By Sean M. Cochran
Special to PGATOUR.com

One of the best parts about my job is I get to meet and work with all kinds of people and I get to see them work toward accomplishing their goals. It’s not a bad way to make a living. In order for me to help you start working towards accomplishing your goal of becoming a better golfer, I would need to do an assessment of not only your golf swing, but your body in general. Let’s face it, it can be very humbling when someone critiques your swing or your body, but it’s the first – and possibly most important – step towards improving your golf game.

The first thing I do when I start to work with someone is a general assessment of their body. I watch them swing a golf club and what I’m looking for is much different then what an instructor is looking for. I watch for body faults, which cause swing faults. Simply put, I’m looking for inefficiencies within the body which prevents the golfer from making a good swing. It’s as simple as if a player isn’t flexible enough to make a shoulder turn, his swing is limited and more than likely, he’s already creating compensations in his swing for his body’s faults.

I also look for weight shift and balance capacities within the body. General balance is the ability of the muscular and nervous system to control the center of gravity and regulate limb movements. So, I’m looking to see if you have the balance capacity to control a golf swing.

Another question I try to answer is do you have a good spine angle and can you maintain the posture and spine angle in a swing? If your body cannot do that, there will be changes in the body angle and posture, which says you don’t have the strength or endurance to support and sustain the swing.

Finally, I look at clubhead speed, the launch angle and simply the sound of the golf ball off the club face, especially the driver. The sound a ball makes coming off a club when hit crisply and perfectly is music to the golfer’s ears. I listen for it and if I don’t hear it, it’s another indication the body is unable to generate power.

Those four components make up my review of the swing. I’m focusing on the body faults and looking to see if your body is impeding your swing. That will give me a general idea of what we need to work on in relation to the golf swing.

The second part of my assessment is a little more detailed look at the body. We did an assessment in the first part of the exam to look at general impedances in the swing, now we’ll do a series of assessments to look at specific physical capacities of the body. We will begin with a static flexibility assessment, which is just a look at the body in a stationary position. I look at the joints, the ankles, knees, hips, spine, shoulder and neck. I look to see where limbs are internally or externally rotated. If the body is not straight in alignment on the stationary assessment it’s an indication the certain muscles are tight. An example, if the shoulders are rolling forward, there’s anterior tightness and we need to work on flexibility to return the shoulder joint to neutral.

It’s an easy assessment to do at home. Just stand in front of a full-length mirror. Is everything straight? Is each joint aligned straight? Are any limbs rotated inward or outward? It is a great indicator of what we need to work on. We’ll look at the lower back, upper back, shoulder, hamstrings, hips – these are areas that are typically tight. For example, if the hamstring, which attaches to the hip, under the butt and runs down behind the knee, is tight it pulls the pelvis backward and gives an extended arch in the lower back. Or if the hip flexor, which is on the front side of the hip, is tight pulls the hips underneath giving a flat-butt look, zero arch in the lower back and the hips shift forward. Or the shoulders – if they’re tight on the front, they roll forward but if they’re tight on the back, it makes the chest stick out too much.

This part of the assessment allowed us to pinpoint the muscles that need to be adjusted. It all starts with flexibility. Quite simply, you cannot look at strength and then go to flexibility because if the muscles are not in the correct position, they cannot do as good of a job because they are not in the right alignment.

Next, we’ll do a balance assessment to see how well the body controls the center of gravity and limb movement. Single leg squats and multi-lunge exercises look at the ability to synchronize movement and control movement patterns and if you are unable to control your body during these exercises, it indicates we need to improve the balance ability.

After balance, it’s on to strength and endurance assessments. This is where we look to see if the body is strong enough and if the muscles have enough endurance to maintain the posture and the spine angle of golf swing. There are several exercises for this, one involves testing to the strength of your core section – using the lower back and abdominals – determining the amount of force you can generate and how long you’re able to maintain it. Another is the time under tension test. We will engage the core (lower back and abdominals) to create a movement and hold a specific body position. It checks the ability of the body to do the same activity over and over and over again. Why is this important? Well, a good golf swing is something you need to create over and over and over again.

Finally, we do a power assessment, which is the body’s ability to generate torque, which turns into clubhead speed if done correctly. The simple definition of power is to create the greatest amount of force in the shortest amount of time. So we’ll do exercises like the vertical jump test, which measure lower body power by measuring how high you can jump from the standing position. Or a medicine ball (which is a weighted ball) sit-up-and-throw, which assesses the core power by measuring the distance of the throw. We also do sideway-seated throws with the medicine ball (which measure core rotational power through the distance of the throw) and overhead throws with the medicine ball (which measure power, again by using the distance of the throw).

The biggest areas we see in terms of fault – and where amateurs can see the biggest results – are in flexibility. Too often amateurs are in too big of hurry and rush right into trying to gain more power, but what they fail to realize is it all starts with flexibility. Gaining strength does nothing if your body won’t allow you to properly use it. Flexibility leads to balance, which leads to strength and then power.