Endurance plays a key role in finishing your round of golf with mental clarity and solid golf shots. In this episode of Golf Fitness Academy, Dr. Greg Rose and Dave Phillips explain the two types of endurance which are critical to performing well on the golf course: cardiovascular and muscular endurance. Your body's efficiency in delivering energy to the muscles will have a significant impact on your fatigue level and ability to stay focused as you come down the stretch. Your body's ability to contract the same muscles over and over during your round will also promote consistent ball striking. Greg and Dave show you how to test your cardio and muscular endurance and provide guidelines for an endurance program.
Episode Details
Endurance plays a key role in closing a round of golf solidly. Improving your endurance allows your muscles to more effectively recover from shot to shot and enhances mental clarity.
There are two types of endurance which are critical to performing well on the golf course:
Cardiovascular conditioning: your body's ability to get oxygen from the air into your lungs, into your heart and to your muscles will impact your focus and how your muscles recover from shot to shot.
Muscular endurance: this is as important, if not more important than cardiovascular, as it provides the stamina to contract the same muscles over and over as you do in a round of golf.
Greg and Dave show you how to test your cardio and muscular endurance:
Cardio VO2 test: At TPI, we measure cardiovascular conditioning with a VO2 max test. This measures the efficiency of delivering energy to the muscles or how high you can go before your body uses up the oxygen supply and begins to burn sugar. VO2 max test measures heart rate, oxygen consumption, volume of air exhaled and CO2. The "Talk Test" is also demonstrated as an alternative way to measure your VO2 max.
Muscular endurance tests: Check for abdominal strength with sit-up test and check for upper body strength with push up test.
Cardiovascular conditioning should focus on interval heart rates rather than a level one and is recommended for 20 minutes per day. A cardio interval program consists of 4 x 1min. intervals increasing in speed. This burns the same amount of calories as a level heart rate and is proven to increase your VO2 max.
Muscular endurance training is not about how much weight you lift but rather how many times you can contract the muscles without getting tired. Our muscular endurance training program focuses on strengthening and lengthening muscles.
Determine your 8 rep max or the maximum amount of weight you can comfortably use 8 times. A beginner's target weight is 30% of your 8 rep max and for those advanced, the target weight is 50% of 8 rep max. Perform 25 reps at your target weight.
