One of my favorite weeks of the year here in AZ is the week of the Bank of Hope Founder’s Cup in Scottsdale. The weather is always perfect for golf, and it’s nice to get all the players in for workouts on their home turf. Players tend to want to hit it hard Monday and Tuesday and then with pro-ams or sponsor stuff it all depends for the rest of the week. I had the opportunity to get out to the course and watch Ryann O’Toole play on Friday afternoon which I don’t get to enough of. Ryann reached out on Saturday evening after shooting a solid 6 under and asked about getting in a workout Sunday morning before she played. I was excited to get one more training session in for the week and to personally hear about the solid round she had crushed the day before. Once tournaments start we tend to play everything by ear. Players tend to be so busy that it’s easier to let players know that we are there if they need us. They know they can reach out if they feel like getting after it. AND….getting after it we did! Ryann arrived on Sunday morning around 8, and we decided, after a brief convo about how she was feeling, to get into good movement/activation flow to get her body rocking for the final day out at Whirlwind Golf Course.
When it comes to pre-round workouts or warm-ups, every player is different. What a player might want on Thursday can be very different from his/her request on a Sunday. So, I waited for Ryann to show up, and we discussed what she wanted for the day. Her response was that after playing all week, her body felt tight. She really wanted to open up her hips and shoulders. In addition, she wanted to get everything turned on with a little bit of explosive work and strength training. DONE! I think too often trainers dictate what their athletes need instead of asking the player and catering exactly to his/her needs on that particular day. Our goal at PFS is for every athlete to walk out of PFS thinking I’M GOING TO SHOOT A 62 TODAY! They feel great, bodies are opened up, every muscle is activated, and they feel warm and ready to rock , but not tired. The goal is to get everything firing on 6 cylinders and send them out for success!
What we tend to do is get our clients going and use the good ol’ fashioned eye test. What do we see that is different? Where do we see the lack of range of motion? What isn’t firing the way it should? At that point, we take a mental note of those things and use them to drive the session. Our goal is to blend what the player wants while also cleaning up the issues are presenting themselves. We want to ensure that these athletes are set up for success. Since Ryann hadn’t played for the day, I want to ensure that I open up her mobility, but not too much. Why? If I opened her range too much, she would lose her feel and connectivity. I also want a lot of activation, so with Ryann we focused a lot on her thoraco-pelvic canister that connects her pelvis and rib cage for optimal performance. Turning on the glutes and hamstrings early on in the workout allows her to have good pelvis awareness. Then, a lot a sphinx based drills bring awareness to her ribs. After fifteen minutes, her ribs and pelvis are working like a shaken up soda can, and this ensures that when she is dynamically moving, she has a solid center to be pushing off of to create stability and allow for maximal performance!
WORKOUT LAYOUT:
5-7 min….Get everything moving. Body temperature rises and you increase signaling from muscles to the brain.
10-20 min…. This is where we start to work on setting up the joints for success using FRC principles – starting to open up range with mobility work, and then a lot of activation work through isometrics and slow eccentric movements to take signaling from muscles to the brain from a 2 out of 5 to a 5 out of 5.
5-10 min….Next we start to focus on patterns. Use different movement flows now that everything is turned on to sequence different movements together. This gets everything on the same page and working together.
15-20 min….This is where we blend some strength and power work. This includes dynamic movements with med balls, jumping, sequencing, and a lot of multi-planar rotation and anti-rotation work. The goal here is to feed the mental monster and have the athlete leave feeling amazing.
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GOLF PERFORMANCE LIBRARYI got the chance to ask Ryann a week later about the workout we did on that Sunday morning. She said it was perfect! She felt opened up and strong w enough tempo to have her ready to do work. It was the perfect blend of everything, so she didn’t feel tired or need additional training to get her where she wanted to be prior to playing and she was able to head home and go right out to the course.
