The Masters Golf Tournament is starting today and Tiger Woods has kind of crept back into being one of the favorites to win the thing.  We know in the past that Tiger Woods has been a workout freak.  He has really pushed himself in the weight room and taken golf fitness to a whole new level.

Then the injuries started happening.

Only in his early thirties, Tiger’s body seemed to be breaking down overnight.  Once a clear cut favorite to break Jack Nicklaus’s record for most career major tournaments, now it wasn’t such a slam dunk.

I’m not a golf fan and don’t know his specific injuries, but we know he had a couple surgeries on his knee.  Most experts felt that he put so much torque on his legs when he swung, that contributed to his knee injuries.

Then he came back, but clearly wasn’t the same golfer.  After working on his game for over a year, he then started getting issues in his Achilles tendon.  Not the place I would want to get hurt at.

Tiger rebounded from that and recently won his first PGA tournament in months.  I don’t even know how many it has been, but it’s been awhile.

Back in August, I put together a workout that I said I would do with Tiger Woods to help his golf game.  What I want to do now is to analyze that workout and maybe tweak it some more to see how we could help Tiger stay healthy enough for the remainder of his career.

Although, let me go on record to say I don’t want to see him break Jack Nicklaus’s record.  I’m a Columbus boy where Jack is from, my dad and Jack were frat brothers, so I’d rather see the Golden Bear keep this record.  But, that is a topic for another day.

When it comes to injury prevention, the biggest component that I preach is balance.  Is the body balanced?  For a golfer that gets to be harder and harder.  Like a baseball player (unless you are a switch hitter), you are violently swinging in one direction.  All your force is going one way.  Thus, over time you will obviously be a lot stronger in that direction.

Ultimately, one side is going to dominate the other side.  When you have such a difference in strength/power levels between sides, there often might be some injuries.

What I would do with Tiger first is a Functional Movement Screen (FMS).  The FMS will give me a starting point to see if his muscles are firing the way they should be for proper movement.  It will also help me identify any muscle imbalances.  This way if I can spot any, then we can start implementing corrective exercises and get those areas fixed.

Those corrective exercises would take up a good chunk of his workout for the first several weeks.  We would also do some active recovery work consisting of foam rollers and stretching.

Once his body starts responding to the corrective work, then we would start introducing some exercises to work on body balance.  Basically, I want to make sure all muscle groups, especially opposing muscle groups, are being hit.

This means for legs, not only do I want to hit the front of the thighs, but also the posterior chain (back of the thighs).  For core, I want to hit the abdominals, lower back, and obliques.  Ideally, I also want to hit them not in isolation, but with movements where they are working as one (such as the medicine ball wood chops I discussed in that Tiger Woods workout).  I also want to make sure I’m hitting the upper body with push/pull exercises.

Finally, I would probably add some forearm work to help with the strength in the wrist and help prevent any additional strain on the elbow.

The more balanced your body can be, the less of a chance for injuries to occur.  Like I stated earlier, I don’t play golf all that often, but one time a client took me for a round of 18.  After the 18 holes, one side of my body was really sore, while the other wasn’t.  Just think if I did that on a daily basis, how lopsided the strength would be.  I’d really look funny with so much muscle on one side of my body.  That is why we do this workout.

Hopefully, whoever is designing Tiger Woods’ workout is considering all these issues.  I’m sure he can afford the best of the best – even though he didn’t contact me 🙂 – and his strength coach is putting everything into play.  But, in case he hasn’t, make sure you direct Mr. Woods to my post so he can keep his body less injured as he gets older.

Actually, scratch that.  If he gets healthy and starts winning majors again, then Jack’s record will be in jeopardy.  And as I’ve already established.  I don’t want that.  Sorry Tiger.