Whether or not you’re performing, you know, your best in your workout, that’s sort of one level of satisfaction.

And this is where I very much would say that strength work and then skill work have to be two very separate entities. Muscular endurance is really important. And of course, that’s what you’re getting from strength training.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Welcome back, everybody, to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. Today we are answering a listener question. And this question is from an exercise coach client participating in strength training workouts twice a week at his local studio. And his question is, I’m really enjoying my workouts at the exercise coach, working out twice a week. I know my workouts are getting me stronger, full body, in my full body. But I do have other goals related to golf and performance.

outside of my studio sessions? Do I need to also be participating in other training, strength training or resistance training, focused towards my goals in that particular area in order to see improvements? So this question is sort of talking about, you know, is generalized strength training sufficient to improve functional capacity or functional performance related to very specific outcomes? So Dr. Fisher is with me to address this question and the various aspects of it that are important to understand when it comes to answering this question. How are you doing, Dr. Fisher?

I’m doing great. Thank you, Amy.

How are you?

Good, good.

So what would you say to a question like this and how would you approach answering it?

Yeah, it’s a really fascinating question, actually. It’s been long asked and still, to some extent, by many people, unanswered. I think the science does have an answer, so I’ll provide that in the best detail that I can. But it doesn’t mean that everybody always follows suit with this answer, so that’s something just to bear in mind. First of all, I love that the listener is engaging in full -body strength training regularly. That’s great.

And that will be doing a wonderful thing for their golf performance, as it would for any sports performance. So it’s worth clarifying that there is a wealth of research that supports that strength training both improves sports performance, specific to golf, for example, in things like clubhead speed and ball velocity. and so forth, and also can help resist injuries. So, you know, flexibility in the back, in the shoulders, and so forth, specifically for golf, but across other sports as well. So resistance training, perfect. That’s great.

And then the question that’s being asked really is this idea of, of loosely what’s called functional training or sports specific training. So we’ve talked previously on the show about functional capacity, and it’s maybe worth just, just clarifying that early on and separating that from this discussion. So functional capacity, we talked about and said that. that a paper I published some time back now looked at resistance machine -based training, so using purely resistance machines improved functional capacity in older adults. In this case, functional capacity were things like a timed up -and -go, a sit -to -stand, so basically tests of gait and static and dynamic balance and things like that. And it showed that

considerable improvements just from resistance machines. So what it was saying was that you didn’t need to do kind of heavy -weighted lunges or step -ups or other pseudo -functional tasks to improve your functional capacity. And that leads us into this discussion. So if you’re playing golf, do you need to do exercises that are functional training exercises, or more importantly, exercises that mimic your golf swing? Well, we published another paper actually, just last year, myself and some colleagues, and this was kind of a wonderful, wonderful list of colleagues. There was Stu Phillips from McMaster, Brad Schoenfeld from Lehman College in New York.

Hugo Pereira from Brazil, Stephen Fleck, Eric Helms, there was a number of wonderful academics on this paper. And it looked at exactly this, and it was kind of a consensus definition of what functional training is. And it was sent to, this question was sent to 31 different kind of academics and experts in the field. And the biggest comment that came back was, The, the idea that functional training or functional has a redundancy. So. all training is effectively functional.

Now I’ll read you the definition that was finally decided upon by this group of experts. Functional training is a physical interventional approach that contributes to the enhancement of human performance according to individual goals in sports, daily life, rehabilitation, or fitness, and takes into consideration the specificity of the task and the unique responsiveness of each individual. But the key things that were kind of clarified were that resistance training in and of itself improves function. So functional training, as I said, was deemed to be redundant as a phrase because effectively all training is functional. And that would lead me back to the earlier comment that strength training improves sports performance.

So If we get into the weeds a bit more on some of the research, there are studies that have looked at this issue of specificity. Do I need to mimic the skill that I’m trying to execute within my sport? Do I need to mimic it in the weight room? And the answer categorically is no. There have been multiple studies done with golfers, with baseball players, with basketball players and so forth that show that we really shouldn’t be mimicking sports specific movements in the weight room.

So why is that then? I mean, that is the golden question, right?

Yeah. So this is it, of course. So for example, with basketball, the studies have looked at if you use a weighted basketball and practice shooting jump shots or free throws with a weighted basketball. Well, I think this is an easy example because most people would realize that if I, as a basketball player, were to be tested now on how many free throws I could make out of a hundred. And then I practice for a given time period with a ball that’s a completely different weight, say a six or 10 kilo, you know, a 15 or 20 pound medicine ball. And I practice shooting that ball.

Then it’s going to change what’s called my biomechanics. It’s going to change the skill element of shooting. I might use muscles differently. I might apply force differently through those muscles. I might change the range of motion that I move my shoulder or my wrist. through or my elbow through.

As I take that shot, I might jump more or less and so forth. So if you retest my shooting at the end of that time period, of course, it’s actually got worse because I’ve been practicing with a heavier ball. I’ve been practicing, essentially, I’ve been practicing a different skill. Although it’s not sufficiently different, it’s actually sufficiently similar, just enough to harm my performance. And that’s what the studies show. And interestingly, the same thing is true in baseball.

Now, I said at the start that some people have been kind of slow to catch on to this and even still don’t believe it. And I’m not a baseball fan, so I don’t watch baseball, so I can’t speak of watching baseball. But I’m told that baseball players still use a weighted doughnut at the end of their bat to do some practice swings before they step up to bat. And there’ve been a couple of studies around this. Um, and the first of which looked at exactly this, they, they put donuts at the end of the bat and they swung the bat and they looked up bat speed velocity or bat velocity, I should say. Um, and they found that using a weighted bat actually slowed down the head speed of the bat.

And then a later study compared using a lighter bat, using a traditional bat, or using a heavier bat. And it found effectively the same results. The heavier bat slowed down the speed of the bat. And in fact, it also found that using a lighter bat sped up the speed of the bat. So after a certain training period, the bat speed had actually increased when practicing with a lighter bat. Now, of course, we could say the same is probably true with a golf swing.

If you were to try to add resistors to a golf swing through the use of maybe a cable pulley or a heavier golf club or things like that, then it would serve to impact golf swing. But we can also say that the reality is that the speed that you swing the bat at or swing the club at is really only one factor in quite a large component of swinging a golf club or a baseball bat at the ball and getting it to move in the direction you want it to move in the distance you want it to go. As I clarified, I’m not a baseball player and I’m really not much of a golfer either, but I’m well aware that the ball is not dependent upon how fast I swing the club. It’s about how well I make contact with the ball as I swing the club and my technique in doing so. So it’s really only one factor that’s maybe being influenced by this and the rest is very much a skill component.

So. The best way to think about this is to improve sports performance, do strength training, become stronger, more flexible, become more resistant to injuries, and then do your skill training, whether that’s basketball or baseball or golf or boxing or whatever else that might be, because that’s the best way to improve your technique for that sport. And that’s the best way to improve your, your function for that sport.

And just to clarify, so skill training, an example of that would just be like swinging a golf club, like going to the driving range and hitting balls or shooting free throws, right? Is that correct?

Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly correct. Yeah. So, you know, if you go to the driving range, a golf coach will say, you know, by keeping your head still, maybe rotating through in the upper torso, you know, keeping an arm straight or bending an arm, and they’ll go through certain techniques. And of course, all of those things would change if you add resistance, trying to maintain that technique would change. And in fact, it’s an area where strength and conditioning coaches have kind of

moved outside of their scope of practice. They’ve tried to mimic these technical movements, albeit relatively superficially. And probably the best people to think about it are the skills coach themselves. I mean, as a strength and conditioning coach, if I take somebody and try and get them to do practice of golf swing with resistance, I can imagine a golf coach would look at me and say, They’re not doing this correctly. They’re not doing that correctly. They’re not doing that correctly.

And therefore they’re harming their golf swing more than they’re doing any good.

So, and this is where I very much would say that strength, strength work, and then skill work have to be two very separate entities. Okay. That really helps.

I think there’s a, may reduce some pressure on some people, uh, learning this and maybe, um, not feeling like they have to manipulate their, their strength workouts. so precisely in order to get that outcome they might be looking for in, in sports. Now it’s worth, if I can just add onto this, there was, uh, in preparation for this podcast, when you had said about the rest of the question, I did a bit of research. There’s a systematic review published in 2021 that looked at resistance training methods on golf clubhead speed and, and, and hitting distance. Um, and there’s a wealth of research, uh, that shows strength training can improve both of those factors, so distance and club head speed. And they actually go on to say that there is one specific, or there is one study, I should say, that has used specific strength training methods.

And they clarify early on that specific strength training methods are methods that somewhat mimic the skill itself. So I was quite interested to see this. So I looked through the paper and I found the single study that does support that specific resistance training methods improved hitting speed and distance. And it’s worth clarifying that what that study actually did is it was, first of all, it was a single arm trial. So they didn’t compare this method of training to another method of training.

They simply looked at this method of training. But what they did was very loosely specific to golf. They actually simply had people have a medicine ball and and stand and throw the medicine ball with rotation in their trunk. So really all they had them do was do a torso rotation exercise rather than a specific golf exercise. So arguably this would have been exactly the same exercise for a baseball player or for anybody else, you know, maybe a tennis player or badminton or squash player. So anybody who has any kind of core strength, stability and rotation.

Uh, which is probably many, many people in sport, but, but it’s arguably not mimicking a golf swing or a baseball bat swing or anything else similar. So to call it specific training is, is a bit of a stretch in my opinion. Uh, but it’s worth just clarifying because there will be some people out there who go away and do a search and I hope they do.

And they come back and say, oh, but what about this study? So I just wanted to say, I have looked at some of the research on this. That is so interesting. A couple anecdotal stories, which is not the same as research, but anecdotes, you know, I’ll just share a couple things that come to mind on this topic. So one is we had a client once at our studio and he had, and I shared a little bit of his story in the past, but basically he came to us after having gone through three types of cancer, chemo treatment. He had lost a lot of muscle mass.

It was a lot of strain on his health and he was very weak and he said, can you help me? And so he started strength training with us. And within a few months, he had tripled his strength. But also, what surprised him the most is he hadn’t golfed in a long time. And he had gone, after getting started with us, to golf with his brother, who was a pro golfer. And he was hitting the ball farther than his brother was.

just from having strength trained at the studio. He wasn’t practicing golf and he was just delighted to see that his golf balls were flying further and he hadn’t done anything to specifically work on that except getting stronger. So that was a cool example and he was just, you know, whether or not you’re performing, you know, your best, um, and your workout, that’s sort of one level of satisfaction. But I think there’s another social level of bragging rights, satisfaction that somebody might get, uh, going in on the golf course and beating somebody else. Right. Um, one other example that I’ll share too is years ago, I, I was, um, I signed up to run a 5k and I hadn’t run any five case.

Like I just wasn’t a really a big runner, um, at this point in my life. And. I was running this 5K with two girls that ran lots and lots of marathons and races all the time, and they invited me to participate. And it was coming up quickly. And so I didn’t have a lot of time to start running long distances and train, you know, longer than two miles that I was used to or one and a half at a time. But all I was doing was biking on a, uh, bike at a, an exercise coach studio.

So I was strength training at the time and I did my concentrated cardio two to five minute interval training on the bikes. And I barely did any other running ahead of time of this race. And I beat both of the girls during the 5k, um, by quite a bit because I, I, uh, guess I was strong enough and I had the endurance because of the strength training to actually do really well in this.

And I was shocked that I was putting them in the dust behind me. So anyway, two anecdotes, but perhaps there’s something to what you are saying. Yeah, they’re wonderful examples and they’re absolutely true. And of course, the other thing that’s worth considering with our consistency in strength training, you know, twice a week and certainly over six months, 12 months and beyond, is we improve our overall fitness, which is what you just talked about in context of your 5k. But if you play a round of golf over 18 holes, it’s not how well you can hit the ball one time, and how fast you can swing the club head one time. It’s about how well you can do that over and over again through 18 holes.

And of course, for many people, you know, golf is an endurance activity. So, you know, it can be a number of hours out on the course. And so it’s the ability to have the fitness to do that for that prolonged period and get that drive off the 18th tee after you played all of the other shots and so forth.

So that fitness and that strength endurance or muscular endurance is really important to add to that skill component. And of course, that’s what you’re getting from strength training. Okay, this is really good. So thank you so much for sort of breaking this down for us. I think this puts a lot of people’s mind at ease and I think it’s very helpful just to break down the distinction between functional training and strength training.

So thank you so much for answering this listener question.

If you are a listener to the show and you have a question for us, don’t forget to go to strengthchangeseverything . com. There’s an orange button right at the top of the page where you can submit a question for us to answer here on the show. So we hope you will go to strengthchangeseverything . com and visit us there if you do have a question. We will see you next week on the podcast.

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