Winterizing With Mike Diffley

Some words of winter wisdom from guest blogger Mike Diffley, head pro at Pelham CC...

Hope everyone is catching some rest after a long beautiful fall here in the Northeast! It's great to have the seasons here in the Met area. Spring brings excitement, the Final Four, the Masters and the start of the golf season. Summer brings long days with plenty of opportunity to get outside and enjoy ourselves. Fall is an awesome time for golfers, conditions are great, the weather outrageous and the end of the season coming soon. Too soon sometimes but still it is great to have a beginning, middle and end.

Those of you that are not in the golf industry, I know you don't get enough time. Weekends seem to fly by even when you get to recreate a little. In the golf business, yes we work almost every day but it is our profession and we live and breathe what we do, so lucky us! Now for the winter, which totally sucks. And I hate the end of daylight savings time--I feel like someone hit me in the forehead with a brick! It is a time to rest, regroup, re-set goals and work on some things that will make us better and healthier.

So are you setting an off-season or winter list of goals? You should! I am!

Physical - You can become more fit ( flexibility and strength are the keys ) The purpose is to be stronger and to increase your club head speed. My favorites are stretching, plenty of places to learn that (Titleist Performance Institute Channel on YouTube) and using the Swing Fan and Swoosh. The Fan provides resistance like weight training and the Swoosh provides speed training. Modern sports science says both are needed to improve your swing speed. Do 2 sets of 10 each working your way up to 25 of each. A little cardio, I ride a bike (something to get you sweating).

Putting - Get a putting mat  (8 feet is enough) do sets of five or ten and make 50 or 100 total. To mix it up make 50 at three feet and then go and make 50 at six. I would do one set standard, one set looking at the hole, one set with your eyes closed, one set left hand only, and one set right hand only!

Mental Training - Read a book!  Here are a few that will stretch your brain and you might learn something about getting better at golf and more!

The Practicing Mind - Thomas M. Sterner (How learning golf is like learning music with deliberate Practice!)
Mindfulness - Ellen J. Langer (The opposite of mindlessness!!  Enough said)
High Performance Golf - Henry Brunton (Many aspects of getting better and developing golfers)

I'm going to Jupiter in a week or so to spend the winter. I'll be playing, coaching and enjoying the golfer life! Lucky me! I'll be starting off with helping Nannette Hill get through LPGA Q School. She is injury free and looks ready to me. Then on to Fox Club in Stuart working on my game and helping those who think I can!

If anyone wants to find me, this is a good avenue to track me down. Be well. Go Johnnies!

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf

Unique Take On Putting Aid

Who says there's nothing new under the sun? There's a cute new gizmo to replace that clunky old putting cup you've got in the corner of your office or den. It's the Putt-A-Round Ball Target, which, as the name implies, catches balls from any direction--assuming they're hit to the cup, of course. Check out the video to see how they work.


Putt-A-Round comes in several color and flag combinations. You can even get a custom flag with your own design to make a great gift for somebody who has everything.  Prices start at $39.97 from Anne Stone Products.

Among many other books, Dave Donelson is the author of Weird Golf: 18 tales of fantastic, horrific, scientifically impossible, and morally reprehensible golf

Check Your Posture For A Better Golf Swing

According to the Titleist Performance Institute (TPI), the most common fault of nearly 70 percent of amateur golfers is “standing up” or losing posture on the downswing. This produces errant shots, powerless strokes and poor control. Sound familiar?

“This loss of posture causes inconsistency because the lower body and trunk are moving out of position,” says Eanna Rushe, a founder of the Greenwich, CT-based BioSport Technologies LLC, which specializes in golf motion analysis, biomechanics and performance enhancement. “The pros and better golfers maintain their posture or spine angle which allows them to be much more consistent and create much higher club head speed,” he explains. “Good golfers can maintain their posture because of the way they use their lower body, not because they try to keep their head down.”

To correct this problem and help golfers feel and understand what it’s like to be in the optimal swing position, Rushe developed an innovative training aid, the GolfPosturePODTM. Not only does the product assist golfers in keeping the necessary spine angle during their swing, but it is also a tool to strengthen important muscles in the lower body.

Golfers place their backsides against a moveable pad that measures motion. A large LCD screen provides immediate visual feedback about their swing and whether or not posture was maintained. Feedback and feel are keys to an effective training aid, according to Rushe. Golf professionals and fitness trainers can use specific exercises that the golfer can perform on the GolfPosturePODTM to increase lower body and core strength, stability and balance and also work on other common swing faults, such as swaying, sliding and poor weight transfer. Portable and versatile, the GolfPosturePODTM can be used in a fitness center, personal training studio, country club, university golf program or on a driving range.

Paul Kenney, PGA teaching professional at Rockrimmon Country Club in Stamford, describes it as a marriage of fitness and swing training. “It’s usually one or the other; the two rarely meet,” says Kenney, who has been using the GolfPosturePODTM to help golfers at Rushe’s Greenwich studio and hopes to bring the device to his club. “The key is that it helps strengthen the golfer while he or she is in the correct positions.”

John Deigan, PGA teaching professional at the Wykagyl Country Club in New Rochelle, says the GolfPosturePODTM helped contribute to one of his students increasing her driver club head speed by eight miles per hour. “Unless you feel the right motion yourself, you’re not going to make that ultimate connection to learn it.”

The GolfPosturePOD™ debuted at the PGA Golf Show in Florida this winter. The commercial product is now available for country clubs, fitness centers and academies. A consumer version will be out next year. For more information, visit www.GolfPosturePOD.com

In addition to writing about golf, Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

A Swing In The Balance

Connecting your brain to your body sounds like a dangerous approach to the golf swing, especially if you're like me and try very hard to eliminate swing thoughts. But I recently experienced a brief demo of a workout regimen that promises to make that connection the right way--by using bio-mechanical feedback to increase your stability, strength, and flexibility--and I have to say it makes a lot of sense.

It's the Flexor Swing Training Method developed by sports physiologist Skip Latella. The system is based on a set of exercises and movements that train proper position and movement patterns to improve your balance, a key component in a solid golf swing.


In the demo, Latella had me take a few warm up swings, then take the club back to the top of my backswing and hold it for a moment while he touched me lightly on the back, almost knocking me over. It was a shock how tenuous my balance was at that key moment, although considering how erratic my driving has been lately, it shouldn't have come as any surprise.

Then he put me through three short exercises with a three-foot foam roll while standing on two inflatable balance disks. Each movement replicated the golf swing in increasingly difficult patterns, although the hardest part was staying steady on the balance disks. After just three reps of each movement, he had me take the driver back to the top again, then pushed me from behind. I stayed stable, which convinced me that the method has a lot of promise.

I could see how a longer workout would build strength and flexibility, too, since just staying upright on the balance disks is a chore. Latella's program consists of a minimum of six sessions with a certified trainer (several club pros offer it now), with practice workouts between to reinforce the lessons the body is learning. He's offering the program at Club 1133 in White Plains, NY, which is where I saw it.

I've fought an unfortunate sway in my swing for years. From just this brief demo, I can see how the Flexor training could help eliminate that problem while building a stable base for better control and greater distance.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo

A Sound Swing

Ever wondered how Darth Vader hones his golf swing? Probably the same way Vijay Singh works on his, with the Sonic Golf S1 swing trainer. Old Darth would feel right at home with the high-tech marvel--it converts the player's swing into audio feedback that sounds exactly like a light saber. Vijay, who would probably wear a black helmet and cape to the course if he thought it would cut a stroke off his score, was an early adapter, using the device to create a more consistent tempo for his swing.

Dr. Robert Grober, inventor of the system, says that's what a good golf swing is all about--tempo. Solid takeaways, smooth transitions at the top, and acceleration through the ball all occur when the player's motion is rhythmic and fluid. The device he created provides biofeedback to help you find that rhythm and build it into your muscle memory.

The system begins with a sensor inserted inside the shaft of your club fitted with a custom Golf Pride grip. Your swing motion is transmitted wirelessly to a belt-worn receiver that converts it to continuous musical tones you hear on a headset as you swing. Slow swings produce a low pitch and quiet tones while fast ones increase the pitch and volume. The idea is to build a relaxed move that produces maximum speed at the bottom of the swing arc.

The demo I saw was impressive. Players with jerky, stiff swings created some terrible noise. Those who swung from the top invariably decelerated at the point of impact despite their efforts to muscle the ball down the fairway. Only a smooth, rhythmic swing produced pleasing harmonic sounds from beginning to end. This video has a good explanation by Grober.

Grober, by the way, knows whereof he speaks on both the golf swing and biofeedback. He's the Frederick Phineas Rose Professor of Applied Physics at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo