Congrats to Rory McIIroy on a fabulous U.S. Open victory!  What a talent and performance.

Today’s blog is directed toward injury prevention for golfers but will benefit any athlete, weekend warrior or workout enthusiast.

A large percentage the golfers I have worked with complain of low back pain or fatigue during or after a round of golf. This is understandable as the golf swing and putting stance require a great deal of core strength during a four-hour round. Stretching and strengthening the lower back muscles can alleviate and eliminate such issues as well as give you more power and club head speed.  From experience, I see people tend to focus on the parts of the “core” that we can see in the mirror while neglecting the back muscles. Here are some Total Gym exercises to help strengthen the all-important back muscles:

THE SHAMU – In case you haven’t seen a SeaWorld Shamu show, when Shamu hits the deck his tail and head are lifted and the only thing touching the floor is his belly.

• Lying stomach down on your Total Gym with your head facing the tower, come up into an isometric pull-up position, where the arms are at a 90 degree bend.
• Deeply inhale with no movement – upon the exhale, lift the crown of your head towards the top of the tower and attempt to lift your thighs off the glideboard.  Inhale while moving back down and repeat.  Repeat focusing on form until fatigue.  Next – the counter stretch.

PILATES ROLLOVER – My clients love this lower back stretch and wonderful hamstring release. (see photo to the right). The beauty of doing this on the Total Gym is two-fold:

• It places less stress on the neck than a traditional Pilates rollover or yoga plow.
• You can position your feet on the squat stand to anchor your stretch, eventually dropping your feet lower on the squat stand as your flexibility increases.  Also, play with bending the knees in this position to increase the lower back stretch.

I hope you’re all having a great golfing summer!

Until next month – hit em’ straight!

JayDee Cutting is a GRAVITY Master Trainer, certified personal trainer, Pilates instructor and creator of the “Core Golf Fitness” program. JayDee’s Core Golf Fitness DVD offers on-course and warm-up exercises proven to help advance your golf game and is available for purchase at http://coregolffitness.com/.

The 2011 Master’s Golf Tournament, which many consider the kick-off to the golfing season, is coming up in April. So my next couple of blog posts will focus on utilizing the Total Gym to improve your – or your clients’ – golf mechanics to get into pro form!

Today’s exercise is an overhead shoulder press on Total Gym. In the video below, I demonstrate a great alternative to the shoulder press that I learned in my Total Gym GRAVITY training course, which is taught inverted and prone (or lying face down) on the glideboard. By utilizing the principle of “line of pull” that my fearless GRAVITY Personal Training educator Jeff Groh strongly emphasized, we are able to do this seated forward as demonstrated in the video

This exercise will help your golf game in the following 3 ways:

1. Hit the Ball Farther: A strong, functional core allows you to transfer the power from your legs to the upper body to generate more club head speed.
2. Improve Your Consistency: During this exercise, focus on emulating the spine angle of your golf swing. This will train your core to stabilize this angle so you can hold it constant throughout your golf swing until the end of your follow through. Without a stable, constant spine angle, it is very difficult to get back squarely to the ball at impact.
3. Protect Your Back from Aches, Pains or Injury: Having functional core strength AND core endurance is crucial to protect your spine from the vigor of the golf swing. As Keith Kleven, Tiger Wood’s physical therapist, points out, “Every time you swing the club, seven to eight times the weight of your body is directed into your spine.” That is a lot of torque happening during a round of 18 holes!

Click the video image to play:

Until next month golfers! Hit ‘em straight!

JayDee Cutting is a GRAVITY Master Trainer, certified personal trainer, Pilates instructor and creator of the “Core Golf Fitness” program. JayDee’s Core Golf Fitness DVD offers on-course and warm-up exercises proven to help advance your golf game and is available for purchase at http://coregolffitness.com/.

Regardless of your passion for working out, we all tend to hit a rut and experience burnout. These are the days when you want to work out but you really don’t feel like it, and I’m not talking about your crucial rest and recover days. I’m referring to those days were you fully planning to workout but when the time comes you just can’t seem to get started.

Here are 5 Ways to Beat Workout Burnout that have helped me:

1. Set a simple, yet challenging goal. For example, I rarely look forward to a Back day. So I tell myself I’ll do 100 plyo pull-ups on the Total Gym GTS, no matter how many sets it takes me, and then I’m done. I mark them down as I knock them out and feel a nice sense of accomplishment when I reach my goal. And I’m done with Back, yay!
2. Work out with a friend. Tell them upfront, “Hey, I’m a little burnt out. Let me just follow your routine today.” Follow their lead, catch up on some much-needed conversation and repeat as necessary.
3. Use the versatility of the Total Gym to make a fun change. For example, on one Chest/Shoulders/Triceps day I wasn’t feeling the workout vibe. So I decided to do the whole workout doing unilateral exercises (one arm) only. It was fun, time flew by and it challenged me to come up with new variations on the Total Gym that I could use with my clients. A double whammy!
4. Train at a different gym. Many gyms will let you work out a few days on a trial basis. If not, it’s worth it to spring for a day pass to be in a new atmosphere with different energy, different equipment and new faces. If nothing else, the $15 bucks you dropped will motivate you to get in good session!
5. Bribe yourself! Have a little self-talk, “OK, I know I don’t really feel like training today, but I also know I’ll feel so much better if I get it done. So, I’ll schedule a massage/pedicure/happy hour or buy new workout shoes, etc. and treat myself after I get er’ done!

I hope one of these tips works for you when needed. When I don’t feel like working out as planned, it helps to remind myself that many of my clients feel this way the majority of the time. When I think of how I always encourage them to fight through that feeling and get their body moving, I take a dose of my own advice and get the “workout buzz” flowing again!

Have any questions about JayDee’s tips. Send him a note at CuttingEdgeWellness@san.rr.com.

JayDee Cutting is a GRAVITY Master Trainer, certified personal trainer, Pilates instructor and founder of www.NiceDogYoga.com. His new “Core Golf Fitness” DVD is due out later this fall.

My passion in life is fitness, but golf is a close second. I picked up the game at the ripe old age of two!  I started lifting weights for sports performance at age 12, but it took the last 17 years living my passion as a fitness professional to figure out the most important component to improve my golf mechanics – flexibility!

For a lot of us fitness fanatics who love to put our bodies through energizing, blood pumping, heart pounding workouts, stretching is like flossing: we know it is good for us and we should do it consistently, but it’s often forgotten. My opinion about why we don’t stretch enough is the lack of instant gratification, which our society can’t seem to live without. With resistance training, we feel the pump, the effort exerted and we have that sadistic soreness the next day, which tells us we actually worked something. With cardio, we feel the heart instantly pump harder, our breathing picks up and we start sweating within minutes. With stretching, well – it’s just not sexy! But maybe if you and your clients are armed with reasons why it will improve your golf swing, you’ll give it a shot and make it a regular part of your workouts.

Look at the pros. Some are strong and it’s apparent they work out; but the majority is of normal strength. And then there are plenty of guys and gals who can hit the ball 300+ yards who, if not for their golf spikes, might be blown away by a heavy gust of wind! However, they ALL are extremely flexible and have good timing – two components that are highly correlated and essential for solid golf swing mechanics.

Case in point:  Tiger Woods. He has put on 30 pounds of muscles since he left Stanford; however, his previous swing coach, Butch Harmon, stated, “… [Tiger Woods] hit it farther when he was wiry…” In addition, Tiger’s physical therapist, Keith Kleven divulged that Tiger’s golf and workout sessions begin with 40 minutes of stretching and core work. Kleven has also been recommending Pilates to golfers since 1975, before the mind/body practice became mainstream in the fitness world. Good Pilates repertoire usually consists of an equal amount of lengthening and strengthening the muscles, and of course, core work.

So, if you love golf but still like to strength train like I do, just remember the flexibility component. Be sure to use a lengthy rest time between sets to stretch the muscle you just worked. I like to use Total Gym GTS for this purpose. Here are a few stretches I like to do:

As soon as I complete a chest exercise, I stand up and use my own bodyweight to passively open up the chest, breathe and relax.

Or after a pull-up set, I use the Total Gym and the weight of my body to open up the lats.

And finally, I LOVE the leg pulleys for opening up the hamstrings and hips (and as you can see, I can slip in some abs while stretching!). If you don’t own leg pulleys, buy them! It’s an investment your hamstrings, hips AND your golf swing will LOVE.

And for best results on the course, make sure you take some time to stretch your hips, shoulders and spine. You’ll get more distance, improve your accuracy and prevent injury.

Hit em’ straight!

Feel free to contact JayDee at CuttingEdgeWellness@san.rr.com or check out www.NiceDogYoga.com. JayDee’s CoreGolf Fitness DVD, produced by Total Gym’s own Brian Rose, is due out this August.