Education

Training young golfers: It’s all about the PROCESS

Written by Ben LangdownApril 12, 2022
I’ve spent many years coaching young golfers in the gym; supporting their strength and conditioning, helping them to modify and optimise their training, nutrition, sleep and recovery behaviours and I always enjoy seeing their progress transfer to their game and preparation on and off the course.

In Sports Psychology there’s a lot of research evidence to promote the use of a ‘process’ rather than focusing on the outcomes. As strength and conditioning coaches, we too must focus on the ‘process’ of coaching young athletes. The process, or ‘PROCESS’, I am referring to here is one that Avery Faigenbaum and James McFarland presented in their feature article in 2016.

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Education

Three goals for optimal hydration

Written by Ben Langdown, Tim Roberts and Alex EhlertNovember 3, 2021
How much impact does your fluid intake have on golf performance?

Probably a lot more than you think!

Hydration is one of those areas that golfers often overlook but one that can potentially destroy a round! In a number of athletic populations dehydration has been shown to reduce cognitive function (Grandjean & Grandjean, 2007; Wittbrodt & Millard-Stafford, 2018) – a pretty important factor that golfers need optimized out on the course!

In this blog we present recommendations based on research evidence and three goals to help optimize your hydration strategy and maintain performance on the course.

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Education

Five areas to optimize you and your golf

Written by Ben Langdown, Tim Roberts and Alex EhlertOctober 26, 2021
Ben Hogan, Mickey Wright, Sam Snead, Patty Berg, Kathy Whitworth, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Greg Norman, Dame Laura Davies, Seve Ballesteros, Sir Nick Faldo, Annika Sorenstam, Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie, Rory McIlroy, Se Ri Pak, Bryson DeChambeau…Over the years there have been many, many golfers who have changed the face of the game and, among other great achievements, have led to the adoption of various practices being employed as strategies for improved performance.

As sports science research and applied practice has developed, so too has the engagement of golfers seeking to gain advantages out on the course and indeed, some of the names above have contributed to professionals of the sport not only being viewed as golfers, but as athletes too. We have previously presented advice on where athletes of the game should be looking to monitor and optimize the moderators of internal load; these link directly to some of the areas we discuss here.

In this blog we present five areas that can help to optimize you, the golfer and ultimately, the athlete.

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Education

Ten tips to help optimize your sleep and improve your golf

Written by Ben Langdown, Tim Roberts and Alex EhlertSeptember 21, 2021
In our previous blogs we have discussed ‘How do you plan for those early tee times?’, exploring how sleep quality and duration have a part to play in performance on the course and we’ve presented that sleep is one of the moderators of internal load.

How do you ensure you give yourself the best chance of a full, undisturbed, night of sleep?

By looking after your ‘Sleep Hygiene’, that’s how!

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Education

How do you plan for those early tee times?

Written by Ben LangdownSeptember 9, 2021
As you look through the second-round tee sheet you note that you’re off at 7.10am. Another early start – getting up in the dark, travelling to the course in the dark, warming up as the sun comes up…sounds inviting hey?! This is exactly where a strategy counts. Your schedule needs to be effective to set you up for a fast start – rather than waking up through the front-9 only to realise that you’ve played yourself out of contention because you didn’t pay enough attention to planning.

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Education

Moderators of internal load

Written by Ben LangdownSeptember 1, 2021
People talk about marginal gains a lot in sport. In this blog I discuss six areas that can all influence the level of fatigue you experience and how you react to the golf, training and any other physical activity you undertake. Each of these could well be considered a marginal gain; those one percent margins that separate you from the rest of the field.

We start by establishing what external and internal load are, and why it is important to monitor your golf, training, and other physical activity load.

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Education

The importance of monitoring workload

Written by Ben LangdownAugust 26, 2021
Monitoring a log of your golf, strength & conditioning, and other physical activity workloads provides you and your team with intelligent insights to help optimize performance and reduce the risk of injury (e.g. due to overtraining or sudden spikes in load).

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Education

Optimize your golf with a dose of daily wellness

Written by Ben Langdown and Tim RobertsJuly 16, 2021
Even with a sweetly struck drive, it’s obvious that an old, cut up golf ball won’t perform optimally in the air, or roll true on the smooth, freshly cut putting surface of each green. In the same vein, a tired, stressed, and demotivated golfer won’t perform at their best either!

Having read the title, you may be wondering, what does ‘daily wellness’ have to do with golf? In fact, what does ‘daily wellness’ even mean?! In this blog we will focus on the importance of understanding and logging specific items each day and how, ultimately, this can improve your golf.

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Education

Five reasons to use live practice monitoring on the driving range

Written by Ben Langdown and Tim RobertsMarch 16, 2021
New goals are often set at the end of the year, and/or at the end of the playing season, in preparation for the next, and this is no different in golf. With good intentions to keep a record of all your golf practice, you open the first page in a brand-new notebook. You log your driving range session from earlier in the day, recalling the clubs used and the number of shots hit, filling the neatly drawn table ready for your stats. Like most New Year resolutions, you start with excitement at creating something useful, high motivation to use the data, and looking forward to making it your best golf season yet. However, whether or not you manage to maintain the motivation to record months’ worth of practice sessions (accurately!) or in fact never bought a notebook to start with, have you then ever considered how you would have used the data?

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Education

Golfers, what priorities are you focusing on in the gym?

Written by Ben Langdown and Tim RobertsMarch 16, 2021
It’s clear that strength and conditioning is an important part of any serious golfer’s routine. You only have to look at the transformation to Bryson DeChambeau to see the impact a training program  (and arguably a nutrition plan) can have on performance. However, the specifics of how you train and how much you train (frequency, intensity and volume) can have a big impact on how efficiently and effectively you achieve your goals of increasing performance and reducing the risk of injury. With this in mind, have you ever considered – what do you want your weekly, 30 day and 90 day S&C priorities to look like? i.e what are you trying to achieve by working out?

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