What the hell is this about?
Stupid Human Tricks
Someone please explain to me what standing on a stability ball with a golf club is supposed to do.
Go ahead, I’ll wait.
Let’s use some logic and THINK about this…..
Q: Is it sport specific?
A: No, it’s not.
When you play golf…THE GROUND DOESN’T MOVE!…so why would be practice on a ball which does?
Q: Does this mimic the golf swing in appearance?
A: No, Look at his feet.
The ankle joint has changed which means the activation patterns across it as well as the knee and hip and through the spine (core) and shoulder girdle..i.e. The ENTIRE KINETIC CHAIN has changed.
Therefore, the swing MUST be different in some aspect.
Q: Does it mimic the speed of movement?
A: No, it can’t, with an increasing level of instability the primary movers must contribute MORE to stabilization and less to power/ strength/ speed production.
“When a muscle contracts, it creates both force and stiffness. Force creates joint torque to support postures and create movement — but sometimes the force will enhance joint stability and sometimes it will compromise stability. It depends on the magnitude of the force and its relative magnitude relative to all other muscle forces acting at the joint. In contrast, muscle stiffness is always stabilizing. A stiff muscle buttresses against perturbations from all directions. Stiffness at one joint buttresses the development of explosive power at another. Stiffness is also enhanced by positional techniques of the body segment linkage where one segment can be stiffened against another……..
high performance in athletics requires rapid muscle activation onset and force development, together with equally rapid reduction of muscle force. Super stiffness needs only to occur briefly in such cases, but if it needs to be brief, the motor control system must be highly tuned to ensure optimal super stiffness.”, Dr. Stuart McGill – Superstiffness
Therefore it’s obvious that cheap parlor tricks that “work the core” or anything else for that matter while under the guise of being , I hate this term, “sport specific” are just that, cheap parlor tricks.
Golfers need to be able to create power and stiffness.
Tension and relaxation quickly and with a highly developed degree of motor control.
Foolish exercises like standing on a physioball and swinging a golf club DO NOT ALLOW FOR THIS!
These types of exercises fundamentally change the movements and therefore the training effect.
In general unstable surfaces, for healthy athletes and applied to lower body training, impair athletic performance.
“These results indicate that UST (unstable surface training) using inflatable rubber discs attenuates performance improvements in healthy, trained athletes. Such implements have proved valuable in rehabilitation, but caution should be exercised when applying UST to athletic performance and general exercise scenarios.”- Cressey
The Effects of 10 Weeks of Lower-Body Unstable Surface Training on Markers of Athletic Performance– Cressey
So what does standing on a physioball add to the training of any golfer?
Yep, it’s just another stupid thing to try and sell some myth that successful training for sports requires some special equipment and esoteric knowledge from a genius who employs the latest and greatest fad… Guess what? It doesn’t….. When it comes to golf performance here’s what the science says:
“Results suggest that core strength and stability, flexibility, balance, and peripheral muscle strength are correlated with golf performance and should be included in golf training programs.”- Wells, Physiological Correlates of Golf Performance
Yeah, so ummm basically you need everything….except stupid human tricks…
About Roy:
