OK, so as you’ve seen, today I averaged 114.4 mph with my driver.  That is clearly a long way away from my goal of averaging greater than 125 mph in one year.   I have tried so many different things over the last year and I have learned an awful lot about what I think it takes to hit the golf ball further.

From my research and testing I’ve found there’s endless theories on what you need to do to hit the golf ball further.  One person will say you need to lift weights and get strong.  Another will say you need to improve your flexibility.  Someone else will say you need to work on speed.   Another person will say you need to improve your core stability.

So who’s right?

Well, from my experience I think all of them are right…to a degree.  The problem is that most people promising you increases in distance are offering one way of doing it.  But from the last year of trying to increase my golf swing speed distance I think ALL of the following are very important components needed to hit the golf ball a long way:

• Flexibility (especially active)
• Core Stabilization
• Balance
• Strength
• Posture
• Power
• Speed

I have found that you’re going to get to a certain level with all of these different fitness components, and once you’ve done that then you’re not going to suddenly jump 10 mph in swing speed by trying to increase it.  For example: flexibility.

At the start of 2008 I was averaging 98 mph.   Then 4 weeks later I averaged 115 mph just by doing flexibility exercises.  Then I added weights the next 4 weeks along with flexibility and I lost speed.   But I added a lot of lifting weights and got burned out.

Now I’m not saying that lifting weights is necessarily bad, but from my research and testing for a golfer to increase swing speed they need a good balance between the 7 fitness components I’ve mentioned above.  The exception being speed.  Last year I got injured three times.  Two times it was my back and the other time it was my left knee.  I believe those injuries were a result of a lack of general conditioning.  If I had more core stability maybe my back injuries would have never occurred.  If I hadn’t been doing a lot of plyometric jumping exercises my left knee injury probably would have never occurred.

That’s where balance as to what you’re doing comes in.  I’ve heard of a lot of people getting increases in swing speed just by doing speed exercises.  I have no doubt you can increase your swing speed by doing just that.  But from my personal experience I believe that by just focusing on one thing like speed it lends itself to injuries.

Anyway, to sum up what I learned from last year would be in one word “balance”.

Do some active flexiblity exercises, do some core stabilization exercises, do some balance/stability exercises, do some strength exercises, do some posture exercises etc.  Then finally try and convert it all to pure golf swing speed.

Just don’t do so much speed work that you’re going to get injued.  And make sure your body is ready to handle it!

So this year I’m going to have another go at my goal of averaging greater than 125 mph for my driver.  Last year I got to 121.8 mph with my driver so I got close BUT then got injured.  This year I’ll be a lot more balanced in my approach and hopefully this will help me to avoid injuries.

Now if you’re looking at improving your golf swing speed what should you do?

Well, I suggest you first start to look at improving your flexibility first.  That’s where most golfers can make the biggest gains.  Here is the best DVD program I’ve found to help do that.

After increasing your swing speed with flexibility then you should add some strength exercises.  I don’t believe you need to get overly complicated when doing that.  Just do some press-ups, pull-ups, squats etc.  Keep the exercises simple.  You don’t need to use machines and you don’t need to do a lot of different exercises.

At the same time as doing strength exercises you can do core stabislization exercises and balance exercises etc.  But don’t go overboard with doing lot’s and lot’s of exercises.  Just add a few here and there.

Then once you have your body to quite a good level then you can look at improving your speed.

So that’s the plan I’m going to follow.

Anyway, I’ll keep you posted this year on how I’m going with my swing speed increase.  I won’t be doing scheduled golf swing speed tests like last year but I’ll do them every now and then throughout the year and let you know how I’m going and what I think is working and what isn’t.

So as you’ve just seen…today I averaged 111.8 mph.  Now I’m not really too surprised with this result because my body has been feeling like crap the last couple of weeks.  I went out for some holes on Friday and it was hard work swinging the club.  I was consistently about 30 yards behind where I normally drive the ball.  The main culprit I believe is my back.  My middle/upper back just feels very weak and to be honest, about to break!

I have had problems with my middle/upper back a number of years ago and I think I could be headed for trouble again if I don’t strengthen up this area.

The back is obviously a huge power producer in the golf swing.  So I’m going to shift my attention from speed work to a more balanced approach to working out i.e.

Flexibility: active and passive

Strength: weights and body weight

Power/Speed: overspeed devices

But before I do any of that I’m going to rest this week.  I feel totally worn out!

OK, so today I averaged 119.2 mph for 10 golf swings. That’s an improvement of 1 mph over my results 4 weeks ago but I didn’t reach my goal as I’d hoped. I did however learn an awful lot from my last 4 week experiment. So for the next 4 weeks I’m going to continue to do speed work and I’m also going to do some exercises like press-ups, squats etc. Not using weights just body weight. It will be interesting to see if that helps me to swing faster.

I am inching towards my goal of averaging 125 mph. Less than 6 mph to go now. It sure would be nice to have a 4 week period where I make some big gains. Hopefully this next 4 weeks will be it but we’ll see.

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So I’m currently averaging 117.7 mph. But if you remember, on March the 14th I completed a golf swing speed test and found that I was averaging 118 mph.

The results were pretty much the same but I did feel a bit slower yesterday than I did 10 days ago and I’m going to discuss possibly why.

To do this let’s look at what I did over the last 4 weeks.

In the first week I didn’t do any exercise at all just to give my body a rest. In the second week I did flexibility exercises 6 days a week and completed one workout doing power exercises, e.g. olympic lifts, medicine ball throws, bench press throws, jump squats etc. I also did some exercises with the Speed Chain and an overspeed device I created (more on that in a minute). I only did this once in the second week.

Then in the third week I was going to continue doing flexibility exercises and two power workouts. I completed the first power workout on the 12th of March. Then before I completed the second power workout on the 14th of March I did the golf swing speed test where I found out I averaged 118 mph.

In the fourth week I planned on doing my flexibility exercises and completing 3 power workouts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then I had the weekend off and completed the swing speed test on the 24th of March.

So up until the golf swing speed test on the 14th of March I had only completed two power workouts to average 118 mph. Then after that I completed a further 4 power workouts and I found I averaged 117.7 mph. A .3 mph decrease in swing speed. Admittedly that is virtually nothing and I’m not placing a lot of importance on that result but rather I’m going on my feelings after doing more power workouts.

When I completed that golf swing speed test on the 14th of March I felt fresher than I did on the 24th of of March.

Now there is a group of people on the net that are like me, interested in increasing club head speed and the majority of them agree that the BEST way of doing this is to…

1. Swing something like a golf club.
2. Swing something lighter than a golf club

The theory behind this is to train yourself to swing fast. They say that if you want to swing faster you must train faster. They also say that doing power exercises like olypmpic lifts, jump squats etc., are performed too slowly to really improve club head speed.

Now there are three main devices they recommend. The first is a speed chain…

This device is basically a golf grip with a long chain added to the golf grip which you swing as fast as possible. Here is a video showing you how golfers should use this device.

Basically you swing this Speed Chain back and forth as fast as possible about 5 times. And you do 3 -6 sets of this.

The next popular device golf swing speed enthusiasts use is the XLR8R with the power modules.

You can find out more about this by going here.

Now the theory behind this device is to swing it has fast as possible each time and then gradually increase resistance by the way of the power modules.

Finally, the third popular device used to increase golf swing speed is called an overspeed device.

What is an overspeed device?

It’s simply something that is quite a bit lighter than a regular golf club. An example, (and what I use) is a golf driver with no golf head on it. Instead you drill a hole in a golf ball and put it on the end of the shaft. Then you simply swing this device as fast as you possibly can. If you’re swinging aggressively you should be able to swing this device a lot faster than a normal golf club.

So that’s the theory. Train your brain and body to swing faster by training faster.

I have all three of these devices and I’m going to do this type of training 3 days a week, along with active flexibility exercises. But I will keep an eye on how I’m feeling. If I’m not feeling very energetic I might knock it down to 2 sessions a week. I think a big key is to train fresh. Also, I’m not going to keep doing my passive flexibility exercises for the next 4 weeks to see what happens. Passive flexibility exercises doesn’t really fit into the theory of training for speed.

So for the next four weeks I’m just going to focus on training my mind and body to swing as fast as possible. It’s going to be interesting to see if it helps me to get closer to my goal of averaging over 125 mph.

It does seem to make intellectual sense to me…if you want to swing faster then train faster. But we’ll see.

As a side note, I was watching a sports science TV program where they were studying who had the most power in a punch. And they lined up all candidates who were from all the popular forms of martial arts and they also included a boxer….and they let them give their best punch to a dummy that recorded the power of the punch. All the martial artists did these “fancy” punches but the interesting thing was that the most powerful puncher was the boxer. And he said “we’re more powerful because that’s all we do…punch”.

Does that mean all we should do to swing faster is practice swinging faster?

I’m going to give it a good shot and find out.

So I did this golf swing test today using the Swing Speed Radar and here is a video of my results…

OK, so I’m currently averaging 118 mph. I seem to be getting quicker but more on what I think the reasons are for this in a future post.

Have a great weekend.

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