By Mitch Sadowsky
golf fitness
MS SPSc TP11 USAW AIS FMS Director of Golf Fitness Lake Nona Country Club Owner, Mitch11 Strength and Performance
hands even with your shoulder. Your ankles, knees and hips should be fully extended at the top of this movement. Starting off slowly, stand back up to an upright position. Start moving quicker as you get more comfortable with this move.
ADVANCING
Clean Pull - Step 1
Clean Pull - Step 2
As you are more comfortable with this movement, you can get in to an actual “pull.” Get in to the starting position with the club at your knees, driving your hips up and forward accelerate up on to your toes in a jumping motion without leaving the ground. Return to the standing position and repeat this 4 more times. When working the initial hang clean pull in the gym, use very light bars initially to get comfortable. As you progress, increase weight slightly and work in sets of 5. If there are no light bars in the gym, you substitute dumbbells for the bar or use one of your clubs.
HOW TO TRAIN
Clean Pull - Step 3
No matter what anyone says, golf is an explosive sport. When you warm up and train in the gym, you should do so explosively. One of the best ways to train explosively is to use Olympic weight lifting movements such as cleans, deadlifts, and snatches. While highly technical, you break down each exercise to its smaller parts and still get the benefits. You don’t even need to use heavy weights or even have a lifting platform. The most basic Olympic movement we use is a Hang Clean Pull. In this exercise, we focus on hamstring involvement driving force, glute extension and muscle coordination. The great part of this movement is we use this movement in the gym as a warm up, as strength/speed development AND on the course as warm up. After LOTS of patterning we will add weight slowly and even work in single arm movements using dumbbells (this is especially useful if your gym does not 54
Clean Pull - Step 4 have bars or plates to use). Because of the nature of this move, you don’t need a lot of weight to get a LOT of results.
THE BASICS Using a light bar (any club in your bag will work great too!), hold the bar/club at your waist, hands just wider than your hips. To get in to position, slide the club down your quads to just above the knee cap but pushing your hips back. As this happens, make sure to put some pressure in to your heels and keep your hamstrings engaged (they should feel “on” with some tension). Maintain a vertical shin angle, knees over ankles, to help stay back. Keep the back completely straight by squeezing your abs and pulling your lats down (think shoulders in to your back pockets). Pull the bar up accelerating up like you are jumping. Keep the bar/ club tight to your body while pulling. Your arms should end up shoulder height in a high pull position with your
With weights, any time you’re working Olympic movements, use them at the beginning of the workout so you’re fresh and quick. Workouts 1-4 3 sets of 10 at the end of your warm up, no weight Workouts 5+ (still work in 1-2 sets of 5-10 pulls in your warm up) Work 3-5 sets of 5 For an added boost, you can add low rep explosive movements in between such as battle rope slams, med ball slams or box jumps. How to Warm Up on the range Sample Warm up Glute-ham bridge 1 x10 Superman 1 x 10 Bird Dogs 1 x 8 alternating sides High knee jog 15 Jumping Jacks 10 rotational lunges 3-5 explosive sets of 5 Clean pulls Southern Golf Central • Volume 15, Issue 9