The Golf Swing is Like a 100-Meter Sprint

By Jim Fanara, CSCS

 A golfer should generate power like a world class sprinter reaches top speed in a 100-meter race. That means using less muscular effort and more reflexive action to increase power to reach top club head speed.

Here’s what I mean.

 A sprinter uses a large amount of muscular effort to explode out of the blocks.

 The first few steps at the start are hard forceful pushes into the ground. Relative to top end speed, those first steps are slower. It takes an enormous amount of muscular effort to go from a stationary position in the blocks, to an explosive start where the sprinter is quickly increasing speed with every step.

 That’s very different from what happens with top end speed.

 When the sprinter reaches top end speed, there is less muscular effort than at the start. So much of the speed comes from the muscles and connective tissue in the legs reflexively responding to the forces rebounding from the track. Top end sprint speed is more like bouncing a rubber ball down the track rather than squatting five hundred pounds.

 If the sprinter continued the muscular effort used at the start to maintain top end speed, the sprint time would collapse, and the gait would look extremely awkward.

 The same concepts hold for the golf swing.

 Think of the transition from backswing to downswing like a sprinter exploding from the blocks.

 That’s where your hips and legs use muscular effort to start rotating toward the target. It takes muscular effort to redirect the hips from moving rearward to forcefully rotating forward.

 After the transition, you’re trying to develop top end club head speed just like a sprinter creating top end sprinting speed after the first few steps out of the blocks.

 But you can’t use muscular force from your shoulders and arms to do that. You can’t push the club with rear side muscular effort to create speed. That would slow things down just like a sprinter trying to muscle his way down the track with the same muscular force used when starting from the blocks.

 To attain top end club head speed, the muscular effort continues to come from your hips and legs. The upper body should reflexively respond to the energy created from hip rotation and force rebounding off the ground from leg drive.

 After the transition into the downswing, the lower body muscular effort continues the hip rotation and hip extension into and through impact. The hip rotation should drag your torso, shoulders, arms, hands and club through impact like a trebuchet unwinding to release the projectile.

 The backswing winds up connective tissue in the torso and arms like a rubber band storing energy. When the hips drive forward, the stored energy is reflexively released in the torso and arms. Front side hip extension into impact is another power boost. Very little upper body muscular effort is required.

 The more effort used in the torso and arms, the slower the swing speed.

That’s why casting and flipping at the ball may seem faster, but it actually slows down club head speed.  When you cast, muscular effort from the upper body and arms are pushing the club head into contact. The free energy from winding up and releasing the energy stored in connective tissue is lost. 

That free energy is the source of the easy power every golfer wants.

So like a sprinter getting to top end sprinting speed, attaining top end club head speed requires more than just muscular effort.