[Vickie]

First let me emphasize that red and white fibers are present in all muscles, the quantity of each is, yea you guessed it, genetic and influenced by your body type. Think of your white fiber, the fast twitch, as your power muscles, typically your larger muscles that can provide a rapid burst of speed and power. Then you can generally consider your smaller muscles more red, slow twitch fiber that provide endurance. So we could consider that the muscles of your upper leg, the quads and hamstrings are typically more white than red fiber, as are the large trunk muscles (I'm trying to get away from the overuse of the word core) your back and chest and abdominals. You wil often hear that the calves, triceps and to some degree forearms have a larger percentage of red fiber. And again you could take a plug from your bicep and one from mine and we can throw the generalities out the window.

Now, even though a muscle may be red or white, since you know it contrains both fibers it should make perfect sense to mix your training up. For example, even though the calves are considered an endurance, mainly red fiber muscle in one workout I will do a couple of sets with heavy weight and less repetitions and then drop the weight to endure more repetitions. This allows me to train for the terrain I am on. If I am hiking or if my golf travels are put me on courses with more hills than I saw in Florida, I might take a couple of weeks and train my strength up. Conversely if I know that my calves are really strong enough but I am going to golf every day for a vacation I might train the endurance aspect of my acquired strength. Most people come in with one or the other advantage. You just need to train for your game, and your expectations.

Now, as to training. The best training you can do for golf is to create a balance of strength and create positive posture so that everytime you address, you are working with the same physiology. As your body fatigues throughout your game poor postural habits will begin to create inconsistencies in your performance. If all of the muscles are working appropriately and you are well nourished and well rested in general, you should be able to replicate your form on every hole.

But . . . The muscles I think are most often lacking in some kind of training are the lats, the rhomboids, to some degree the traps and the glutes and hamstrings. For everyone this could mean too weak or too tight or too strong and too lax. Again the key is balance.

The latissimus dorsi muscle is the large back muscle that creates the "V" so promanant on swimmers and gymnists. In my experience, this is the most singularly neglected muscle for most golfers. This muscle is the primary stabilizer for your hips (the abdomen on your front), attaches to the thorasic vertebrae and then crosses under your armpit and attaches to the front of your arm in close proximity to your chest muscle attachment. It is a huge muscle and is intricately/ critically involved in shoulder rotation and bringing your arm across your body (adduction); pretty important issues for the golfer. When I read so often that the hamstrings are the culprit for all that ails hip action I cringe because if your are underdeveloped in your lat function (again out of balance) you could have perfect hip flexors and hamstrings and you still won't have good hip managemdnt.

Best exercises you may ask? The Lat pulldown in any gym is a good first exercise to consider. DO NOT pull the bar down behind your back. Instead, place your hands on the bar wide (not too wide in the beginning and then reach wider and wider over about 6-8 workouts). Sit up straight, draw your shoulders down, engage some abdominal support, and then pull the bar to your chest using the lat muscles. Slowly stretch your arms back out and repeat 10-15 times slowly, deliberately with no jerking. If your weight is not too heavy you should feel your chest lift to the bar slightly but you should not arch your back. Also you should keep your shoulders down and pull your elbows back and not round your shoulders to make contact. You can create a makeshift lat pulldown with bands or surgical tubing (you can buy at any sporting good store). Just tie a knot in the middle of the band, lop it over a closet door, close the door and voila, instant equipment. Other exercises would include one arm rows, chin ups, or reverse grip straight bar rows with a wide grip. I could describe them all but I recommend you get a book with pictures, worth a thousand words. This will be the first pictures we will put up and I promise to get on that immediately after Easter.

If you don't want to go buy a book just go to the library or even on line and copy some pictures. I am a big believer in predictability and yet know that variety is important to muscle adaptation so I would look for a Weider or Arnold's exercise encycolpedia. These books always have good descriptions and good pictures and the exercises can be adapted to your fitness level. There are plenty of books for golf but I don't think they are better. Lynn and I have some exercises specific to TGM that we will release to help imprint the tensions that you want to apply to the TGM technique. But your first order of business is to establish correct posture thereby creating balance. Don't pick a muscle and then over emphasize it to the disservice of body balance.

A number of the posts have explored individual exercise programs. The most important thing to remember is to train all of the muscles appropriately. The legs are bigger and more numerous than say your arm muscles so . . .the legs will take more weight and often more exercises to be balanced to your triceps. But . . .Last week, I saw a fellow doing a leg extension with 40 lbs. and then turn around and do his triceps on a cable with 60lbs. I would normally jump to the conclusion that he was over training his triceps except that you never know what someone is doing on any given workout. For all I know he might be rehabing a knee or he might be doing some very specific tricep work to get his bench press up. I am only telling you this as a reminder that you have to create your workout for your needs. Be careful when you are watching people in the gym.

Hope this gets you started. I know I dumped a lot on you. I'll come back to my office this afternoon and clean it up a little. Let's explore this some more. Vik