Need Help with Exercises to Increase Club Head Speed. Can you Help?

Hey all,

I need some help and/or advice from you all, if you don't mind. I am 54 and was never a good golfer, but I loved the game. Unfortunately I was born with an AutoImmune disease in my spine, Ankylosing Spondylitis. It's a disease that effects young men and symptoms present in the early 20's. It's a degenerative disease that causes your body to attack the discs in the spine or the hips. The vast majority of patients have the hips effected and only a small percentage have the spine afflicted. Guess I was one of the unlucky ones. As the disease progresses it will, for lack of better wording and descriptors, attack the discs and steadily destroy them, leaving you with no discs in your spinal column at all. That's where I am. I have lost about 4 inches of height since finishing high school until the disease finished it's mission to eat away my discs.
As you can imagine, I have ZERO flexibility. I cannot look up...at all. I can turn my head side to side, but not as much as you guys and gals can. I thought about it for a while and decided that I didn't want to let this thing take the game I loved away from me as it has done with so many other facets of my life. I figured that if I was ever going to play golf again, I had to get started now. If I put it off any longer, I'll be 60 and wondering where the last 6 years went.

Its been over 10 years since I played golf. I hit some balls a couple years ago and got so discouraged that I left the range extremely down in the dumps. This disease, and the lack of physical activity that comes with it, has taken a good bit of my strength away from me. As you can imagine, I don't have much movement in my lower body when I swing so any kind of repeatable swing I will be able to come up with will be mainly with my arms. The advice that we all are given to try and get your belt buckle to point at the target in your follow through, is likely not possible for me. I'm not going to say it would be impossible for me to do that, but it would be difficult. What I need is to get some basic exercises that I can do with resistance bands that will strengthen my arms and enable me to gain club head speed. The problem is that I don't know which ones to do. I'm hoping you all can give me some advice and instruction on how I can get stronger with the goal of being able to swing the club better, quicker and more efficiently. That's going to be the only way I can ever hope to play golf again. I want to aim for a club head speed of 85 mph. I figure I'm at about 67-68 right now, maybe a tad higher, but not much.

SO..if you all don't mind, and you want to help someone that will really appreciate it, please give me some strengthening exercises that I can and should do on a daily or every other day basis. I'm in Houston so I won't have to worry about colder weather and I'll be able to hit balls anytime I want..if I can get stronger. I'd love to get to 85 mph by Halloween. That might be overly optimistic, but it's a goal that I want to reach for.

If there are any questions, feel free to PM me or post them and I'll answer as best I can.

Lastly....this disease is passed on so pay attention to your sons guys and gals. If he's in his late teens or early 20's and starts complaining of back or hip pain and it just seems to hang around and nothing really helps it, take your son to get a blood test that can tell you if he's got it. Believe me, it'll be the greatest thing you'll do for your son. Things are so much better now that we have modern biologics to combat this disease. It's possible now to keep the disease from ever making it to where I'm at, with a totally fused spinal column, or needing a total hip replacement.

Thank you all for your time and any help you care to give me.
Have a great Sunday.

Larry


P.S. I'm not thinking about clubs or gear right now. I need to get stronger first, then I'll start looking at clubs when it's evident that I'm going to be able to play again.

Given the lack of flexibility in the spine, you need to turn your entire body. It's not a new way of swinging. It's a very old way of swinging. All you need to do is feel the club head and know where it is. As we age we're not as flexible as we once were. Brian Sparks wrote a book about it. You can buy the book on Amazon, or you can watch the video and get the idea. And given your condition, I'd just play from the senior tees.

I'm inspired that you're chasing this improvement despite the hand you were dealt Larry. If your condition allows you to target your hand wrist and forearm strength that might be something else to incorporate? Strengthen those muscles and train your new swing to utilize those muscles more predominantly than in a classic swing requiring all that flexibility and rotation which seems unattainable for you.

Focusing on my forearms and wrists etc... had the biggest impact on my own club head speed gains. Even in my prime I was a slow swinger and didn't really utilize that lever well. When I was almost 60 I returned to golf after a 20 year layoff and launch monitors were a thing. I was only averaging in the mid/upper 70s when going at it as hard as I could. I decided to utilize my hands more and to focus my strengthening exercises right there because I knew I was way too lazy to work on everything I needed. The chart below shows my progress and I'm sharing it because the vast majority of my new driver speed came early on. I can sometimes even hit triple digits now if I really go after it but I now average mid 90s.

It's not ideal to go about it that way because I struggled with more mis hits than ever by being so handsy, but I worked through it and now things are GREAT. I hit the ball so much better throughout the bag. I hit so many more GIR, and my handicap is lower than it's ever been despite me having a crap short game/putting game compared to the past. Even in my prime my absolute upper limit on a flat par 4 was about 375 yards. That was two absolutely smoked shots back then, something that happened RARELY. Now that upper limit is about 450 yards if I absolutely cream two balls.

First, sorry you have to go through what you’re going through.

I normally recommend the SuperSpeed program for anyone that is looking to increase CHS. I’m not sure that it’s appropriate for you. I would definitely check with your doc before starting it, but it’s been the most viable way to increase CHS that I’ve seen. If you’ve never heard of it’s basically swinging 3 differently weighted sticks both right and left handed in certain reps depending on where you are at in the program. That’s way oversimplified, but pretty much sums it up.

At any rate, best of luck to you!

Man - sorry to hear you've got this affliction. There are some teachers that believe the hands can generate a ton of speed without the need for huge body rotation. Darrell Klassen I think may be one, but it might be useful to do a few searches on YouTube to see what some teachers may be saying. Best of luck to you!

I completely read over and missed the part where you asked about specific exercise recommendations. My bad. If you do decide to go the handsy route I can try to describe the one thing that helped me the most. I kludged together a makeshift 'golf grip' that I could attach to my bowflex. A 12" wooden dowel of the right thickness, duct tape for a 'grip', a big eye bolt threaded into the end of the dowel, and a big dual loop swivel like those used when chaining up a large dog to a post. I do small sets of slow reps setting my wrists against the resistance and then turn around and do more slow reps forcing my wrists to unhinge against the resistance. Isolate and focus on using just those muscles in your forearms wrists, hands, and fingers. I don't use or need much weight to really get my hands, wrists, and especially forearms burning. Best of luck and very glad to hear you aren't giving up on this game.

Thank you all for your advice, help and encouragement. I need ALL of those that I can get, sometimes more than other times.

I just want to be able to play golf again. It's the only game I ever played that I really enjoyed and now it's one more thing that this condition has taken from me. I can't go backwards, but I can make a difference in the future. I can either get with it and in 6 months I might be able to swing 85-90 mph, or slower, but at least I'll be trying as best I can. That's worth something just by itself. I need all the exercise I can get. My pain management doctor is always asking me about using resistance bands to gain strength. He'd be happy as a lark if I went in and told him that I had started a program to get stronger.
If I don't do anything and just let it go past, in 6-8 months I'll be saying "boy I wished I had just tried to get stronger to play golf again." Every day that I put it off, it gets harder and harder to get to where I want to be.

I'm gonna try it. I'll also be looking up the things that you all told me about too. Lastly, I am in the Houston area and there are courses all over the place. Heck you can't throw a rock without hitting a golf course or a hospital. They must be related...
After I get a bit stronger and hitting balls again, I am going to try and find a teacher that is used to working with people that have "special needs" and challenges. I think a teacher like that could help me more than a typical USGA certified teacher at any of the clubs around me. A lot of the courses close to me are private anyway and I almost never see anyone on them.

Anyway, one other plan I am thinking about is to get a sheet or blanket, suspend it between 2 trees, use a door mat and hit balls into it every day....maybe every other day.

Thank you all and have a great week!

Larry

Need Help with Exercises to Increase Club Head Speed. Can you Help?

Hey Larry,

I have advanced AS as well with a similar sounding profile. (Very limited neck & spine movement). I have certainly improved a lot over the last 12 months due to a more focused & tailored exercise program, which has significantly reduced my pain and made golf a lot more enjoyable.

It is one of the few physical activities I can still do, so I really use golf as a focal point for trying to better understand, manage & improve where things are at for me with the condition.

A few of the things that have really helped me.

1) I found a TPI specialised Physio / osteopath & Pilates instructor. TPI specialists are able to break a golf swing into a series of biomechanical movements and then test / analyse your ability to perform each one which is invaluable.

2) They were then able to provide me with an exercise program that was tailored to strengthen the areas (ie Hips, shoulders, core, glutes etc.) where I had / needed more flexibility & movement in order to maximise what I could do.

AS with restricted spine & neck, at least for me, had resulted in very weak core, glutes and chest / shoulder tightness. Once I started strengthening & working on these, things improved significantly. (With both the golf swing, as well as general well being.)

3) I also found a PGA pro (again TPI certified) that was open to working with me on lessons to help me shape a swing that was more suited to my limitations. I am still early in this process, but for me it is more about using hip / body movement to add more turn & width where my shoulder turn is obviously quite limited. But there are lots of little compromises I was making that needed to be professionally structured.

4) Finally I also got fitted for clubs with lighter & more flexible shafts which was able to help a lot with both control & distance etc.

I still only have a swing speed of around 80 and do aspire to get this up closer to 90. However I have definitely added 10-15 yards in distance since starting the process and am now swinging more consistently.

Happy to share more detail if needed. But regardless, best of luck on your own journey. And hang in there!

Scott

I am no physical therapist nor of any authority to suggest any type of exercise for your issues. But I will say that I am so sorry for what you go through and I admire your drive to play. I truly wish you luck and really hope you find a way to play the game in whatever manor possible.

If you are ever in Cleveland, the round is on me.