UI Sports Medicine

Golo Golf

If you are a golfer, you know that your fitness level influences your game. The Iowa Spine Research and Rehabilitation Center at UI Hospitals and Clinics offers a program called Golf to Your Advantage that works to improve the golfer’s game. Senior physical therapist and master level Golo golf performance specialist Karen Drake who runs the program says the newer golf swing mechanics can be hard on a golfer’s body. "Specific fitness activities that support your particular swing, awareness of swing faults, and improved conditioning can lead to a friendlier swing and a happier body."

Drake says fitness issues like flexibility, strength, balance, and stamina, inadequate warm ups, faulty and inefficient swing mechanics, overuse, hitting a solid object other than the ball on impact are the major causes of golf injuries.

The Golo Golf Performance System, used in Golf to Your Advantage, was developed by William Breland, the nation’s only Board Certified Clinical Specialist in Sports Physical Therapy and touring golf professional. The system uses golf specific evaluation and exercise to give golfers a competitive edge. Drake says the program uses video and still photography to analyze the biomechanics of a golfer’s swing, looking at strength, flexibility, motor patterning, response time, and balance.

"We design a program to support your swing, to gain distance and consistency, and improved recovery time between rounds. Our goal is to improve your golf performance and fitness and avoid those nagging injuries.

"The three most significant factors in a successful golf swing are the grip, alignment, and posture. The biggest difference between an amateur golf swing and a professional is the acceleration at the point of impact," she says. "Elite golfers generate more club head speed with less peak muscle activity and joint loading."

Drake says the three power accumulators in the golf swing are the left wrist hinge, the right elbow bend and the turn of the forearms.

Golfers should be aware of what a pro or book asks them to do and what they are capable of doing. "That’s where physical therapists trained in golf performance cone in to bride that gap. They help you achieve your best physical capability to perform."

"Training to engrain" is equally important to what is learned from a pro or a book Drake says. "It takes hundreds and hundreds of repetitions to produce consistency in any movement or activity. If an exercise program takes into account elements of the proper swing, you will more quickly gain that consistency and repeatability needed for a high level of performance.

"The Golf to Your Advantage program can help you achieve better mastery over the physical limitations of your game; fine tune your motor control and movement patterns that support your swing; improve flexibility, strength, and balance; achieve greater distance and reach your true golf potential,’ says Drake.

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