With the golf season starting to wind down and the offseason around the corner I want to cover one of the most common goals among the golfers I work with: Increasing club head speed and distance. While the needs and programming will vary from golfer to golfer, I will cover three of the most common elements needed to increase club head speed.

1. Physical Improvements in the the body

I will start off this discussion with my area of expertise on the body and physical characteristics required to produce more club head speed. Many golfers focus on flexibility and it's importance in the golf swing. Flexibility and mobility are important or allowing us to get the body into the desired positions of the golf swing, make a full turn and increase hand path length, which is one way to increase club head speed as shown by golfers such as John Daly and Bubba Watson.

However, strength and power play and equally and in most cases an even more important role in producing club head speed. Our physical strength and power are responsible for applying force to the golf club which is another major factor in our ability to create club head speed. TPI has developed testing protocols of your physical power which can determine your potential ball speed within a couple of mph. Professional golfers have embraced the importance of training for strength and power as seen in these videos of Rory and Jon Rahm. Also our speed and power are one of the quickest physical characteristics that declines with age. It is crucial to continue to train these qualities to maintain fast twitch muscle fibers which is important for club head speed as well as healthy aging. Beyond the potential speed gains, increasing our physical strength and capacity can also be protective against injury when pushing speed.

2. Swing Mechanics

While we need to possess the physical capability to create speed, it is equally important that we can actually express that speed and power in the golf swing. Just because you increase your body's horsepower up doesn't mean that it will automatically show up in your golf swing. The golf swing is a unique skill and our swing mechanics play a crucial role in being able to create and transfer speed through our body and out of the golf club and ball. Advancements in technology such as 3D motion capture and force plates have been able to identify mechanical characteristics that allow golfers to create speed. For example, ground reaction forces have become a hot topic over the last several years. PGA professionals such as Rory do an excellent job of using the ground as a mechanism to create speed. However, many amateur golfers struggle to optimize the timing of these forces, often times applying them to late in the swing to get the benefit in speed. You could spend all offseason building up your leg strength and power, but not experience any speed gains if you can't optimize how you are using the lower body in the golf swing. This is just one example, however there are several other mechanical elements that could effect our ability to produce speed in the golf swing.

Intent:

Another important aspect of increasing club head speed is swinging with the intent and focus of creating speed. This sounds easy, but can very challenging for some golfers. It can be difficult to let go and give up the feeling of control when training for speed. Some of the speed training products such as the Stack System and SuperSpeed Golf help with this process by taking hitting a ball out of the equation so you can solely focus on speed. However, at some point you have to get comfortable doing this while hitting a ball and eventually the golf course. In the video above you can see Bryson demonstrating a speed training session hitting balls with the focus on maximum speed. This is designed to raise your maximum speed, not necessarily that you would swing this way on the course. Your cruising speed on the course would naturally be a few miles per hour less than this. It can be beneficial in this process to have a radar or launch monitor to track these speeds and see what the differences in speed are during a speed session, cruising speeds, practicing on the range and playing on the course to make sure the drop in speed is within the expected range and not excessive.

Want to learn more about speed? Check out our upcoming speed and longevity workshop presented by "Fast" Eddie Fernandes and Dr. Joe LaCaze on September 28th and 29th. Eddie is a 3x world long drive champion and at age 53 is still capable of club head speeds over 150 mph and ball speeds over 220 mph (The average PGA tour pro is 115 mph club head speed)! Equally impressive is that he has managed to be pain and injury free throughout his career. Eddie and Joe will be covering each of these topics and more during the speed school and this will be a great opportunity to learn from world experts on the subject.