Baseball legend, David DeJesus, practicing swinging in a barrel to release the hands quickly.
My 2nd World championsip title against a field of LPGA players and the best Long Driving Women in the World. Columbia Edge Water, ORE. 2003
I was honored to spend the last 10+ years exploring, researching and testing the best core exercises to do for performance (striking and throwing skill athletes: football, soccer, golf, softball/baseball, etc.). Most traditional competitive sports include throwing and striking skills. I used myself as a research subject to see how the traditional fads of core exercises that ebb and flow into our prolifically personality driven (not research driven) industry stood up to delivering “Spine Sparing results” in and out of the arena.
Lesson #1: Muscularity doesn’t = Performance. But, correctly trained musclularity does buttress joints, and increase performance and increase longevity.
Ask any of my dormies from college who was the crazy blonde with her feet locked under the common room couch doing 1000+ sit-ups every night in hopes of buying the holy grail of a 6 pack? Yes, that was me. Yet what I bought was an overdeveloped set of rectus abdominus, and when caught out of position diving, I landed in full hyperextension and nearly broke my spine! I was smart enough to know if I did a lot of arms, my arms would get bigger…why it never made sense then, that my waist went from 28 to 38 in solid muscle in 4 years..hind sight, RIGHT!
Lesson #2: POSTURE = POWER.
Practicing how to Breathe and Brace a tall Postured torso concisely, creates a permanently grooved powerful, repeatable performance. This has been proven by the research and by some of the greatest coaches of all time.
I have trained all ages (4-94), and have seen pattens to performance improvement that are consistent with the research. Truly if we use the entire torso as a handle on a whip, the extremeites create the distal speed. Energy leaks create overuse and repetitive trauma to the spine if the torso continually exceeds it’s individualized neutral zones of functionality. It is a hard sell to stop stretching when it feels so good when were doing it. It is also near impossible to sell an athlete who has created entrenched motor patterns with excessive end ranging, to stop practicing these injurious end range moves as part of their athleticism, when that is what they believe they need to do that enduring to perform at a continual high level. Take Golf for example…
Among Boomer’s timeless lessons was visualizing yourself turning in a barrel. In this Golf Digest instruction article from May, 2012, authored by Jack Nicklaus and the late Jim Flick, Flick cites Boomer’s phrase, “turn in a barrel.” “Boomer recognized that turning around your body, rather than sliding your hips sideways, results in more consistency,” Flick wrote. “It’s difficult to hit it solid when you move off the ball on the backswing, because you have to move back to the ball the exact same amount to hit it flush. That takes more talent than most golfers have and more practice than they can afford.” Golf Digest 2013
Lesson #3: Develop the hip hinge skills. The glutes “house the spine” and are the foundational cornerstone for ALL performance.
We can have great core strength, but if it doesn’t connect the dots of power (body linkage), then the kinetic chain is incomplete. Training the core correctly has to have perfectly trained and engaged glute and hip hinge component to change performance.
I have been blessed to team up with Professor Stuart McGill to create this ground breaking, educational, and research based streaming video or DVD. So whether your a weekend golfer, or a professional….this is for you.
Traditionally, scientific investigation has been on the golf swing motion. For the first time McGill brings some top golfers into the lab to measure their muscle activation patterns together with their body linkage forces.
PGA Pro: William Breland, DPT, TPI Certified…”Truly ground breaking.”
TPI Board of Director: Dr. Peter Mackay, DC, PGA …”Simply Brilliant.”