How to Improve Your Golf Swing Speed

By Tony Brian

A heightened golf swing speed can affect many parts of your golf game, including the distance of your drive, the accuracy of your short game, and the consistency of all your shots. The amount of speed you can gather behind your club dictates the amount of energy transferred to the ball on a shot, directly affecting multiple aspects of each shot. Speed control is a vital part of any well-rounded golf game.

The speed of your club is directly affected by the mechanics of your swing and your physical fitness. If you cannot pull up a full backswing and release as much energy as possible on the ball, you cannot reach the utmost club speed.

Follow Through

Follow through is equally important in ensuring a high, consistent club speed, as it ensures that the full energy displacement of a successful swing has occurred. When you fail to follow through, you pull up at the last second, decreasing your swing speed exponentially in the final steps of your swing. Imagine you are aiming to hit a target a full foot or two beyond where the ball is located. The extra energy you impart to hit this imaginary target will ensure that you exert the maximum energy as you approach the ball.

Fitness

A strong follow through is essential, but only the first step in getting the most out of each swing. To truly optimize your swing speed, you need to be physically fit and flexible enough to wind up a backswing without pulling a muscle or feeling any pain. It needs to be a natural part of your body and the best way to do that is to be a spry as possible.

Use rotational exercises to maximize the strength and range of motion in your shoulders, hips, knees and wrists. Everything in your swing involves rotation, so by strengthening these muscles and loosening your body's approach, you can be sure you get the most out of every swing you attempt.

Good exercises include simple stretches such as touching your toes to loosen your back or twisting in place to strengthen your oblique muscles. By holding a weighted object while doing so, your body adjusts to much greater pressures while twisting, making your golf club seem that much lighter.

You can increase the strength of your rotational muscles by swinging the club with a weight in your hands. Many club manufacturers make weighted clubs for just this reason, providing extra resistance for your body when swinging. If you cannot afford a specialty club, consider using a standard weight that accomplishes essentially the same thing.

By using these simple, inexpensive training exercises, you can increase the range of motion your body enjoys and further increase your ability to push the golf club from backswing to follow through with as much power as possible, speeding up your golf swing in the process. By increasing your swing speed, you can greatly enhance your game in more ways than you ever expected. Be prepared to work hard and train regularly and you can start hitting those 300 foot drives you always dreamed of landing.

Tony Brian is a freelance writer for outdoor sports magazines and a contributing writer for smart parts sp-8 paintball gun specializing in hunting, hunter, and paintball safety goggles

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tony_Brian

Perfect Golf Swing

By Barry Nolan

The perfect swing has two whole-body sensations that most amateurs never will feel. They are: "Around" and "Whip".

The common face-on view of the golf swing usually is confronted on a tv screen or a magazine page. That view gives the swing a back-then-forth appearance. Not surprisingly, "back" and "forth" have become the most frequently used directional indicators in golf instruction ("Take the club back.", "Backswing", "Get your weight going forward.")

However, the back and forth movements in the golf swing are primarily incidental to an overall rotational motion. When you place a camera above a good golfer, overhead, almost everything you see is whirling in circles, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise. Whether your focus is on the clubhead, hands, shoulders, or hips, the first word that comes to mind to describe the action you're viewing is "Around".

This coiling and uncoiling of the torso is harder work than it looks like. Sliding the hips back and forth is lots easier. But coiling stretches the most important muscles in the golf swing, and the whole purpose of the "back"swing is to stretch muscles.

Concerning "Whip", only a very sharp eye can catch that, in a good golfer's swing, the motion is not divided into two distinct parts: e.g. back then forth, up then down, one then two. The truth is that for ALL good players some lower-body uncoiling overlaps with some upper-body coiling.

By initiating the "down"swing with the thighs and hips about eight hundredths of a second before the shoulders have finished coiling, rotational stretch in large mid-torso muscles between the hips and shoulders is maximized.

So feel these two whole-body sensations, Around and Whip, and enjoy the best shotmaking of your life!

Find more golf tips, video and instruction at http://www.swail.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Barry_Nolan

Golf Guru

General Tips for improving our golf swing

Is your golf swing providing you with the results you need to compete? Are you throwing strokes away by topping, slicing or hooking the ball? How many penalty strokes do you typically have during a round? Only you can answer those questions.

Naturally, that means that if you shoot over 90, you will be able to reduce your handicap by much more than 7 strokes.

Here's a question for you to think about. What do you feel are the 3 biggest factors that prevent bogey golfers from reaching their true scoring potential? This is the question that I asked over 200 golfers after hearing the following information.

Here are some interesting figures:
- There are roughly 27 million golfers in the world.
- Their average gross score: 107 shots.
- Eighty percent of the golfers do not achieve a handicap of less than 18.(Source: Revista golf international. November 2000)

Here is a brief summary of what I did research online:
- Inconsistency --- 187 Golfers --- 94%
- Slice --- 142 Golfers --- 71%
- Distance --- 124 Golfers --- 62%

Needless to say, many golfers were experiencing the same problems. It was developed specifically for the bogey or bogey+ golfer with CONSISTENCY as the end result. How many shots per round do you think you could save if you made solid impact, hit the ball straight, and hit it long every time? This blog will give you the information and methods that will allow you to master these three problem areas, so you can move on to concentrate on your short game.

Improving your golf swing!

Here are some basic tips to help you improve your golf swing and may help you shoot in the 90s or even 80s:

1) Warm up. Just like any other game or sport, golf players need a little warming up before starting a round. This is what most players, especially amateurs, often take for granted.

It is best to come early at the golf course and take a few minutes to stretch those muscles and warm up. This will make your muscles "know" that they are in for something and that they should be prepared. Taking a few swings in the driving range will also help you get tuned up and perform better.

2) Exercise. This is really important, not only for golf. Constantly exercising your body and muscles will keep them toned and ready for any activity. This will also prevent common body aches and pains that you usually feel when playing golf.

Getting into the habit of exercising, especially tuning up your muscles will have a great impact on your swing. It will help you have a good stance and increase total balance and control on your swings.

3) Do not swing too hard yet. It is really tempting to give your swing that extra effort. However, it is not recommended unless you already have the control of your swing. The key to a powerful and graceful swing is the balance and control that you have, add to it the proper form and stance.

So how do you get to learn to control your swing? Again, it's tip number 2. Regular exercise will, in time, allow you to have a faster, more controlled swing.

Aside from these simple steps to do, it is also best to ask help from the pros, personally or thru online methods. They can give good advices as they already have learned a lot from their experiences. Keeping updated with the latest about golf will also help.

Also, most players tend to be so conscious in their desire to improve their swing that their minds are focused on every aspect of the swing itself; doing that will only make your swing look awkward. Instead, it is best to keep your mind off your swing. Try to focus on something else and the good swing will just follow.

We all dream of hitting the ball straight and far, landing softly on the green and rolling towards the hole, walk up to the ball, make the putt and move to the next tee...

Our golf Dreams!!

In our dreams golf is simple and easy, no hassle, no looking after lost balls, no feeling of embarrassment, we are just mastering the art of golf, we have a good golf swing and we are in control of our mind. A lovely dream! But what is our reality? Getting little late on the course and not having time to go to the range, nervously driving on the first hole into the woods, but forgiving ourselves because after all we were late, and didn't have that time to warm up... double bogey on the first hole, not feeling good at the second either... after 9 holes the game is lost, but our thoughts are already on the next round, or maybe we just want to get quickly home and forget about this miserable game...

In our dream it wasn't like this. In our dream we controlled the ball with our perfect golf swing and we were also in control of our emotions. We know it can happen, because we have done it so often on odd holes, we just don't seem to be able to make it work for the whole round, but the dream is there... someday I will do it, someday I will play that perfect round or golf. After I done that, my self confidence is going to be so high, I will keep on playing at that level. I don't have to play with these guys I'm currently playing with... the important low scoring guys in the club will ask me to play with them, and I will be looked up to! This is who I am and what I deserve! I just need some time to work on my game... next summer I will do it...

If these feelings sound even remotely familiar to you, read on.Firstly, the dream can come true. But it is going to take some sacrifices before it will be reality. It will mean a good golf swing and physical control, but above all mind control and taking control of the nerves.One very important part of being successful at anything is self understanding. Now I don't mean that we make a training program, which might also be important, but it is a question of our dreams versus reality psychologically speaking. Let me explain this concept little more:If we crave for fantastic results and have unrealistic dreams that we cannot reach, we are going to create unnecessary pressure in our system. This pressure is going to lead to uncontrolled psychological state of mind, and that will result as bad golf, which again is going to burst out as anger.

Golf is a mind game above all. We can play much better within our limits, if we can be clear minded about our skills and what we want and not have unrealistic expectations.Have you ever tried to be calm and untouched even though you play badly? Is it possible to decide that no matter what is going to happen out there, I'm not going to loose my calm? If you can do this, you are controlling your mind and not letting the mind control you. It is very easy to get out there and just "see" what the round has to give you today. No expectations, no worries, just looking at your game as it was somebody else's game. And you know what, it is somebody else's game to everybody else but you... others will not punish you because you missed an easy putt, it is you being hard to you're self that is creating the bad feelings and pressure. The problem is called "what needs to be and what is". What needs to be is not reality, what is, IS REALITY, but we don't want to see it because of "what needs to be".