• October 31, 2018
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Interview With Golf Pro Roy Ahnstedt, PGA, of Shadow Valley Golf Course, Boise, ID. Roy’s Stats: Started playing golf at age six Has been playing golf for 46 years Current handicap: 5.5 One of two golf PGA pros at Shadow Valley Golf Course with 14,000 members I Tell My Clients, “You have to strength train to get better at your game. I do.”

“Doing personal strength training at SuperSlow Zone Eagle, ID, has given me more stabilization and increased my ability to stay in posture throughout my swing so that I swing better. Strengthening my core and my entire body – that’s we’re doing. A strong core helps me maintain good posture in my swing, which is critical to making a good ball strike..

Strength always creates more speed. I’m getting more toward the inside of my ball, especially with my driver. I have gained ten yards on my drives from increasing my strength. This is important because 10 yards is a full club difference that you’re hitting into a green. If you’re going to increase 10 yards or more with your ball flight, you’re hitting more a lofted club to a green, so your scores automatically come down. We all want that!

Core stabilization is critical to the golf game. Unless you’re keeping with it on a regular basis, you lose that core stabilization, core strength and flexibility. We all know this – use it, or lose it.”

Strength Training – A Foundation To Improve Technique

“One of the things we pros often struggle with is that golfers will think, “I better just go play more and improve my technique,” and they don’t know that core strength is a foundation piece to that technique. They need consistent strength training to help improve their technique.”

Consistency In Your Strength Training Schedule

Everyone is busy. So how do you make the time, consistently, to strength train?

“As Golf Pros, we go to work at 6:00 in the morning and sometimes get home at 6:00 or 8:00 at night, so there’s not a lot of time to exercise. I know my clients have the same challenge with their time and schedule. I’m not a gym rat guy. I don’t like to go to the gym and stay two hours. I had to find something that would fit into my schedule and produce results, which is to get stronger so I can improve my game.”

The biggest thing is that you have to make the time to exercise. You have to set the time up to do it. If you want something, just like anything else in our lives, if you want to get better at something, you got to put in the time. If I’m not scheduled with an Instructor, and coached by them, I won’t exercise. I have workout equipment in my house and it’s collecting more dust than anything else.

I have been exercising at SuperSlow Zone Eagle, ID, for four months. I just go in my golf attire. I like the fact that you can do it in about 20 minutes, twice a week, be done and be where my schedule demands next.”

Improved Concentration – Essential For Improving Your Golf Performance

“Why is improving concentration critical to playing better golf? One way I look at playing golf is that it is a series of:

one-minute focuses
to a series of two (2) hours
for nine (9) holes,
or
four (4) to five (5) hours
for 18 holes of focus
My ability to concentrate, to focus, when playing golf, is essential. The SSZ exercise protocol helps me concentrate better when I play golf and this is an added bonus. Lifting my weight for 10 seconds and lowering my weights for 10 seconds on each piece of equipment …really feeling through each cycle at that slow cadence, takes all of my focus and concentration. It also helps me be aware of what’s happening to my body throughout. That’s critical, too. You have to know, to feel, the parts and pieces of your body. I am not just working on my strength. I am feeling, by focusing, all of the parts of my body as I strengthen it. This helps me improve my ability to focus minute-by-minute, over hours, while playing golf.”

The Most Common Question I Get About Exercising And Golf:

“What Exercise(s) Are Best For Improving Your Golf Performance?”

“When I talk about exercise to my clients, I don’t tell them to focus on any single exercise. I want them to focus on total body strength. An effective total body workout will get you this.

If you’re looking to generate more power, that comes from the legs. That is one reason I like what we’re doing at SuperSlow Zone; because it is so safe, efficient and effective at building muscle in minimal time. Strong legs help you generate the power to create clubhead speed. Again, while you need leg strength, you also need total body strength.

There are a lot of moving parts that have to move in time which start from the ground up; from the legs, to the abs, to the shoulders, to the arms. Everything builds in rhythm from the feet up. So, to say “Oh, you only need to work on one part of your body,” is wrong. No, you need to work on all parts of the body.”

Improving Your Golf Swing And Overall Performance – How SSZ Can Help

“I’m pretty lucky because I’ve been golfing forever. My golf swing is pretty efficient. I’m in the fortunate place that I learned how to develop an efficient golf swing at a very young age. I would say my leg strength has gotten better with SSZ exercise so that I’m staying in improved body position with better, consistent posture.

Slow Exercise Cadence – Helps Slow Down Back Swing

With that said, I have also noticed that one of many positive impacts of exercising at SuperSlow Zone is that it has helped the rhythm in my golf swing. Rhythm is the timing; it’s the time that it takes to take club to the top of the backswing, transfer it and then rhythm to swing through the ball efficiently.

Concentrating on doing the slow cadence of moving the weight 10 seconds out, 10 seconds back is helping me slow down my backswing and even through the entire swing.

Slow Down To Speed Up Clubhead Speed

You don’t have to swing back quickly; you want to swing back smoothly, load the muscles properly and then accelerate by releasing the muscles. When you take a backswing fast, you under-load the muscle which, in turn, creates less club-head speed but you swing faster, so your timing gets off. You are not creating greater clubhead speed by swinging fast.

Some golf instructors say you have to speed up your swing, but that’s in takeaway. Their takeaway is smooth and then its acceleration in transition from the top of the swing through all the way. You’re releasing the muscles. Well, because I’m able to concentrate through the swing a little better, I am better able slow my backswing, load my muscles properly, and then swing through and accelerate by releasing my muscles. SSZ exercise enables me to have better control through the entire swing due to increased core strength, facilitating better, consistent posture and improved concentration.

Fluid Movement And Power Requires Control

Also, the golf swing relies on the coordinated sequence of muscle activation to produce a fluid and reproducible movement. Fluid movement is what’s creating that power that’s generated through turn and rotation in the golf swing. If you don’t have that ability to control it, then you’re not going to have the ability to swing fluidly through the ball. That’s the critical part. That takes concentration. SuperSlow Zone exercise protocol is especially helpful for improving my control, which takes optimal concentration.

Core Strength, Balance and Stability

Core strength helps maintain your posture because if your abs are stronger, you’re going to be more balanced because you have a more stable platform that you’re working off of. That stable platform is what’s creating that ability to turn and stay in posture and keep your legs in the flexion that they need to be at when you’re swinging. That’s the difference. This is what SSZ exercise helps…all of it!

Not Muscle Memory

Finally, muscles don’t build memory; your mind builds memory through that concentration. That’s also where I would relate SSZ exercise to the golf swing. It creates that motor skill to maintain control throughout the takeaway, through impact and through the finish of your golf swing.”

Lack of Strength Produces Weakness In Golf Swing Form

“I think the weaknesses that show up in a lot of people are weak forearms, and the lack of ability to rotate. I think strength creates a good rotation. Then their forearms…I find it even with some men but a lot of the time, it’s in women’s forearms. They don’t rotate their arms properly because they don’t have the strength in their forearms to rotate the club properly to get the ball strike that they’re looking for.”

Injuries From Golf

“I see a lot of lower back injuries and golf elbow, because of repetitive vibration injuries. Very painful. Regarding low back, as you know, core is critical to keeping lower back pain or injury from happening. So if they’re not working their core muscles, injuries happen in the L4, L5 or your spine. It’s not supported by good strong abdominal muscles.”

Increased Confidence

“When you are stronger all over, you’re definitely going to be more efficient with your body movement because your confidence is going to be up. Strength creates confidence and confidence creates better mobility, which in turn creates a more efficient golf swing.”

Two Total Knee Replacements

“I’ve had two total knee replacements. But not from golf. Oftentimes, people think they cannot strength train because of a total knee replacement. That’s a fallacy and contradictive to what they really want you to do. They don’t want you to run. You should not run with new knees, with these artificial knees. But after physical therapy, strength training is critical because it actually helps you to maintain the ability to take some of the load off of the knee, off of the joint. You have to work on strength with the artificial limbs, the artificial pieces.

SuperSlow Zone personal strength training is the safest I have found. This is really important to me as a golf pro and a person with two total knee replacements and it builds muscle in minimum time…so I can help my clients…and get out and play golf!”

About Shadow Valley Golf Course, Boise, ID, Where Roy Ahnstedt Is the PGA Golf Pro

Shadow Valley Golf Course is truly an oasis for the serious golfer, designed by Mother Nature and C. Edward Trout, creating a natural landscape that winds through the foothills. Shadow Valley is proud to have been certified by the National Audubon Society, and we invite you to join us and see for yourself why we have been rated the “Best of Treasure Valley” by area golfers for 4 consecutive years.

Thank you to Rob Imeson, owner of SuperSlow Zone Eagle, ID, for enabling SSZ Corporate to interview his client, PGA Golf Pro, Roy Ahnstedt.