Whilst Covid-19 has presented countless grave health and economic challenges to the world's population, it also provided opportunity for many people to focus their attention on projects that they normally wouldn't have time for.
Turns out PGA Tour players are no different, and in the case of Cameron Smith, we used the enforced break from competitive golf to undertake a very rare, uninterrupted 3 month block of strength training.
Cam plays 25-30 events a year spread across 4 continents and this presents a number of challenges to overcome from a training and programming perspective:
- Varying facilities
- Travel fatigue and jet lag
- Concerns around muscle soreness affecting ability to perform on course
- Physical and mental cost of competing
When combined, these challenges can often render even the most carefully planned training programs redundant. So whilst many golf fans were coming to terms with a prolonged absence of PGA Tour events, I was getting stuck into designing programs that would hopefully elicit the following outcomes for Cam:
- More muscle mass
- More strength
- More power
In a normal season, I'm hesitant to prescribe programs that focus on muscle gain, because the nature of the training volume tends to tighten Cam up (reduce his range of motion), reduce his club-head speed and elicit a lot of muscle soreness.....not an ideal combination for short term performance! But I knew in this case, we could get stuck into some higher volume work because we would have plenty of time to recover from any lost mobility, reduced speed and increased soreness before tournaments started again.
Mid March - Program 1 - General Hypertrophy Focus
We decided with the global virus outlook looking dire and the PGA Tour promising to deliver a 30 day notice before resumption of play, we should focus on hypertrophy (increasing muscle size) until the 30 day notice period was delivered. At that point we would switch to a more familiar power based program in preparation for tournaments starting up again.
Program Breakdown:
- 4 weeks
- 3 sessions per week
- 1 x lower focus (legs, glutes, core)
- 1 x push focus (chest, shoulders, triceps, core)
- 1 x pull focus (back, biceps, core)
- Gradually increasing volume over 4 weeks (more reps and sets to failure)
Training Variables:
Sets: 3 to 4
Reps: 8 to 12
Tempo: 2-0-2 (2 seconds up, no pause, 2 seconds down)
Weight: around 70% of maximum
Rest: 60 seconds, but this can vary when pairing exercises together in supersets or mini circuits
Example Workout - Lower Body Focus (legs, glutes, core):
Example Exercises:
Mid April - Program 2 - Lower Body Hypertrophy Focus
As Cam was about to finish up his first hypertrophy program, there was a fairly clear indication that there would be no play until mid June at the earliest. Knowing that we had 2 more months of training, we decided to continue with another hypertrophy block. This time increasing the focus on the lower body by breaking down the leg work into 2 seperate sessions and ramping up the training volume.
Program Breakdown:
- 4 weeks
- 4 sessions per week
- 2 x lower body focus (1 x quad focused workout and 1 x hamstring / glute focused workout)
- 1 x push focus (chest, shoulders, triceps, core)
- 1 x pull focus (back, biceps, core)
- Gradually increasing volume over 4 weeks (more reps and sets)
Training Variables:
Sets: 3 to 4
Reps: 8 to 12
Tempo: 2-0-2 (2 seconds up, no pause, 2 seconds down)
Weight: around 70% of maximum
Rest: 60 seconds, but this can vary when pairing exercises together in supersets or mini circuits
Example Workout - Pull Focus (back, biceps, core):
Example Exercises:
Mid May - Program 3 - Power Focus
Once we received confirmation that play would be resuming 11th June at Colonial, we made the call to switch to a power focused program. Moving back to 3 days per week, lowering the volume and increasing the intensity (more weight and more speed in the main lifts).
The idea is to get the body used to moving fast again, reduce muscle soreness to allow better quality golf practice, and supplement the with more mobility work to re-gain any lost range of motion.
We also added some extra grip work because Cam discovered that with the muscle and strength gain, plus lifting increased weight, his grip was failing on key lifts.....not such a bad problem to have!
Program Breakdown:
- 4 weeks
- 3 sessions per week
- 1 x lower body focus (legs, glutes, core, grip)
- 1 x upper body focus (chest, back, biceps, triceps, core, grip)
- 1 x combined focus (legs, glutes, shoulders, core, grip)
- Volume remains constant (same sets and reps), aiming to increase intensity (either weight or speed) over the 4 weeks.
Training Variables:
Sets: 4 to 5
Reps: 3-5 for main exercises, 8-12 for accessory exercises.
Tempo: X-0-1 for main exercises (as fast as possible in up or effort phase, no pause, 1 second
down). 2-0-2 for accessory exercises.
Weight: around 85% of maximum for main exercises, around 70% for accessory exercises.
Rest: 90 seconds, but this can vary when pairing exercises together in supersets or mini circuits
Example Workout - Combined (legs, glutes, core, shoulders, grip):
Example Exercises:
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