There are many people who believe that you don’t need to do any fitness training to play golf, all you do is stand still, hit a ball and walk to the next tee…Right….Wrong. The age of Tiger has come upon golf and showed the masses that a strong and well conditioned athlete can sweep the board and dominate the sport.

Golf is the most successful and highly supported team that I coach at Bournemouth University and as a Titleist Performance Institute (T.P.I.) Certified Golf Fitness Instructor I put more time into working with them to ensure that they stay on top. Our top nine has an average handicap of 0 and is made of some very dedicated players.

There are many exercises in my programme that people may not expect to see, we do Hang Cleans, Squats and Deadlift variations because I believe these fundamental lifts should be in any sports programme to create a rounded athlete. We also do a large amount of mobility, stability and balance work, which is vital for a consistent Golf swing and preventing injuries due to poor form.

The programme starts with a Golf specific movement screen taken from T.P.I. This will show up problem areas, such as poor external shoulder rotation or pelvic stability, which could lead to a number of swing faults, many of which could not be rectified with Golf specific coaching alone; The athlete simply may not be able to do what the golf pro is telling them to due to weakness or instability. This would make the lessons pointless and slow the development of the Golfer.

The screening results are used to directly create a programme for that golfer, it is designed to address their specific issues and to also increase their general strength and power production capabilities. When combined the individual will now be functionally strong and have the right mix of stability and mobility to be able to perform consistent swings and long drives, they can then work with their golf coach in the confidence that they have fewer physical limitations holding them back.

The transfer of training is a major concern of most strength & conditioning coaches when it comes to exercise selection. It is very easy to improve the strength of most athletes and have them lift more weight in the gym. What is more difficult is to make sure that this improved strength results in an improved performance on the field.

When it comes to improving speed an often used training method is resisted sprint training. Many coaches use resisted sprint training in the belief that it bridges the gap between weight room activities and actual sprinting.

On the flip side, there are coaches who will stay well clear of this type of training in the fear of it confusing neural patterns.

The attempt to perform the exact same movement that is used in competition, but with added resistance, is a contentious issue in the world of sports performance training. This type of training, where the two movements look almost identical, has been termed mimicry training. The term mimicry training has negative connotations, since it is believed such techniques can negatively affect the neural patterns in the competitive movement.

So how can we make sure that we do not fall into the trap of mimicry training when using resisted sprint training methods?

A good starting point would be to take a look at some of the research out there regarding the determinants of sprinting performance.

It has been shown that maximum sprinting speed is dependant on the ability to produce a large vertical ground reaction force in a short period of ground contact (Weyand et al., 2000). This finding alone gives us a big clue as to what types of resisted sprint training should and should not be used.

If the key factor determining sprinting speed is the amount of force that can be applied to the ground, then we can rule out using ankle weights as an appropriate form of resisted sprint training. This training method will only serve to increase force production during the hip flexion that occurs during the flight phase. This is the exact opposite movement pattern to that which must be developed in order to increase the application of force to the ground.

Effective resisted sprint training methods that develop the ability to apply force during the ground contact phase include: hill sprints; weighted vest sprinting; speed chute sprinting and sled sprints. Which of these is chosen will depend upon the level of the athlete and the type of speed that is to be trained.

Some of the different types of speed include: acceleration, maximum speed and multi-directional speed. The strongest predictor of acceleration performance is horizontal force production (Hunter et al., 2005). Methods such as sled sprints and speed chute sprints emphasise the horizontal component of force production, and are therefore the most suitable tools for the development of acceleration. In contrast, weighted vest sprinting would be the most suitable method for the development of maximum speed since it emphasises vertical force production.

Hill sprinting represents a compromise between training for acceleration and training for maximum speed. The athlete is moving uphill, and so the effect of gravity means there is a greater emphasis on vertical force production. This lends itself to the development of maximum speed. However, the body angles when sprinting uphill are more suitable for the development of the acceleration phase of sprinting.

Hill sprinting is, however, a very suitable training tool for athletes in the early stages of their development. Such athletes may not yet have the strength to hold a good body position for the acceleration phase of sprinting, and so training on a steep hill may be the only way for these athletes to experience this.

By looking at the different types of resisted sprint training methods we have only scratched the surface. Hopefully I have provided some food for thought though. The next obvious consideration would be the level of resistance the athlete should be working against. This opens up a whole new can of worms.

In one of my previous roles working as a strength and conditioning coach for a number of GB rowing internationals, I spent a lot of time reading up on the heart rate training protocols they use as rowing is a very physiology based sport requiring huge contributions from the aerobic systems.

As a result of the time I spent with these athletes, I now utilise heart rate training extensively with my athletes. In fact I would say that a heart rate monitor should be part of any athletes training kit bag!

I tend to work with 5 Zones. These are taken from the individuals maximum heart rate (MHR) and are as follows:

1. 95% MHR or above.

2. 85%-95% MHR

3. 80%-85% MHR

4. 70%-80% MHR

5. 50%-70% MHR

Zone 5 is essentially recovery type work and this should be used for mobility work, active recovery etc on non training days.

Zone 4 is aerobic development. Isolated sparring, drilling and some skill work may fit into this zone. It is also the zone I recommend for weights loss work in athletes who have high volume training programmes as it will not induce large amounts of physical or mental fatigue.

Zone 3 is usually around where your anaerobic threshold (AT) point is. This is where your body switches from producing energy aerobically to producing it anaerobically. It is an important training zone as training around your AT point allows you to develop your heart so that you can maintain aerobic work for longer. This is beneficial as you can sustain this level of work for long periods of time.

Zone 2 moves into anaerobic training and is commonly associated with high intensity drilling and sparring, conditioning games, circuits etc. It is important that this zone is trained extensively for strength and power sports such as MMA, tennis, rugby, soccer etc. My take on this is that you are training to improve your work capacity within these heart rate limits. How much work can you do with your heart rate above 85%? That should then be the goal of the sessions moving forward and it should be measured accordingly.

Zone 1 is fully Anaerobic and can only be sustained for around 1 minute in most cases. It is reserved for extremely high intensity periods of play within your sport. In training it is important to experience zone 1 and attempt to improve your bodies tolerance and the duration you can maintain this work rate as these will be the times when you are under the most pressure.

One of the key points about heart rate training is that yes you need to train your heart to develop and adapt to the demands of your sport, however the methods in which you do so are very important. For example it would not be optimal for an MMA athlete to be continuously performing shuttle runs in order for anaerobic development. When it comes to the crunch the muscles demanded from clinching and grappling may not have been conditioned optimally. An MMA athlete needs to do specific training utilising stand-up, clinch and ground based activities in accordance with their game plan and their opponents style. Shuttle runs are more suited to rugby players, field and court sport athletes although for general preparation type training sprints would be suitable.

Heart rate training can be utilised very effectively in ‘Skills Under Fatigue’ type sessions. Within these sessions if your athletes have heart rate monitors on you can effectively see what type of stress they are experiencing. It is interesting to note the difference between a technical session with and without conditioning. Look at the technical execution of the skills at 70% MHR and compare these to 80-90% MHR. You will initially notice a huge difference but over time it will diminish. When you think about the application to sport of this concept it does make sense……to me anyway!

The other area of importance is the recovery rate and time to recover to a certain heart rate. For example, with the combat athletes I train I like them to get their heart rate back to 75-80% of their max heart rate within the 1 min rest between rounds. So a 200bpm max heart rate would return to 130bpm by the start of the next round. This is extremely demanding and requires some training. Practice different methods of breathing such as 3 seconds inhaling 1 second exhaling or in through the nose out through the mouth. You will find that recovering to 75% MHR allows you to perform substantially more work in the following 5 minutes, therefore it is a key facet in the conditioning process.

Here is a guide to which zones certain sports should be focusing on:

Mixed Martial Arts: Zones 3, 2 and 1. 4 weeks pre fight work should focus on 2 and 1. 8-12 weeks out more so on zone 3. Use 4 and 5 for recovery and technical work. Zone 2 is the zone which I believe most athletes will experience the greatest benefits from training in and should be done with specific circuits/strength training. Zone 1 is best trained with either sparring with new body thrown in every 20-30s or with exercises such as squats, presses and pulls as these are fixed objects and have to be dealt with by the athlete. It is easy to slow down when you have to move yourself like in a bodyweight circuit, its much harder when you have to move someone or something else! Make sure you have technical competency in the exercises you use before putting them into this type of training and keep the reps low on power exercises. You are better off doing several exercises. I do not recommend doing extensive reps on exercises like power cleans or snatches!

Rugby League: I believe Zones 1, 3 and 4 are very important to develop for rugby league. I also think 2 is important as well. The ability to switch repeatedly from aerobic work to highly anaerobic work such as tackling, sprinting etc is very important. Conditioning games as well as more traditional methods such as shuttles, sprints etc work well for rugby players. Conditioning games are easy to cheat on so monitoring the players is important. Contact based games such as sumo wrestling, 2-V-1 wrestling games are also very good and really stress zones 1 and 2 when carried out for longer periods of time and are interspersed with skill based games to keep the heart rates high.

Tennis: I tend to focus a lot of my training for tennis players around zone 4. This is usually med ball circuits, shuttle runs, sprints and specific court work integrated with endurance work or tennis drilling to keep the heart rates high. Tennis players have high volume programmes anyway so spending time working with lower intensities is not beneficial in my experience. Bodyweight or light load power activities are more appropriate as they are not shifting opponents around like fighters or rugby players. However I do think there is a place for that type of work with tennis players as all athletes need to work on mental strength as well.

Thats all for now, let me know your thoughts on this and keep training hard!