Jim Cotta traveled to Carlsbad, CA to attend the World Golf Fitness Summit by Titleist Performance Institute. At this Summit, many fantastic lectures were given by some of the best strength coaches, golf instructors, physical therapists, doctors, nutritionists, and sports psychologists today. Here is a brief summary of some of the lectures Jim had the privilege of experiencing.
The Summit was kicked off by a very inspirational speech given by legendary football coach Dick Vermeil (former coach of the Eagles, Rams, Chiefs) The theme of his talk was “The Art of Coaching” which can be applied to all aspects of your life and how to be a leader. Some of his key points to being a great coach or leader are 1) make sure people know you care 2) lead by example 3) positive attitude & appreciation 4) have a plan 5) bring Energy 6) build relationships 7) be trustworthy and have integrity. Now all of these ideas are things that we’ve probably heard before, but I believe Coach Vermeil really did live by these principles and is why he was so successful at every team he coached.
Dave Phillips the co-founder of Titleist Performance Institute gave a talk on what the latest and greatest is in the technology world and gave me some great insight as to what can be useful for me and golf instructors and what is not. We have recently seen that there are a lot of devices and gadgets out there that can give us a lot of information, but the real question should be what do we do with that information? What truly is useful and what things just add to the confusion?
Martin Hall, a golf teacher and has a show currently on the Golf Channel, gave a lecture about how important the hands and wrists are in the full golf swing. “He gave me some great insight to things that I can work on with my clients in the weight room,” says Jim.
Tom House, a trainer who is probably the best in the world at working with athletes with shoulder issues and at increasing swing velocity, lectured on the training protocols he uses with professional baseball, football, and golfers. I have already incorporated some of these protocols with my clients here at The Grove and are seeing positive results.
Dr. Greg Rose, co-founder of Titleist Performance Institute, gave a very informative talk about back injuries in golf and how, as trainers and therapists, we can get people out of back pain and back to moving their bodies correctly again. So many of us compensate when we have any sort of back injury, and he stressed the importance of getting out of those compensations before getting back into any activity, and especially the golf swing.
Tom Pernice Jr. and his swing coach James Sieckmann presented a great short-game clinic on chipping. James Sieckmann showed us some really interesting kinematic sequencing information of the best chippers in the game, and I was intrigued that it is actually the exact opposite of the full swing. He also pointed out how important lower body stability is in the short game and that you should be working on that stability in your client’s fitness program as a trainer.