Ep 96. How to Create a Natural Golf Swing with Erika Larkin

The Fitness for the Fairways podcast helping you make your body the best club in your bag. Joe interviews the best strength coaches, physical therapists and golf professionals to help you take your golf performance to the next level. Hey everybody, welcome back into this week's episode of the Fitness for the Fairways podcast. I am your host, Joe Gambino. I am a physical therapist here in the New York City area and as always, I invite you to connect with me even further on Instagram. My handle is Agile Gambino dpt or you're and or you can use the handle at par four performance and you can get more information from me. As far as movement goes, fitness goes, rehab goes. There's lots of educational tips coming through that channel and you can always DM me. Reach out to me through that channel as well to connect as well as we have the Facebook group www.facebook.com backslash groups Fitness for the Fairways and you can get on in the conversation and join the community there. I just wanted to quickly thank all of you for tuning into the podcast, sharing this with your friends and family, for leaving reviews, all of that great stuff. Hit 50,000 downloads for the podcast. Huge, huge, huge milestone and I highly appreciate all of you guys. I hope that you all continue to get a lot of this podcast, continue to tune in and if you've been enjoying the show, please drop that five star review. It's super helpful to continue to grow the show, to get this into more people's ears and just to continue to have a bigger impact on the community. Thank you guys so, so much. But I have a breaking 100 update for you guys. Played golf this week at Middle Bay Country Club out in Long island here and super, super windy day. Gust had to be somewhere in the ballpark of 2530 ish miles per hour. Enough to affect putting, enough to almost knock me over, enough to send one of the guys I was playing with his hat right off his head. And luckily for my hustle, I was able to save it from going into the water. But the wind made it very, very difficult for me to really get a feel for my game. And I didn't actually keep track of my score, which is probably for the best. I happened to get logged out of the Grint app and forgot my password. So being that we got started, I didn't really want to fiddle with it. I just wanted to kind of play and also didn't have a pencil in my cart, so I just scrapped it. I figured, let me just work on a couple things and wind sucks it makes it really, really hard. Makes the game a thousand times harder than it is, which you guys are all familiar with. But, you know, there was a couple shots that were great. I actually had a drive that went roughly like 295, maybe a little bit more, 298, according to the golf cart, had the GPS in it. So 360, 70, 367 yard, par four. And I left myself with about. I think it was about like a 60, 70 yard or 8 yard, you know, 54 back into the green there. And it was just. I mean, I hit it really well, and we had wind to the back. So that was. That was a huge, huge, huge plus. I don't think I'm hitting, you know, that kind of distance without wind assistance, but that's how, you know, significant the winds were. There's a lot of huge slices, but I think that is the fact that the wind was playing. Those shots always happen when the wind was coming right on into me or when the wind was going left to right. And on the few holes that I had wind going from right to left, I have beautiful shots because I was able to put, like, a significant draw on it. It just kind of plays into the way I typically swing, but it was huge up and down. But good news is I putted really well, and I was able to work on some of the shots that I was stuck with. So if I lost the ball, I just dropped it, you know, in the areas I know I really struggled trying to get to the green, put myself around the green side, you know, where I hit over bunkers. And actually, on this course, it forces you to have a higher shot to enter the greens because there are a lot of bunkers that surrounded an obstacle. So typically, I have a low shot to get into the green. It's like, I really only have one chipping method, so it was nice to be able to work a little bit on, like, flop shots or having my club face a little bit more open, which typically I don't do in rounds because there's a. You know, for me, I either will just hit the ball way to the right. It's just kind of like an open club face and almost like has a slice to it effect off the club, or I just blade it and it goes flying. So it was great for me to kind of work on those things, and I felt like I was able to get a little more of that touch around the green, which was. Which I think will be huge for me as this season continues to progress. But enough about me and My golf game. I do want to introduce this week's episode, Erica Larkin on the podcast. She's the director of instruction at Crayton Farms, and she is a great teaching professional that I've been following on social media for a while, and I was really happy that we were able to finally work things out and get on the podcast. And we talk about a ton of different things, mainly around the physics of the golf swing and creating a natural swing for your body. And we touch a lot on fitness. She's a huge proponent of fitness. She does it for herself. She gets her clients involved. So we talk a little bit about that, and at the end of the podcast, we talk about putting tips. I kind of brought this up as a kind of selfish question for myself because I've been struggling with putting. So we talked a little bit about how to become better at short, medium, and longer putts and how to get a feel for it. There's actually a couple interesting things that she wrote up in that conversation as well. So without further ado, let's jump on into this week's episode. Today I'm here with Erica Larkin. She is a PGA teaching professional. She's also the director of instruction at Crayton Farms in Aldi, Virginia, and the author of the book A True Swing. Erica, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

Yes, I'm glad we finally made this work out and fun fact for our listeners. I mean, we didn't know it at the time, but we both lived in Queens and found out that she went to high school in the same vicinity where I went to college and all that fun stuff. So it's fun facts for the day there.

Yes. Queens. Queens, baby. Gotta love it. All right, so I missed it up there, but it's always good. Always a city girl at heart.

Well, you're in. How is the weather in Northern Virginia compared to New York?

It's pretty similar. We get our spring maybe a week or two earlier, and the fall, you know, it's a little longer, but it's really pretty similar. I would say on average, maybe we're a few degrees warmer on any given day, but it's very temperate here and we certainly get all four seasons. And today it's windy and sunny. We've gotten a really mixed bag for spring. It's been some really glorious days and a lot of really nasty, nasty.

April's been.

April's been very challenging. So we got a good one today, though. We're maybe on the way out, on the way into summer.

I'm praying for the same thing. It's been the same thing here. It's been like we had hail, like four days ago, it was like 60 degrees in the morning, it was hail, and then it was like 30 degrees by night. So it's been an interesting April, for sure. But anyway, take the floor. Tell our listeners a little about who you are, how you got into golf, and anything else you want them to know about you.

Sure. I grew up in Queens as we spoke about, and my parents were not golfers. They wanted to learn the game. And we ended up actually taking to the course at pitch and putt in Flushing Meadows.

Just that's where I got started.

This is something else in common. So we spent quite a few years just playing there when I was pretty young. I was 8, 9 years old. And we were into a little tennis at the time, which we could play right across the street from there. And we just played golf, you know, just for fun and trying to figure out if we liked it. And we liked it enough that we bought clubs and went to a real driving range and tried to figure out how to hit the ball further with all the different equipment and ultimately did start playing golf at some municipal courses in Queens and also near where my grandma lives in Connecticut, Southern Connecticut. There were some short courses up that way that we found. So we think we started a really the right way, started small, worked our way up, didn't get too discouraged. And, you know, there was always ice cream at the end of a round of golf. That was sort of what kept me going probably early on. But I did love it. And as an only child, I definitely was a fun experience to have that time with my parents that way. It was something we could definitely all do together. And I got into competitive golf, played a lot of junior golf in the Met section. And ultimately with some mentoring and some success in junior golf, I was able to get to a college scholarship at James Madison University, which brought me to Virginia, where I pursued a marketing degree, but knew I always wanted to stay in golf. And my intention was to get into more golf business management operations. And I ended up. I ended up getting into teaching and coaching. So that is like the short story. But as I stayed in Virginia and grew roots here, I have now spent my time at three different really great golf courses in this Northern Virginia area. We're about to 45 minutes outside Washington, D.C. i'm at a private club now, and over the last almost 20 years, I've been coaching in this area. I've built up a great business, a lot of Regional clients. And I've developed my online social media game to where I have a lot more national and global recognition, too, which is really fun. So I've caught the eye of a lot of people and different golf media publications and outlets. So it's great to share my knowledge with a bigger audience out there online. So I'm having a lot of fun with that.

I'm sure your marketing degree kind of helped a little bit along the way to develop that stuff. I feel like golf professionals, fitness professionals, I mean, no one's ever really taught anybody how to sell or market or anything like that. So I feel like it's a little harder for this profession to really get their education out.

Yeah, I was lucky that I had that skill set. I always had a little hand in kind of arts and performing, too, over the years. So that doesn't hurt with, you know, communication and presentation and all of that. So I think my. My skill set of all of those things definitely has helped me market myself and figure out how to produce quality content that people want to see. And it's, you know, messaging too. Over the course of now, enough years of teaching people right on the lesson tee, all that practical experience and taking that and seeing themes brought me to a place where I wrote a book. And that has been the inspiration for now a lot more of the content that I do. And it's created good consistency with my communication and the themes that I talk about when I do video tips. So it's been really good.

Yeah, that's awesome. Your social media has done really well. It's one thing that kind of drew me towards your content and then eventually having you here on the podcast. And I like that in your bio you say edutainment. So you're kind of like trying to mix that education and obviously, I think in social, to get something across to people, there has to be some sort of level of entertainment to it as well. Otherwise, there's really probably harder for people to kind of get on board with things. So it's been pretty awesome to see your content. And we'll kind of drive down because I kind of want to nerd about this a little bit. And, you know, I want to talk a little bit about how you mentioned on your website that you should trust the simple physics and momentum of the golf swing. And I can attest that that is much harder to do than it actually is to say. But let's talk a little bit about the physics behind the golf swing and how we could actually utilize that and harness it to our Benefit?

Yeah. I very simply think of the golf swing as a big circle that's moving around us. You know, the club paints this arc in space. And as we know, as we move something and swing it in a circle, especially something that has weight on the end of it, there's a lot to be said for forces that are being created. And also, as the person and the engine at the middle of that circle, we have work to do to get everything moving and get everything swinging around us. So I just look at it as we have this tool, we have to get the tool swinging. We want to, at some level, have a control and an understanding of how our engine needs to work to do that efficiently. So I really do talk a lot about moving naturally. But in moving naturally, we want to move in a way that, through using our body to create rotation and to create a swinging action, we are putting this weighted object into motion to ultimately generate that centrifugal force around our body, which is the speed. So I think if we can break it down in that way and get people to understand the goal, that we're trying to move this club fast around us. But there is an efficient way of doing that that can be very natural and effortless. If you do it well, that's the end game. So when people work and swing their body, move their bodies, and hit at the ball, or swing the club in a direction that is not matching up with where the golf ball is in space, it's either hard to connect, or you have to add what I call a lot of manipulation by the hands and the arms to make contact or to square the face up. And that's a tricky way to play golf because it breeds a lot of inconsistency when you're always on the hook to try to make contact happen. But if you set the club into motion on a good path, a neutral path, where the. How the. The tool was built to swing on a certain angle, and you can facilitate that with good, balanced, efficient body motion. You're not only creating a good sequence for delivering that club with speed and power, but you're delivering it in a way that's very easy to come back and find the ball, find the connection point where the ball with the ground, if it's on the ground. And so that just makes things easier, makes things more consistent to make better contact more often.

That's a good way to put it. And you mentioned it's kind of like you talk about as like a natural movement. And obviously, you know, people move differently. So is there, you know, when we're talking about naturally, we're trying to find somebody's specific way of actually doing it because I, you know, I mean, everyone has a slightly different variation of their swing or are we trying to match certain components? I mean, obviously there has to be some sort of resemblance of a kinematic sequence for our swing to be somewhat efficient. How are you kind of pairing this thought process individually, person by person if they have different movement skills or the ability to learn like a motor pattern to some degree?

Sure. I believe in the kinematic sequence big time. When we just walk normally down the street, whatever we're doing, we move inefficiently ways to get tasks done. Unless we're impeded by a physical limitation injury, then we have to compensate somehow. And so their golfers definitely have compensations if they can't move well. And then as a coach, you're looking to try to put together a way that they can move that fits how their body is functioning, how they can move pain free and still connect with the golf ball. And so you have to be a little creative and be open minded to maybe different kinds of postures. Or some people need elevate their arms more or less. So there's different, there are some different angles that can work and still be simple and efficient. So I don't necessarily have a swing model that everybody has to look exactly the same at every position, but I do talk about phases of the swing. Like I really talk a lot about feels. And I think that the feel of how we get the club into motion is something that's universal. You might go more upright and I might go more flat, but still we're swinging the club back. And because a lot of times with golf we start in a completely static position, unlike other sports where you're moving and responding to a ball that's flying at you or something that's, you know, you have to do in reaction to something somebody else that you're playing with. In golf, it's just you and the club and the ball and it's just sitting there waiting to be hit. So we have a lot of time to think, overthink. And we also have to get something moving from a completely static position. And how can we do that in a way that is fluid and promotes good, again sequence of motion as opposed to lifting or hitting at or swatting at the ball. So I really just try to get people understanding how to get energy moving in their swing. And there may be different cues for different folks. For some people that are able bodied and can can do anything, let's say. I mean, for them, then the sky's the limit. I can coach them a lot of different ways. For somebody that has a limitation, maybe a leg injury or hip injury, and they're leaning on one leg more than the other because of that, we have to possibly adjust the ball position or maybe their feel of how they can create energy on their backswing is different from somebody else. But it's still about creating energy on the backswing, changing direction, and letting the arms and the club respond to that as opposed to manipulating it to try to make something happen. We're letting. We're getting the body to lead and the body to act so that the arms can react. And that's really the picture I try to paint for everyone, no matter how they are built and however big their swing is, or however they're able to make a weight shift or not. You know, we want to try to stay true to those themes of swinging and not hitting.

Sure. Yeah, I like that. And kind of curious here. You mentioned that, you know, people have these different angles to work and find something that feels kind of natural to them. Now, my question would be, how would somebody know or identify if their swing? Because there's probably no way to really say, oh, this is, you know, this person on this podcast, this person should be doing this or that. But is there a way for somebody to know if their golf swing probably isn't ideal for their body and they may want to actually start considering making a change?

Well, the question I would ask yourself is, are you playing with pain or do you have pain at the end of your day golfing? I mean, we want to feel good. We want the swing to be an enjoyable, good feeling experience and not anything that's causing us pain. There's a difference between pain and being tight. You know, I think a lot of golfers struggle with mobility, especially older golfers that may have had a history of injury. So, you know, getting people to move within their own range of motion is important, and then encouraging people to really focus on mobility is huge. Strength's always great if you're trying to increase club head speed, but range of motion is probably more important for the average golfer. And when people are tight and their swing gets short and then they try to muscle the ball, it only makes things worse. So creates that flow. If you have less range of motion, then don't force what you don't have. That would be my best advice. Move in a way that's smooth and that creates, you know, a pain free experience. And that allows you to connect consistently the club to the ground. Let's say if you're hitting an iron, be a good test to see if your posture and your balance in your body is matching up with how you can deliver the club consistently. If you can't touch the ground consistently in the same place with your divot each time you hold an iron, something's going on. Either your posture is wrong, your balance is wrong. Dynamically, you're not moving the club on an angle that's. That's going to help you find that golf ball. And what feels natural to you right now doesn't mean that it's perfect, but it's better than if you're swinging in a way that you can truly be honest and say, yeah, my swing doesn't feel good. I think people know when they make a natural, smooth practice swing how effortless it can feel and they get over the ball and something completely different happens. So there's definitely a conversation I have often with golfers about transferring their natural movement to the ball, because I think people's practice swings are always better than their real swings. And so there's that hit instinct that develops when the ball is there. And there are some strategies to try to overcome that physically and mentally. But I think all of that is important to consider when you're talking about, are you moving the right way for you? It should feel good.

Yeah, I really like that. And I mean, use talking about mobility here on this podcast and even strength without me having to bring up the terms of fitness as a question makes me happy on the inside because I don't think a lot of golfers initially kind of go towards fitness as their primary means of feeling better or trying to improve their swing. I know that there could be huge benefit there, and apparently you also know that. So it's great to hear the swing coaches feeling the same way and bringing that up. Versus Is it just always being the fitness coaches or the physical therapists on this podcast that are always preaching about how human movement can. And performance training can actually make this huge impact on our golf game?

Yes. Yeah, definitely. No. I'm a big fan and just from personal experience, too, as I put more attention over the last three or four years into my own body and understanding what it takes to overcome some injury, overcome pain, and how to work through those things, what the process looks like, I think I have a better appreciation for PT and mobility programs and how that really can change your life, let alone change your movement in things like golf. So it's huge.

Wow. I Couldn't have asked for a more perfect segue into what I wanted to talk to you guys about, which is my online Kinstretch membership. For those of you who do not know about it or what Kinstritch even is, it is a scientifically backed mobility system that helps you create better active mobility. And I say the term active here because when we look at mobility, what really matters is our control over the positions. So if we consider something like the backswing as we're trying to get there, if you do not have active control over that rotational mobility, it's going to be very hard for you to have control within that position. Get your club to the top of your backswing and then create disassociation through the hips and through the trunk coming down in the downswing. And that's why active control, I find is so important. And that is what we really focus on with the online Kinstrip membership. So head to the Show Notes or go to www.joegambinodpt.com services kinstretch, and you can sign up for a two week trial. It will only cost you $1. And it's a way to get into the system experience for yourself. And I know once you do that, you're going to be sticking around for quite some time. I don't want to cause too long of a break in this episode, so let's jump back into it. But I do want to. You said something about trying not to manipulate the clubs, and I feel like this is a big one because just from personal experience, I feel like with all the. I've taken several lessons and I feel like when you're going through the habit of constantly making changes and constantly having somebody tell you to tinker with this or that, you can get very caught up in what you're trying to do with the club versus actually just trying to swing. And I just went through my own, like, kind of offseason. It was the first time I've ever really played around with like overspeed training for myself. So actually going through that process made my swing significantly better because I think I finally stopped thinking about the club itself and just like you say, just, just let it swing. And one of the mental things that I've done on the golf course this season as I'm going out is I try, like when I get there, I set myself up, I line my shot, and once I'm set up and I'm over the ball, I just imagine I'm on the driving range and I'm just taking. I just Imagining I'm just trying to swing really as, as fast as I could at that point. And it's cleaned up a lot of my contacts where my bigger misses were either just topping the ball or having a huge slice. And both of those misses have been actually, surprisingly, to my happiness, very rare this season so far. So I think it kind of goes to that point of saying, like, you know, yes, you know, we need to try to control the club as we're going through our swing, but our body and where we're bringing that club should all be dictated by how our body's moving. And we're not just trying to take the club and like stab it at the ball.

Yeah, we're making a golf swing and we forget that sometimes, especially when we are trying to hit the ball farther. There's a difference between swing harder and swing faster. We're trying to swing faster, swing the club, move the club head faster. And the best way to do that is with efficient sequence and more of a whip like effect as opposed to a hitting effect. And there's a difference between that and, I think when people realize that, they feel it, they experience it, they allow it to happen instead of trying to make it happen. It's very freeing. And that light bulb goes off and they start to trust that more and more. It's not easy. Like you said, easier said than done. But at least it gets them in the right mindset, having the right intention. They know what they're looking to experience and they can recognize if they do stray away from that.

What kind of strategies do you use? And I mean, this could be in as general of a sense as possible because obviously I know all these things are kind of individualized to a person, but what kind of strategies do you utilize if someone is struggling with this concept of, you know, actually using their body to create the force versus just kind of like, I don't know, using some other, you know, where it's not that kind of like natural swing and they're not using their engine, so to speak, to create that swing.

Yeah, typically I get them to feel the weight of the club, be aware of that. So my, my best first trick is to get them to flip the club upside down and hold it by the club head. Swing a few times that way. So the grip end is pointing to the ground and that moves all the weight into the hands. So then when you do that a few times and then you reverse it and put the club back to normal, it creates awareness for how heavy the club head really is. And the overall Weight of the club is more apparent. So it just puts it in perspective when we can swing that we're moving this weighted object around us. And how do we get the weight of the club and the weight of our arms, too, as a softer unit, into motion? When the arms are rigid and we lose, we tight cloak, excuse me, we grip the club extremely tight with our hands. Our wrists are locked up, everything becomes numb and we can't experience the swinging sensation. So just that alone is huge. Getting people to feel the club, they can sense where it is around them in space. It helps create a picture and a feel of the shape of their swing, the timing for their swing. They're not searching for trying to move something down to hit the ball. They're moving the club back in a way. They can experience the lag of the arms and the club going back and hopefully the lag of the arms and the club coming down. And just get a feeling for letting the weight of the club swing out and not pushing it down or pulling it down. There's a difference in that, really. Again, letting the arms be the followers and not bossing the club around is important right from the takeaway. So the manipulation, if people are like that, and I see it all the time, it. It starts in the takeaway usually, or if. If they're really good and trying to be smooth on the backswing, then the other moment where it kicks in is the beginning of the downswing. So there's usually a key point where the manipulation begins. So if you can identify that and work through those zones with less manipulation and a different feel, hopefully you can bypass it altogether and it changes the movement anyway. Then I prefer a more draggy backswing instead of somebody that's cranking their wrists up from the beginning and hinging early. So there's certain things I'm looking for, and when I see people levering the club too soon in their swing.

Yeah, I mean, I love that they.

Are doing too much too soon.

They're not letting them everything as far as the only way to talk about performance in any aspect, meaning the arms and the club, is can you recruit energy, another part of your body, which.

Is likely going to be, especially for.

Full swing, whether it's you're trying to squat, whether you're playing golf, whether you're playing another sport. I mean, if you're trying to throw a ball right, you know, just using your arms to throw.

Right.

It's a complete. The kinematic sequence is similar. You're driving your legs through the ground to throw A ball, there should be a similar feel to that when you're swinging.

Changes their perspective completely on how they.

Driving from the ground swinging. Do you have any sort of feedback that you give your clients to let them know if they're actually swinging faster or more efficient?

It. Well, I coach with Trackman. I also own a Flightscope. But you know, they're both. Any kind of monitor is great to have a sense of if your club head speed is changing or you're moving the needle on something that you're working on in your swing. Some of the smaller units, the consumer facing units, Rapsodo, lightscope, Mevo are also really good. At least they do give you some information about speed. There are even more basic units. You know, like you said, if you're working with speed sticks or different overspeed training tools that you can just lay on the ground simply to catch how fast the club head is moving. And that's just the basic, basic number. So if you can get some feedback, it's great. Whatever the tool is that you can have access to is awesome. And it doesn't need to be the fancy, fancy Trackman. It can be something simple. There's even, you know, some old school tools out there. And there's the swing right training aid, which is super old and it has like this weight on the club and it clicks out when you swing it faster. You can change the tension on it. I mean that's going back to like the 1950s. It's, it's like an antique, but I love it. There's. There's some different ones like that that.

Just from my experience of recently, you know, that's kind of what I've done tracking, like I'm huge. I love tracking like every single. Everything I track like is how many bucks around how many fairways I hit, how many. Like if I could track it. I'm doing it just because it's kind of like experimental for me. I'm trying to see what I'm doing is it actually change it and all that stuff.

But, but in real time, you know.

I also think that's the best way to make progress. You know, if you're actually having some kind of track on something. People talk about a business performance metrics that you're tracking you if not tracking it's probably not going to get better. It's the same thing in golf. If you're not tracking a specific statistic that you really want to get better, it's most likely not going to get better.

Right? Yeah. I have a new partnership with arcos, and I'm really a fan of their very simplified version of keeping stats. You throw these sensors on your clubs, you play golf, and you look at the report when you're all done. I mean, it doesn't get any easier than that. Very effortless way of keeping statistics. So big fan of arccos. All their strokes gained stats now are upgraded, and you can really see how far you're hitting all your clubs on the golf course. And over time, it tracks your handicap in different components. You can really see trends as to if you're improving in the areas that you're working on. So I think there's so many great statistics programs out there, but this one, it just seems like they've made it as easy as possible to collect the data because sometimes that's what holds people back from committing to knowing their numbers. It's a pain to. To write it all out while you're playing. It's distracting. So if you can get the data automatically and it's just in your. In your app, you have nothing really left to do except look over and then digest. It even does the math for you on where the priorities are for you to improve. You know, hey, putting is your biggest weakness. Focus on this. And, oh, by the way, here's a couple tips on how to improve. I mean, really, it gives you a lot of information. So if you're out there and you're looking for a solution, that's a great one.

That's awesome. I didn't. I mean, I've. I've heard of it, and I knew that it's did a lot of that, but I didn't realize it was that in depth. And I mean, automation is amazing. So that's awesome. Yeah. I want to shift gears here a little bit and talk about fitness, and we can use your, you know, you as a personal example, kind of. What are you currently doing or what are you promoting to your athletes as far as what they should be doing from, you know, a fitness perspective or at least, how are you having that conversation with people if that's the case?

Sure. I had a conversation the other day with a junior golfer that I started working with this season. He's a very competitive player. He's 13, you know, on the brink of really developing his body and his golf game more and made a huge commitment to golf just thus far and moving forward. A lot of time, a lot of dedication there. But they haven't really explored the fitness component. I said, you're getting that age. And he plays basketball recreationally with friends so he gets a sweat and runs around a little bit. I said but okay, that's your cardio. You need strength, you need speed training and you need mobility. So like there's three more spikes to this. Spokes, excuse me, spokes to this wheel. And you're missing a few here. So let's see if we can develop a more well rounded approach for you as a young person moving forward to create good habits for life. But for golf, it's only going to help you build strength so that you can move the club faster consistently with control. And then even kids that are young can get tight, especially boys. So, you know, let's get those hamstrings mobile. Let's make sure they're not, we're not missing something in your body that is a problem area that's causing you to move in any restricted way. You don't know until you dig in and have them evaluated or go through a program where those underlying things are causing problems. And I have been CPI certified over the years, so that's great. I've worked with Orange Whip Golf and their fitness platform as well. And I've always had my hands dirty a little bit in fitness. Personally. Well, I'll say personally. I work out three or four days a week. I do different cross training activities in the gym with a lot of mostly group settings, some semi private strength training classes as well. So I'm lifting, I'm doing my HIIT training, I'm pulling sleds, I'm doing squat jumps, I'm doing a mix of stuff. So I just feel like for me it's been a nice, well rounded fitness program that I do with a great local place here in Virginia and there's a lot of gyms out there that do this kind of stuff. So I'm a big fan. You could have at home programs as well, just to stay moving and, and build in some strength training, whether it's just with dumbbells or if it's more, you know, more intense than that. But the speed portion for me, I've messed with speed sticks. I've gone through that protocol helped a little bit. I have been tinkering with Mach 3, which I think is really great. That's a whole speed training program using these long ropes, almost like battle ropes to swing in different ways, different patterning and that's really great as well. So there's so many, so much stuff out there now, especially since speed training has become such a hot topic that I know there's going to be more. But I think that Those, you know, different products I've mentioned and programs I mentioned are great if you're looking for a starting point to specifically work on speed. But as far as the gym, you know, if you don't have access to those tools or if you're just training, integrating some explosive movements into your strength training, too, is good, whether it's a push and press, more explosive lifting moves, rotational things that you throw medicine balls fast back and forth against a wall, lots of those types of things. Some sprinting are great because now you're lighting up that part of your engine of how do we go from 0 to 60 fast? We want to be able to cruise, too, but we want to also have that explosive ability, and that takes supporting that movement with working on your strength, overall strength, overall balance and mobility. If you're an adult golfer out there and you don't know where to begin, I mean, again, range of motion, do yoga, get in a mobility program. There's so many good things out there. There's yoga for golfers, there's just regular yoga. It doesn't matter. Just move your body and let's get stretching. And that'll improve your balance by default because certainly there's a good amount of moving around your own body weight when you do yoga that does help you get stronger. But actually lifting in the gym is where you're going to, I think, see gains or lifting at home if you have the equipment. But I think you got to do a blend of everything if you want to really stay well rounded. For people that only lift and don't do mobility, they get tight and they get bulky, and then they have a tough time swinging freely. So really you want to try to stay lean and loose but be strong. So that combination, I think, is the most ideal for golf. And maybe Bryson would prove me wrong because he's bulked up so much, but that guy's pretty mobile. So, you know, if you can be. Can be powerful and mobile, that's best case scenario.

Yeah, I mean, it's pretty well said and, you know, it's nice to see where, I mean, you know, you're primarily on the swing side of things that you have a good grasp of, you know, the fitness side of things. Because I think that when, you know, different, you know, like here from my side, you know, understanding a little bit about the golf swing because I've taken some lessons, I think it makes it easier, right, to have conversation with people and be like, hey, you know, go see this golf professional. You can talk a little bit about, you know, how the process goes and you can kind of relate a little bit better. So, you know, it's nice to start to see that, you know, some. There are a lot of these golf coaches now who are starting to understand a little bit about strength and taking, you know, the fitness side a little bit more seriously. And you know, I like what you talk about with kids, you know, like, yeah, they, they need to build, you know, a solid building block of movement as they're younger, right. They're growing into their body. They don't necessarily have the greatest control. Some of these kids can still swing the clubs pretty fast, you know, so, you know, for them, right, being able to move well, maintain their mobility, build some sort of foundation of strength, you know, I mean, you're not going to take a 13 year old and try to hit them, you know, throw some PRs at them and try to have them hit one rep maxes every week. But you know, teaching them good movement control and body control can go a long way. And that I think that younger development that you can, you know, that body skill and body movement that you, if you start to do that stuff at younger and younger ages, I think their long term development is going to be significant, significantly better. You know, I think a lot of these people who pick up fitness as they get older, they've already lost because they've not necessarily, you know, it's, it's like I always say, it's not right or wrong, right. But you know, if you've lost mobility over time because you decided not to pick up fitness to you or 35 or 40 or 50, you're starting from a deficit in a sense and you'd have to build up all that mobility and now build that baseline strength and then you can start to build that baseline explosiveness on top of that. But if you've been doing it as a kid, you're gonna have all those core qualities. So, you know, by the time you're in your 20s and 30s, you're not gonna have, or hopefully you won't have those same aches and pains as, you know, I did because when I was younger I was just playing sports non stop. I was abusing my body and I'm paying for it today. So hopefully if you're kind of going through that process and really building solid movement along the way, you know, that stuff should, you know, the longevity, I think is the name of the game for most people, right? Can you then play the game until you're 50, 60, 70, 80, you know, all that?

Right. You know, well, that's what it is for these young guys, too, is can we do these things to create good habits? It's just gonna be a part of your life forever. Why not start tomorrow? But to prevent injury for those kids, you know, because again, if they start to swing harder and harder at the ball, but they don't have the strength to back it up, they're going to hurt themselves at some point. So having the stability in the joints and the muscles to back it up, to have more, better balance while you move faster, then they also will have more accuracy when it comes time to controlling the club face. I mean, even grip strength. I never realized how important grip strength is. And I talk a lot about free motion and being really relaxed when you swing, but you have to hold the club, and the faster you move, you actually have to hold it tighter. That doesn't mean your arms get tighter, but you can't let go of your hands or you lose control of the club. And you'll hear a lot of powerful hitters talk about this, that, you know, you need soft arms, soft wrists, and honestly, almost tight hands on the club at some point when you try to swing your hardest or fastest. And so having grip strength from strength training is important. Unless you're going to just do their squeeze a little stress ball or something, I don't know. It's not the same. You know, when you have to, when you have to lift a heavy object and you're. You're trying to work on your fitness that way, by default, you, you get stronger in your hands and your arms to where with less effort, you can support a faster movement.

Yeah, no, I agree with that. And it's, it's pretty well documented that grip strength will help, you know, will assist in faster clubhead speeds. It will also assist in strength. But it's interesting that you say this because, you know, you talk about the loose arms and the strong hands, and one of the most common things that I see just inside the gym, nothing to even do with golf is that people will have, you know, they'll have completely tense arms when they're trying to move. And when you're, I think part of movement scale is knowing which part of your body needs to be tense at that moment and what parts need to be relaxed to create the optimal movement pattern. And it is a skill that not a lot of people initially have, and probably why a lot of people struggle creating a really fluid swing is because, you know, you're grabbing it and instead of creating just grip strength, right. And then, you know, you know, where, you know, stability through your core maybe and allowing forces to transfer to the club. You're trying to create that stability through your entire arm or wherever else you may be trying to get it from. And now you're moving those segments and not the segments that initially need to be moving to get that ground up. Recruitment.

Yes, Yes, I agree totally.

So, you know, that's definitely something I see in the gym all the time. You know, whether it's upper a lot with the upper body movements, where people just like, even if you're just trying to teach them how to row something, they don't even really know how to get scapular motion because their arms are so tense that they can't even create like a normal movement pattern because they just don't have that control.

Right.

So, yeah, something easy to work on there. But I do want to shift gears here. And this is, this is semi selfish because this is where I've been struggling recently in the last few rounds this season with putting. I've been. I've been definitely having some significant difficulties with longer putts. I've been actually hitting greens from longer distances, which has now given me much longer putts than I'm accustomed to. And it's been kind of throwing me off around the green. So I kind of just want to talk a little bit about, you know, what's the difference between short, medium length and longer putts and what kind of strategies can we use to be pretty good at all of them?

Gosh, you have like three hours. No, I mean, I teach AimPoint green reading and I'm a big fan of that. If you, if you. Do you use Aim Point or do you know about it at all?

I do know about it, but I do not use it.

Yeah. So I think having a good plan for where you're aiming is really important because it sets the tone for what pace you're gonna match with that. And it also gives you a really clear visual as to how you're gonna line your body up your golf ball where you're starting the ball online. If you're over putting in this indecisive or second guessing your read, nothing good happens. If you over or under read a putt. You have to adjust your speed to try to make it work, but you're really doing yourself a disservice because you either have to hit it too hard or too slow to make the line that you chose work, and the chances of the ball actually going in the hole are less. So having good pace and a read that matches it and vice versa is really key to making more putts of any length. Short putts, you know, I'd focus on having the body still and committing to your start line and not way over reading a putt, you know, making sure that you've hit it with confidence. And the shorter the putts you have, if the pins are in semi favorable positions, you're not going to have a pin cut on a huge side hill. Hopefully you're going to have within a cup of break inside six feet, more or less. So a lot of people think there's more than there is or they're not able to feel subtle breaks and so they don't play any break and then it falls outside the hole. So kind of tuning into subtle breaks is important. And at any point we teach people to use their feet to feel the tilt. And then we take the same process for long putts and calculate what the break equals over more distance, which is really fun to do. It's fun to read a long putt, but your expectations have to be less about making putts and more about lagging it. And then honestly, the read is fun and it helps get the ball started on the line. That's going to get you close to the hole. But really the speed control portion when you get further away from the hole is more important than the read. So when you get 20ft or out, 30ft, 40ft, the speed trumps the line. You have to really focus on your distance control. Connect with the hole practice swings with your eyes up to feel the putt and visualize not only the line, but the pace. People don't see in their mind the speed of the putt before they hit it. I think that's a really key component to getting better at distances. And lastly, practice, I mean, putting yourself at 20, 30, 40, 50ft and hitting a bunch of putts from those distances, getting the reps in, associating how far away that is going uphill, downhill, how it feels, the length of your stroke. Those are all things that you can quantify and measure and could create a framework to help you improve your distance control on long putts. But it takes getting out there and doing it, or it takes really trusting your instincts and ultimately being athletic and connecting with the hole and not being frozen for the ball.

That's interesting, seeing the speed of the putt, because that I've never considered and I think that's something I may. I think I could visualize that pretty pretty well. So I want to see if that makes an impact to how I putt. The ball a little bit, so I'll take that one. Good luck. I do find it, you know, because in New York City, there's, you know, and in Queens here, there's not a lot of options to practice long putts. So, you know, I have a putt out mat, and I feel like I've gotten better at hitting my starting lines and connecting with the ball better. And, you know, for definitely really short putts, not too bad. But I find when I'm really far out that it almost feels like my. My swing or my putt is like it's disconnected. It's like I think I'm going to hit it far. And then when it actually hits my club, I realized that's only gonna go like, you know, it's 10ft. You know, it's not even really even make it close to the hole. And that's where I've. I've ended up. Especially in the beginning of the run, it almost takes me like eight holes or nine holes to like, really start to connect and, and get my putter going.

Yeah. Um, definitely comes back to how you're practicing. If you're doing better inside those 10 foot distances, that's what you're practicing the most. You feel good there. So you just need to spend some more time, it sounds like, on your long putts, if you can. And as far as practice goes for indoor use, the first tool that comes to mind is actually this. It's an indoor putting simulator called X Putt. And I discovered them at the PGA show before COVID And they have a pretty cool unit that you hit into like a foam piece. And the way the technology and the optics work that come with the kit, it projects how far the ball would have gone. It's actually pretty accurate. And it's a few hundred dollars, I'm going to say, is the retail on it. But it's a cool system. You can play games, and as you hit the putt, then you hook it to your tv. You don't even need to go through a PC. It's just a standalone unit. It helps to project the image of the ball rolling on the green. You can even play breaks and have putt challenges. And I've had a few clients get these systems where they, again, have limited access to maybe practicing long putts in the winter or. Or just in an office space. It's a great thing to get, and they've said it's really, really helped them connect a field to different, longer distances in a way that they wouldn't have been able to practice it before. So pretty cool little product. And it's just putting, it's not full swing or anything, it's just a mini way, a really simple way of getting some feedback on having again to visualize what the heck of 30, 40 foot putt looks like, feels like without actually being on the green. It's really good process to go through. It forces you to have to visualize and connect with a feel. So that's a kind of a cool tool. But nothing replaces getting on a real green and actually mapping out some length putts and you know, putting some tees down, make a circle around the hole, three feet or so and just try to get some nice long putts in there consistently.

Yeah, I agree with you on that one and that's pretty cool. The expo thing, I got to take a look into it. Some of the tech that's coming out is pretty interesting, but I do want to be mindful of your time so I want to just give you the floor real quick. You get to let our listeners know a little bit more about where they can find you, where they can learn from you, where they can pick up your book, all that fun stuff.

Great, thanks Joe. So I can be found on my website, which is erica larkin.come r I K A L A R K I N and or @Erica Larkingolf on Instagram, YouTube. My book is available on my website, also on Amazon and I'd be happy to sign a copy of it for you if you order it through my website. Love to hear from you guys. If you have any questions, let me know or DM me on insta. I'm always on there and it was great to chat with you today.

It was a pleasure. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for listening to this week's episode with Erica, all the information to connect with her, learn more from her, get her book. You can head to the show notes to do so. If you've been enjoying the show, I will ask that you leave a five star review for the podcast. This helps kind of get the show out to more ears, continue to grow the show. We had a huge milestone of 50,000 downloads this week. So I mean I thank you all for coming in, tuning in, listening, sharing the podcast with people around you. It's been been quite the journey and I really, really appreciate all the support from you guys. So thanks again and if you can leave that nice review for the podcast and I will see you guys back here next week.