Train Key Muscles for Power

Improve your fitness & swing ‘sequencing’ with the medicine ball drill.

 

 

Working with a weighted medicine ball is a really effective way of improving the sequence of movements in your swing and – as a result – increasing speed and power. There are a number of specific benefits. To start with, it encourages you to set-up in an athletic position. Because you are supporting the weight of the ball you have to engage the important stabiliser muscles in your torso and legs, giving you a ‘grounded’ and balanced feeling.

 

        

 

From here, with that heavy weight in your hands, you are encouraged to initiate the turn into the backswing by using the bigger muscles of the torso, allowing the arms to simply be carried by the turn. Again, supporting that added weight should improve your forearm rotation as you move into the ‘loaded position’ at the top of your backswing. You really have to focus on supporting that weight at the top of the swing. Look how my lower half is very stable against my upper half in this position, a dynamic that maximises the energy in the wind-up and coil ready for the change of direction.

 

 

From the top you can see that the lower half of my body initiates the downward move – this is the correct athletic sequence for golf. With the heavy ball in your hands it is difficult not to enforce this as you unwind and swing through. This tiny change in momentum will help your arms to fall into a good delivery position and you can see how it is so easy then for the arms to rotate on the way through as the body rotates to a full finish. Look at the release position I’ve achieved as I swing through with the ball; my right hand rotates over my left as I release the ball and throw it towards the target.
 

You can finish the swing in two different ways, either concentrating on throwing the ball down the target line, or, alternatively, you can focus on swinging all the way through, holding the ball nice and still. Either way you will improve both the ‘sequencing’ and dynamic balance in your golf swing. With a club in your hands you can look forward to a much better rotation of the body and a more natural, athletic movement overall in the swing.