Arm Exercises:
Any golfer, and particularly any male, will know that real strength or rather deep strength comes from the arms, and yup you guessed it, the Biceps!
Biceps are a mans best ally, and I’m not talking about the bravado associated with having big arms, and flexing them and those things you see other guys in the gym doing, I’m talking about your overall strength, swing speed, control, consistency in your shots, accuracy in ball striking and of course greater distance with each stroke.
Strange but true, biceps, or if we are being more accurate, ‘stronger’ arms, account for a whole lot more than you might ever have thought during the swinging of a club.
When I speak about strong arms, I am referring to the common ‘big three’ muscles in a persons arm, the biceps, triceps and forearms. Obviously it is a lot more complicated than this, but as a starting point, I believe this is all the detail we need for now.
So, how does it all fit together?
In order to develop a consistent and accurate shot, you need to be able to generate a consistent, and repetitive swing. Having a swing you can rely on to do the same thing all the time every time, will give you the confidence to ‘speed up’ or ‘slow down’ you swing speed, or to attempt coming around the ball to generate a fade, or draw. But all of these things require that your arms move through the air in the same particular way, each time. This is referred to as the flight path and can be trained into your arms through muscle memory.
Imagine standing over the ball, lined up for a mid-iron swing. The ball is roughly positioned equi-distance between your feet, and you hands are holding the club in the middle of your body, with the shaft extending from your bodies gig line to just behind the ball, meaning that each arm, and hand, is meeting its counterpart equally. I.e. your arms and shoulders should create an equilateral triangle.
As your body rotates away from the ball in executing the swing, your leading arm is flexing at the elbow to allow the club to be drawn back over your right shoulder (for a right handed golfer). The bicep is contracted, whilst the tricep is stretched. Similarly the trailing arm is under going the same flex but to a different degree.
Now, as we know, leading arm gives direction to a swing while the trailing arm gives the speed (distance/strength) to the swing. As your body rotates forward your arms need to reverse the flex arrangement set out above.
The reverse-flex is achieved by the relaxing the initial tension of the biceps, thus creatng the first flex, and massive tensioning of the triceps to ‘flick’ your arms straight. The stronger your arms, triceps, are the faster this flick takes place and the quicker the club head speed will be.
Your biceps serve as an anchor between your body and your ‘flick-ing’ arms. The stronger your biceps the more controlled your swing will be and the more likely you are to have a repetitive, controlled swing, and the less likely it will be to have the club head pulled away from you by the centrifugal forces generated during the ‘flick’. Thus during the down swing your biceps remain tensioned to ensure that the ‘flight path’ of your arms is maintained.
Our forearms are gripping the club tightly to ensure that the club face does not rotate upon impact with the ball, and even a misaligned shot will be forgiven if your forearms are up to the challenge of holding the club straight.
Ideally this takes place just as you body begins to rotate back over the ball during the down swing, with the arms reverse-flexing to straighten in time so as to bring the club face into contact with the ball, all in perfect alignment. This means that your arms need to pump energy to pull themselves straight so as to catch up with the body, pull the club trough the air against inertia and to speed the club into the ball. Obviously the better timed you are and the faster you can bring the club around your body, the greater your strike force on the ball will be, the harder your shot will be, and thus the greater the distance will be, the H2G way!
You are more likely to develop all these traits, the ‘flick’, the flex, the reverse-flex, the ‘flight-path’ etc, if you can feel your arms during a swing. Building your arms will allow all of the traits to be developed quicker, and stronger, thus resulting in the greater distance.
So, how do we do it?
Biceps
I would have to assume that most people are well versed on how to perform a bicep curl, and as such I won’t go into much detail. Just know that whether you are attempting a bicep curl by either standing or sitting, preacher curl, cable preacher curl, inside or outside EZ-bar curl, inclined or reverse incline curl, 21’s, hammer curls or any other bicep exercise you can think of, the fundamentals remain the same;
Keep your upper arm as stationary as possible and attempt to only have movement and pivot at your elbow. Tuck your elbows into your side to avoid ‘swinging’ your arms forward to help raise the weight, and pause at the top of a curl to ‘pinch’ your biceps before releasing the tension and allowing the weight to return to the starting position.
While this may sound like obvious and easy advice, many people in a gym don’t follow these fundamentals and as a result end up cross-training, placing excessive strain on the shoulders (specifically deltoids), or just don’t work the biceps deep enough to get any worthwhile results.
Also keep in mind to vary your bicep curl exercises or super-set your training. There are quite a few muscles which make up the ‘bicep’ and each one should be focused on and exercised, for optimum results.
Triceps
Much like bicep exercises, there are so many different tricep exercises that picking just one is almost impossible. What I can say however is that, just like the bicep, the tricep needs to be exercised in a similar fashion, i.e. controlled flex around the elbow, while keeping the upper arm stationary, tucking the elbows into your sides (depending on the exercise) and ‘pinching’ the muscle at the utmost of contraction, are all still important factors to focus on during an exercise.
Triceps tend to build faster and remain built longer than biceps, thus, I recommend the tricep exercises should vary between strength training, and form training.
Strength training for the tricep will included a heavier double arm exercise i.e. such as a bulking exercises like ‘Skull Crushes’ or ‘Close-Grip Barbell Bench Press’. The form training will include higher tension exercises such as ‘Kick-backs’ or ‘Overhead Cable-Fly Extensions’. Personally I would recommend the Kick-backs. This is a tough exercise which you can really feel working, while you doing it. Furthermore, to do the exercise correctly a lot of concentration is required to ensure form is maintained and that no –cross-training is taking place. Perfect for H2G!
Forearms
While it is possible to train forearms exclusively, I would not recommend it. Your forearms will build themselves according to your bodies requirements. They build as a by-product of all the other training your doing, the strength and tension which is required to hold a weight, and the greater strength required as the weights increase, will be accommodated for by your forearms slowly building little by little during each workout.
There are times when a forearm exercise is needed to supplement its growth, i.e. when training with lifting straps for extended periods, but even then you should be okay with just a few ‘Barbell Rolls/Raises’ or ‘Hand Clamp Crushes’.
The reason I recommend you stay away from exclusive forearm training is the following; the forearm will grow very quickly, BUT its increased size (if trained independently and not as a by-product of other exercises) needs to be maintained, heavily! If you’re not careful, you may find yourself training your forearms up to 3 times a week! This just becomes a waste of time in the gym.
So there you go, not much on the training side this week, but instead more on the reasons for training the arms and what you should be thinking about while training.
Till next time,
Feel the burn, enjoy the pain, and yield the results!
Mr. Mulligan
Remember, muscles contract! They do not extend! Thus a muscle always wants to be as small as possible. So for example the only reason that you can hold your arm straight, is because the tricep and bicep are attempting to contract equally, and thus a medium is found at the straight arm position. Try for yourself, allow your arm to ‘hang’ at your side from your shoulder. Naturally your arm will have a slight ‘kink’ at the elbow, such that your hand will be slightly in front of you waist. Now, leaving your arm at your side, straighten your arm so that the ‘kink’ is gone, you should feel your tricep tension up. This tensioning is the tricep contracting to pull your forearm backwards. Now release the tension in your tricep, so as to allow the ‘kink’ to return and you should feel your bicep pinch for just a second as it contracts to bring the forearm forward again, and place the arm in the rest position.
