Spending More Time in the Sand Than David Hasselhoff

My golf fitness business, Cutting Edge Golf Fitness, has had a few cool developments lately.

First, I’ve got my three junior golf customers running. I was at a tournament with my son last weekend and the three of them were talking with me on the putting green before their rounds about the exercises they were doing, what was tough for them, and how they liked the workouts. Good feedback for me.

Second, Cutting Edge will be sponsoring a junior tournament this month. The Tarheel Golf Foundation has given me a “presenting” status for their next junior tournament at Finley GC in Chapel Hill. The official name is the Tarheel Golf Classic presented by Cutting Edge Golf Fitness. I’ll hang around before the players start their rounds, do some simple physical evals, and talk up the program with the kids and their parents. The Tarheel Golf Foundation’s founders, Eric Murray and Bob Gerard, have been tremendous supporters of my business and I am very, very grateful. I’ve also enlisted the help of the original, one and only Claydog, Clay Garland, to help out. Another TPI certified golf fitness instructor and PGA pro, Clay is a good friend and will be great to have around at the tournament and to help out with kids who need evals and workouts.

Finally, I got a hit from our website from a local courses’ director of junior instruction about helping with their club’s juniors’ fitness. We’re going to talk about setting up some type of program.

All this is exciting stuff. Let alone the fact that my offiicially logoed golf bag, hat and shirt are on their way. I’ll give you a sneak peek when they hit the door.

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The business is finally official!

That’s right - Cutting Edge Golf Fitness is in business for fitness!

I’m not just working with my son for free. Got our first paying customers – Grayson Murray and Larry Han. Grayson and Larry are two elite junior golfers, both from North Raleigh, and I am lucky enough to be working with them on their physical conditioning. Fun, because they are both great young men, and also because they are outstanding golfers. If I can help them a little bit, it will be very exciting for me. They’re also great because they are dedicated to golf and are willing to work hard to get better.

Can’t ask for better first customers.

So bring it on, world! Cutting Edge is ready for you!

GET FIT – GET BETTER!

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Have given a quick runthrough on a webpage for my TPI Certified Golf Fitness Instructor stuff – check it out and give me some feedback – Cutting Edge Golf Fitness.

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I passed my 20 question Titleist Performance Institute CGFI test – getting 19 of 20 correct. I needed 16 to pass so I think I’m graduating magna cum laude, or something.

Now, I can put “CGFI” after my name (Certified Golf Fitness Instructor).

I’m waiting for some of you (Jess) to put other words to those initials.

Sincerely,

Kurt Ehlert, CGFI, TPITA (Total Pain in the . . .)

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Just finished with Day 2 of the Level 1 training for the Titleist Performance Institute. Again, very interesting stuff. As I mentioned yesterday, we’re learning how body mechanics and deficits in mobility and stability can create difficulties with the golf swing.

Today, we finished up learning how to do an 11 test evaluation of a golfer. This consisted of our 80 person class breaking into groups of 2 spread all over the room and hallway and having one be the “client” while the other was the evaluator. It doesn’t seem like a lot of tests, but when done well, it takes a full 7 minutes to finish. At our stage, where we aren’t exactly smooth (”Um, sir, could you squat – no, wait – stand – no . . . Let me look at the sheet!”), we were allotted 20 minutes a person to do the eval. John Walker, a PT from San Diego, and I did just fine, thank you. No one got a hamstring pull, we got good info and finished well in advance of the bell.

Later, we tried to compare people’s evaluations and the deficits described their with what we predicted their golf swing would then look like. Some of the attendees got their swings taped for this part – not me, thank goodness. I mean, there are a lot of golf pros there, including Claude Harmon (Butch’s son), and I don’t want them laughing out loud. After a bit, we kind of got the hang of it. We could predict some swing problems just by knowing the physical limitation. Cool!

We also went over some exercises to help correct those problems. New insight – if you’ve never felt your gluteus medius, I have a couple of exercises for you. Mine are still yelling at me.

Your butt exposed - including the gluteus medius

Now what? That is a great question. My first thought is to evaluate my 15 year old son and a few of his buddies and try to get them on a program to help their condition before high school golf starts in February. After that, I don’t know. There are a lot of TPI certified golf pros and a few fitness guys in Raleigh – I may get in touch with a few and feel them out about working together. After all, I’ve got 1375 square feet of open space from my old business adventure, just sitting there waiting to be used.

Now, if I can only evaluate myself . . .

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I am posting from Austin, Texas, home of the put-upon Texas Longhorns’ football team. I’m down here in the Horns country at the Titleist Performance Institute’s Level One Seminar.

The TPI is the foremost authority on how a golfer’s physical limitations affect his golf swing. They provide certifcation seminars multiple times throughout the year at various locales. Greg Rose, a chiropractor, is the driving force behind these seminars and the education process and he is in charge of this seminar. These are designed for golf pros, fitness professionals who have golfers as clients (or want to build up that part of their business), and health professionals. The typical health pro who comes to these is a physical therapist or chiropractor. I am the only MD at this seminar (out of about 80 people) and from what I can tell, will be the only MD who is certified by TPI in the state of North Carolina.

If I pass the test.

It is a two day event. We started at 8 this AM and just finished at 5 tonight, with a similar schedule tomorrow. Today’s topics – golf swing faults, at least the Big 12 of them, as seen on video analysis. In the afternoon, we started learning how to assess an individual to find out what restrictions or deficits they have physically as they relate to the golf swing. Tomorrow, we finish the assessment part and go into exercises to correct the physical problems.

Very cool. I’m certain there is nothing being done like this in the world, not at this level. And their way of linking the swing fault with the physical issue is very interesting.

I’ll fill you in tomorrow on Day 2.

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As I’m sitting in my hotel room in Hilton Head (where my son, Alex, is playing in an International Junior Golf Tour tournament at Palmetto Hall), sweating profusely from doing a kettlebell workout (watch the video below if you don’t know what kettlebells are),

I’m thinking that kettlebell workouts should be great for golf. They work the core really hard, which is what most golf fitness is directed at. They also target the butt, hamstrings and upper thighs – a lot! All of these areas are key for golf fitness. If you don’t believe it, check out how big the butts are on the PGA Tour – no, not the Craig Stadler kind, but the fit kind. These guys lift, hard and often. Look at how Tiger has changed himself. And Camillo Villegas lifted with the football players at the Unversity of Florida – and held his own.

Also, you can’t do kettlebells correctly without being flexible, another key ingredient to a powerful reproducible golf swing.  I just got Pavel Tsatsouline’s book, “Enter the Kettlebell: Strength Secret of Soviet Superman”. I’ve done some kettlebell lifting on my own the last few weeks and really like it. Now that I have the book, I can do it correctly. It really is awesome. Everything he talks about is regarding strength and fitness (he is, after all, the Father of Kettlebell Fitness in America), but I think it all relates really well to golf too.  I’m going to the Titleist Performance Institute’s level one training in December – I’ll be curious to see how that classic type of golf fitness compares to what I see with kettlebells.

Bottom line – Don’t fear the iron, golfers!

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