Overhead press in my garage
There’s a very simple reason why Tiger Woods showed up at the Hero Challenge looking even more muscular than just a few months ago.
At 48 years old now, and with all sorts of wear and tear to his body, Tiger is incapable of moving his body anywhere near as fast as he could just ten years ago, let alone twenty years ago.
Therefore, Tiger understands that to continue to compete at a high level, he needs to be stronger than average.
Along with the rest of the golf world, he witnessed what Bryson DeChambeau was able to accomplish after packing on a ton of muscle a few years ago.
DeChambeau, being the physics geek that he is, understood this formula… Power = Force x Velocity.
Strength is the ability to produce force against an external resistance.
Therefore, in order to produce more force, DeChambeau got a lot stronger. Additionally, he did a lot of work to increase his body speed.
The issue is this… as we age, our ability to produce velocity diminishes.
We can train for speed, and increase our speed a bit, but that can also result in more wear and tear on the body if we aren’t conditioned properly.
However, we can actually continue to add strength for a considerable period of time.
Tiger appears to understand this and knows the limitations on his ability to swing fast.
While our strength potential diminishes with age, we can still increase strength if we have never come close to achieving our strength potential.
60 year old man deadlifting 445 pounds
Recently, I watched a video on social media of a 60 year old man deadlifting 445 pounds for a set of five reps. That was a new personal record for him.
I would venture to guess that most male golfers over age 50 can’t even deadlift 250 pounds for a single rep. Yet, it would only take a couple months of training for the average male to achieve that.
The issue is that most golfers after age 50 have a tendency to focus more on mobility training in an effort to increase the length of their golf swing.
That is certainly an important part of fitness training for any golfer, but it shouldn’t be the priority for a golfer who has done little strength training.
If you want to continue to play golf at a pretty high level into an advanced age, you need to add strength training to your fitness program.
As we age, we lose muscle mass due to a process known as sarcopenia if we don’t train. This process starts around age 40, and accelerates past age 70.
Strength training allows you to offset that process.
And, by strength training, I’m not talking about medicine ball throws against a wall, or dumbbell lunges.
Legitimate strength training involves barbells.
And, barbell training can be safe and healthy, even if you have wear and tear on the body. Very few people in the population can’t perform at least a partial squat or deadlift.
With all this in mind, I hope you’ll take the time to check out my Golf Performance Newsletter.
