarded with incorrect information on a daily basis and then acts upon it, it should come as no surprise that the golf industry will be subject to the same.
Before arguing the case of one golf conditioning program over another, it is first worth gaining a basic understanding of the body's different metabolic pathways towards energy production for muscular contraction. Once this is accomplished, one can better evaluate how certain conditioning programs are better suited to the golfer than others. Although simplistic, we basically have two major metabolic pathways that produce energy - the aerobic system ("with oxygen") and the anaerobic system ("without oxygen"). We also see terms such as endurance training or cardiovascular conditioning associated with the term aerobic. For the purpose of gaining an understanding of these metabolic systems, marathon runners have highly trained aerobic systems while sprinters have highly trained anaerobic systems.
"However, a major misconception is that sports and activities are either aerobic or anaerobic in nature."
This is simply never the case, all activities from sprinting to running a marathon have relative contributions from both systems. An even greater misunderstanding is that activities that have a large contribution from the anaerobic system, such as sprinting, will have little training effect on the aerobic and cardiovascular system. This is wrong, dead wrong. If it were true, sprinters would have lousy cardiovascular systems because the vast majority of their training is spent engaged in high-intensity intermittent activity, not low to moderate continuous activity. The fact is of course is that their cardiovascular systems are in great shape. A sprinter might not log spectacular times running a marathon, but they would have no problem walking eighteen holes of golf interspersed with a high number (we'll leave that number to the reader!) of short duration ballistic movements, a.k.a. the
golf swing.
If one were to create a spectrum of sporting activities based on the relative contributions of these metabolic pathways, we might see track and field's hammer throwing at one end of the spectrum and running a marathon at the other. The question of course is where on this spectrum does golf fall? Well it doesn't take a genius to realize that golf is at the end of the spectrum close to the hammer thrower, that is to realize and understand that golf is a high-intensity intermittent activity sport. Now before anyone starts to argue that golf has a very large endurance component because rounds can last four hours or more, I've seen a game of chess last longer. The point here is it's not simply the length of the activity that determines the type of training needed, but the nature of the activity and how energy is utilized throughout. Yes golf has an endurance component, but it is muscular
endurance not cardiovascular endurance that is the most likely performance parameter to fail you. Engaging in high-intensity intermittent training will provide you more than enough aerobic/cardiovascular conditioning to play a round of golf while training that all important anaerobic system to reproduce the ballistic golf swing throughout the round without fatigue.
It is also important to realize that these energy providing systems are in competition with one another when it comes to training. Perhaps more simply understood we are never going to see the gold medals for the 100 meters and the marathon at the Olympic Games go to the same individual. Consequently, if you understand that golf is a high-intensity intermittent activity sport, don't make low to moderate "aerobic" activities the core of your training program as it will be counter productive.
"The majority of your time should be spent on activities that fatigue you in a short period of time."
If the activity is intense, a minute is a long time! By repeating the activity multiple times, with recoveries of one to three minutes between each repetition, you will train your anaerobic system while also training your cardiovascular system. This type of training is often referred to as interval training and before anyone asks, yes it's also effective for weight loss. Has anyone seen an overweight sprinter lately?
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