Read More Here: http://www.golfwrx.com/447782/jonas-blixt-case-study-from-back-pain-to-pga-tour-win/

Article Title
Cochrane, D. J., Harnett, M. C., & Pinfold, S. C. (2017). Does short-term gluteal activation enhance muscle performance? Research in Sports Medicine (Print)
Andersen, V., Fimland, M. S., Mo, D. A., Iversen, V. M., Vederhus, T., Hellebø, L. R. R., & Saeterbakken, A. H. (2017). Electromyographic Comparison Of Barbell Deadlift, Hex Bar Deadlift And Hip Thrust Exercises: A Cross-Over Study. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research

Conclusion
The hip thrust created greater gluteus maximus activation (20-28% higher) than squat and deadlift when matched for weight. This is possibly due to less complexity as the hip joint is the main moving joint whereas the other two exercises involve a large range of motion from the knee joint.
The glute bridge won out over six other ‘glute activation’ exercises in its ability to increase the ability of the glute muscles to engage. Using cues that encourage you to push your hips up and rotate your knees out also further increase this activation. This also suggests some benefit to performing bridges early on in your workout.
If you only had one exercise, the bridge would go close to being your choice.

Article Title
Sim T, Yoo H, Choi A, Lee KY, Choi M-T, Lee S, and Mun JH. Analysis of Pelvis-Thorax Coordination Patterns of Professional and Amateur Golfers during Golf Swing. Journal of Motor Behavior: 1-7, 2017.

Background
The aim of this research was to quantify the coordination pattern between thorax and pelvis during a golf swing. The coordination patterns were calculated using vector coding technique, which had been applied to quantify the coordination changes in coupling angle (?) between two different segments. For this, fifteen professional and fifteen amateur golfers who had no significant history of musculoskeletal injuries.

Conclusion
There was no significant difference in coordination patterns between the two groups for rotation motion during backswing (p = 0.333). On the other hand, during the downswing phase, there were significant differences between professional and amateur groups in all motions (flexion/extension: professional [?] = 187.8°, amateur [?] = 167.4°; side bending: professional [?] = 288.4°, amateur [?] = 245.7°; rotation: professional [?] = 232.0°, amateur [?] = 229.5°). These results are expected to be a discriminating measure to assess complex coordination of golfers’ trunk movements and preliminary study for interesting comparison by golf skilled levels.

The key new finding in this article is that Pro golfers laterally and anteriorly-posteriorly flex & extend their spine significantly more than their high level amateur counterparts. However, rotation of thorax and pelvis was similar. So it seems that professional golfers move with a greater degree of freedom and possibly use this to generate greater ball speeds. This also supports the work of Glazier 2011 where motor patterns, and therefore skill execution, were described as becoming more stable in changing environments when sports people had multiple movement options, as opposed to one regimented fixed motor pattern.

Article Title
Cirer-Sastre, R., Beltrán-Garrido, J. V., & Corbi, F. (2017). Contralateral Effects After Unilateral Strength Training: A Meta-Analysis Comparing Training Loads. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 16, 180-186.

Background
The cross-education effect (also known as the cross transfer effect or the cross-over effect) is the observation that long-term resistance training of a limb can lead to gains in voluntary strength in the contralateral limb. This effect has well-established, with a meta-analysis of 13 randomized controlled studies of voluntary unilateral resistance training (using >50% of 1RM and lasting >2 weeks) showing contralateral effects of resistance training of around an approximately 8% (range -3% – +22%) increase from the initial strength levels, or approximately 35% of the change in the ipsilateral limb. In order to explain the cross-education effect, it has been suggested that there exist central factors that are altered during strength training that affect both ipsilateral and contralateral sides similarly, although the ipsilateral limb also benefits from peripheral (muscular) adaptations. Currently, the underlying mechanisms for the cross education effect are unknown but may include changes at cortical, subcortical or spinal levels. The possibility of changes in many (but not all) peripheral factors has been explored and rejected. Related to the cross-education effect is the finding that imagined contractions can lead to meaningful gains in strength. In a remarkable study, it was found that left hand fifth digit metacarpophalangeal abduction torque increased after a 4-week period of strength training in both the conventionally-trained and imagined contractions groups (by 30% and 22%, respectively) and that both of these groups also displayed cross-education effects to the right hand (by 14% and 10%, respectively. In contrast, a control group displayed minimal changes in measurements for both left and right hands. Other researchers have reported marked gains in strength after imagined contractions. In addition, there appears to be an additive effect of imagined contractions and conventional resistance training, particularly in respect of the lower body.

Conclusion
The researchers concluded that training programs using single sets to failure produce the lowest cross-over effects to the contralateral limb, while those with multiple sets and/or eccentric-only training involve the highest cross-over effects.
So the take home message if you are re-training an immobilised limb is to train your good side with multiple sets with a focus on controlling the “down” phase of the movement.

Background
The effects of golf specific strength and conditioning interventions on performance are scarcely researched. However, a multitude of research exists relative to golf related injuries. From those studies, it has been postulated that an increase in the X-Factor Stretch (XFS) variable increases the probability of a lower back injury. As the XF has been identified as a performance variable, it is of interest to determine how it is influenced by a golf specific intervention. Objective To examine the effects of a 5-week strength and conditioning intervention on golf swing performance factors. Design Quasi-experimental. Setting Laboratory and gym. Participants Nine female NCAA Division II collegiate golfers (age 20.7±2.7 yrs; height 175 ±9.81 cm; body mass 76.5 ±9.2 kg), maintaining a handicap of ≤3. Intervention:
The 5-week strength and conditioning intervention was implemented to improve the subject’s golf swing. The majority of the exercises were lower body orientated, and included rotational aspects.

Main Outcome Measurements:
The pre- and post-testing procedures included a biomechanical analysis using 3D motion analysis. The dependent variables were clubhead velocity (CV; m/s), hip velocity (HV; °/s), XFS angle (°), and ball speed (BS; m/s). It was hypothesized that CV, HV, and BS would increase without an increase in the XFS. T-tests were used to define statistical significance (p<0.05).

Results:
From pre- to post-intervention, subjects significantly increased HV (8.2±0.5°/s to 8.8±0.7°/s; p<0.001), and CV (35.8±0.9 m/s to 36.8±2.5 m/s; p=0.018) and significantly decreased XFS (−54.9±10.2° to −47.9±4.2°; p<0.001). We did not detect a significant change in BS from pre- to post-intervention (52.7±2.8 m/s to 53.2±5.1 m/s).
Conclusion
It was demonstrated that the intervention increased CV, HV, and BS; but decreased the XFS. Thus, it can be suggested that a golf specific strength and conditioning program can increase golf swing performance factors, without increasing the risk of lower back injury.
So the take home message is that once again we see that increasing the strength of the golf specific muscles gives the golfer more options to create greater club-head speeds without having to over-utilise the potentially injury inducing stretch-shorten cycle in the golf swing. It’s also possible that increasing golf-specific muscle strength also provides protective support to the structures of the lower back during the golf swing.

Background
Background Mental imagery is often explained as a way of creating an experience in the mind of a particular event. It can be performed either with an external perspective, in which the individual imagines watching themselves as if they are an outside observer, or it can be performed with an internal perspective, in which the individual imagines themselves as if actually performing the movement there and then. In the context of strength training or sports, mental imagery usually involves the recreation of performing either an exercise (such as a squat or deadlift) or a sporting movement (such as a sprinting effort or jump). Mental imagery has often been used immediately prior to a real attempt, in order to prepare an athlete for optimal performance. It may be the case that mental imagery improves performance by enhancing motivation, self-efficacy, self-confidence and reducing competitive anxiety. Even so, the long-term effects of mental imagery have been less well-described. Some investigations have reported that mental imagery performed during rehabilitation can enhance the speed of functional recovery, especially after limb immobilization.

Conclusion
Overall, there was evidence that mental imagery can increase strength gains. Moreover, it seemed that the internal type of imagery was more beneficial for closed skills than external imagery, whereas the external type of imagery might be more helpful for open skills. Open skills are those that require more coordination in response to a changing environment, while closed skills are those involving a much more predictable set of circumstances. The internal type of imagery was also found to produce higher levels of EMG activity than the external type of imagery. In addition, there was evidence that self-efficacy, motivation, and imagery ability were responsible for the effectiveness of the imagery programs.
The researchers concluded that mental imagery is able to induce an increase in maximal strength tests, in a similar way to actual strength training. This is of course likely to be caused by neural mechanisms, and possibly in a similar way to the cross-education effect where the contralateral limb increases strength even while the ipsilateral limb is trained unilaterally.
So the take home messages are:
1. If you want to maximise a simple exercise or rehabilitation use internal imagery, ie. imagine yourself doing it.
2. If you want to maximise a complex skill use external imagery, ie. watch others doing it
3. This will only improve the accuracy of your nervous system – it won’t bring about all of the other health benefits such as improved metabolism that come from the real exercise!

Article
Risk Taking Dynamics in Tournaments: Evidence from Professional Golf
Todd McFall Department of Economics Wake Forest University & Kurt W. Rotthoff Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Spring 2016

Background
Professional golfers can differ in their risk-taking and loss-aversion behaviour on the golf course in relation to shot selection. Generally speaking this is more noticeable on par 5’s, especially with the second shot approaching the green. Retrospectively analysing 10 years of PGA Tour Shot Link data between 2004 and 2014 – including 3 major tournaments each year, the researchers were able to determine statistical trends in how players behaved with their second shots on the par 5 holes. Over 458,000 par 5 holes were analysed.

Conclusion
Players were more likely to play it safe (similar to loss aversion in the economics world) on par 5’s when the purses were bigger ($US10million compared to $US4million) or when they were placed at or above their world ranking level in the field on the final day. Players also tended to play it safer on the first 3 days of the tournament. Conversely more risky shots were used by players if they were 50 places or more below their expected place in the field (based on world ranking), were longer drivers of the ball or were in contention on the last day. Amazingly, having Tiger Woods in the field on the last day meant all players in the field were more likely to take on risk on the par 5’s.

Article Title
Improved skeletal muscle mass and strength after heavy strength training in very old individuals. Experimental Gerontology. Bechshøft, R. L., Malmgaard-Clausen, N. M., Gliese, B., Beyer, N., Mackey, A. L., Andersen, J. L., & Holm, L. (2017).

Background
Sarcopenia is a syndrome involving low muscle mass and reduced muscle function, typically observed in an aging person. Sarcopenia involves a generalized loss of muscle rather than a localized loss of muscle or muscle group specific loss of muscle and may follow primarily from disuse atrophy. Recent estimates have suggested that the loss of muscle mass occurs at a rate of 3 – 8% per decade after the age of 30 and that a higher rate of muscle loss occurs in old age. Thus, sarcopenia is a key problem in geriatrics and leads to an increased risk of several adverse health outcomes, including physical disability, poor health-related quality of life and increased mortality.
To prevent sarcopenia, the ACSM recommends that for resistance-training, older adults should perform bi-weekly muscle strengthening activities of 8 – 10 exercises for 10 – 15 repetitions. Interestingly, however, studies have shown that the loss of muscle mass in sarcopenia is only partially correlated with the loss of strength, which appears to be much more rapid. Loss of power, which is defined as the combination of strength and speed appears more rapidly still.
In this study, the training group experienced muscle size increases of 3.4%, strength increases of between 11 and 91%, and leg power increase of 13%. Muscle fibres shifted to a greater increase in fast twitch fibres, which are important for falls prevention, whilst blood pressure was reduced.

Conclusion
The researchers concluded that heavy strength training can increase leg muscle strength and size in very old (83+ years) people, and that the magnitude of the increase in leg muscle size is greater in those individuals with smaller muscle size at the start of the program. The study didn’t mention the methods by which improvements in function could be achieved after accomplishing increased strength and size. However, clinically we see that regular strength training and the benefits listed in this study review allow older people to live much fuller healthier lives with greater confidence and reduced illness. At Ocean Fitness we have trained dozens of clients between the age of 70 and 90 and have seen that amazingly personal bests in strength can still be achieved after 5 years of continuous training.
So the take home message is: “never give up on gradually increasing the resistance in your exercise”.

Article Title
Muscle Strength and Functional Ability in Recreational Female Golfers and Less Active Non-Golfers over the Age of 80 Years. Stockdale A, Webb N, Wootton J, Drennan J, Brown S, and Stokes M. Geriatrics 2: 12, 2017.

Background
Sarcopenia is a syndrome involving low muscle mass and reduced muscle function, typically observed in an aging person. Sarcopenia involves a generalized loss of muscle rather than a localized loss of muscle or muscle group specific loss of muscle and may follow primarily from disuse atrophy. Recent estimates have suggested that the loss of muscle mass occurs at a rate of 3 – 8% per decade after the age of 30 and that a higher rate of muscle loss occurs in old age. Thus, sarcopenia is a key problem in geriatrics and leads to an increased risk of several adverse health outcomes, including physical disability, poor health-related quality of life and increased mortality.
To prevent sarcopenia, the ACSM recommends that for resistance-training, older adults should perform bi-weekly muscle strengthening activities of 8 – 10 exercises for 10 – 15 repetitions. Interestingly, however, studies have shown that the loss of muscle mass in sarcopenia is only partially correlated with the loss of strength, which appears to be much more rapid. Loss of power, which is defined as the combination of strength and speed appears more rapidly still.

Conclusion
This study found that grip strength, the timed up and go test and the physical categories in the quality of life questionnaire were significantly higher in the golfing group than the non-golfing group. More work needs to be done to understand the mechanisms behind these benefits, however it would appear that continuing to play golf for as long as possible leads to a greater quality of life up to and beyond your 80th birthday!
Happy golfing!

Article Title
Genetic variation and exercise-induced muscle damage: implications for athletic performance, injury and ageing, by Baumert, Lake, Stewart, Drust & Erskine, in European Journal of Applied Physiology (2016)

Background
Genetics are believed to be important for determining the response to strength training, particularly in relation to the amount of muscle mass that can be gained. Indeed, some individuals respond very well to resistance training and display marked hypertrophy (responders) while others fail to respond in a meaningful way (non-responders) although they are all subject to the same training program. In addition, some individuals seem naturally to display a higher degree of hypertrophy during development, resulting in more muscle mass in adulthood than others of the same height and gender, even when put in the same environment. Traditionally, researchers have had to rely upon twin studies for investigating the extent to which heritability influences muscle mass in adulthood. Based on this literature of twin studies, some reviewers have suggested that genetic factors are responsible for around 50 – 80% of the inter-individual variability in muscular size, but whether these twin studies are able to control adequately for differences in the lifestyle of the individuals involved is unknown. In contrast, more recent research has been able to explore the genetic influences more directly, by comparing gene expression between individuals. This research currently paints a very different picture from the twin studies. Indeed, only a small number of genetic traits and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) seem to be related to the ability to gain larger increases in muscle mass. Consequently, most reviews have concluded that, with a few minor exceptions, single variants in genetic polymorphisms explored using modern genetic testing methods can currently only explain very small amounts of inter-individual variability in the hypertrophic response to resistance training.
EIMD is a broad description, referring to damage to any part of the muscle fiber, but particularly the ultrastructure (the inner framework that maintains the contracting actin-myosin filaments in place), the extracellular matrix (ECM) (which is the framework that encapsulates each actin-myosin myofilament), in addition to the sarcomeres themselves, and the ttubules (which release calcium ions inside the muscle cell during excitation-contraction coupling). Some types of exercise are known to cause more EIMD than others, particularly those involving a high proportion of eccentric muscle actions. Although this has led some researchers to focus on EIMD produced along the length of a muscle fiber, a large proportion of force is in fact exerted laterally during muscle actions. This means that structures that transmit force in that direction (including the costameres that link the myofilaments to the ECM, and the ECM itself) are also subjected to high stresses and damaged.

Conclusion
The researchers found that there are early indications that the tendency to incur EIMD is a genetic trait, probably caused by differences in SNPs. If, with further research, this is proven to be the case, it fulfils the current suspicion that all people need to be trained as individuals not just because of their exercise and injury history, but because of genetic differences that change the way our bodies respond to exercise.
So the take home message is, if it’s true that we are genetically disposed to greater damage during exercise then we need to adjust our exercise program to include more protective elements such as:
– Greater rest periods between exercise
– More eccentric (lowering phase: slow down fast up) exercise
– More isometric exercise (holding in the middle or bottom of a movement
– More focus on biomechanical improvement
– More recovery enhancing activities
I’m off to get myself tested!