| 1. Describe the 1st Routine.
2. Describe the Ten Routine™ System for striking strength, fitness and flexibility.
3. Do I have to buy a Clubbell™ or Kettlebell? And if so, what weights should I buy?
4. Who are you, Trainer Joe?
5. Would you tell me what martial art the Flow Training comes from?
Especially the horizontal and vertical figure 8 exercises.
6. Do we have any golf swing speed “before and after” studies which show the gains achieved if this routine has been followed for a certain period of time?
7. How do I fix my slice?
The 1 st Routine is a 50 minute workout. It has 3 sections. The first section is 20 minutes. This is the Flow Training proper section.
This first section has four primary drills. They are the Vertical Infinity Drill, the Horizontal Infinity Drill, the Coiling Drill, and the Horse Stance Drill.
The fifth drill (not shown in the demo) is the glue that binds
together the other drills.
The timed length and arrangement of the drills in the first section is as follows:
1 minute Wave Drill
3 minutes Vertical Infinities
1 minute rest
1 minute Wave Drill
3 minutes Horizontal Infinities
1 minute rest
1 minute Wave Drill
3 minutes Coiling Drill
1 minute rest
1 minute Wave Drill
3 minutes Horse Stance Drill
1 minute rest
20 minutes total
The 2nd section is the weight resistance component of the program. You can work with Kettlebells or Clubbells™ or both. This second section has three exercises. The timed length and arrangement of the drills in the first section as follows:
Choose 3 exercises from either the Clubbell set or the Kettlebell set, or from both if you’ve bought a Clubbell™ and a kettlebell.
Do 4 sets of 45 seconds continuous with 45 seconds off for a total of 6 minutes. Rest 1 minute. Go on to the next exercise.
If you can't make the 45 seconds continuous, don’t worry
about it. Keep working at it. You will.
20 minutes total
The 3rd section is the Gravity Drill component. There are two Gravity Drills. Each is performed for 4 minutes with 2 minutes rest in between.
The first Gravity Drill trains steady rotational flexibility
while maintaining a single plane. The vertical vector of the
swing plane is eliminated so in this sense the plane is idealized.
You may be a little surprised at how challenging this drill is when performed slowly, steadily, and continuously with mental focus. This drill is beneficial to any athlete regardless of sport.
The second Gravity Drill trains the all-important rotation and release of the hands through impact. Very few golfers any idea of how rapidly the hands and clubhead must rotate through impact. The ball won’t be compressed properly on the clubface without rapid rotation.
The Ten Routine System™ has 3 Levels: Level 1 or Fundamental Level; Level 2 or Expert Level; Level 3 or Masters Level.
Each Level has ten 50 minute workout routines.
The Routines build upon one another in sophistication and complexity.
The Levels also build upon one another in sophistication and complexity.
Our production schedule calls for shooting three routines a year.
An athlete will generally spend 3 to 6 months on a routine before moving on to the next.
No. The most important component of the training is the flow training drills. If you don’t want to spend the money on equipment, or you aren’t interested in weight resistance work, then you have the option of excluding this component.
If so, then a good option is to repeat the 1 st section for a total of 40 minutes.
As for what weight to buy, these are the general guidelines:
Most men will start with a 15 lb. Clubbell™.
Most women will start with a 10 lb. Clubbell™.
Most men will start with a 35 lb. Kettlebell.
Most women will start with an 18 lb. Kettlebell.
It’s better to err on the side of getting a tool that’s a little too light rather than too heavy. In this system we favor high rep continuous set drills.
I'm nobody special. I have a simple idea: to translate Asia's
dynamic body movement methodologies –in practice for
many, many generations and generally encoded in the high level
and often concealed martial arts systems- into training routines
accessible to the modern athlete.
I see myself as a translator, or as a diplomat trying to get two parties across the table to communicate. I’m not an innovator. I’m not a martial arts master, nor am I a master golfer. I have teachers who are masters. I’m their student.
I don’t have any special degrees. I’m not a world champion with a laundry list of credentials. I’m an ordinary man with a simple idea.
Look at the demo on the website and decide for yourself if you can use this system.
In this First Routine I’m focusing on trying to give people a sense of what it means to move with whole body connectivity. This notion is not very common in our culture, though it’s a cornerstone of the Asian martial arts, and in particular the advanced or “internal” arts. The term “silk-reeling” is used in Asia. This term comes from Chen tai chi, and it was first in Chen tai chi that I experienced it, but I’ve come to believe that the principles revealed in silk reeling are common to all the internal arts. This is because at the physical level they depend upon creating whole body whip action through opening and closing the joints in fine succession from the ground up through the spine and finally out the hands. I find the analogy to golf and other swing sports almost completely perfect.
I’ve also done a lot of work in Pencak-Silat and again these same “silk reeling” principles apply, learning or re-learning how to move with ease in wave-like patterns and then generating sharp, quick and whip-like attack strength. Or take the Ba Gua, the Eight Trigrams Palm, with its constant revolution about a central pivot…again the same principles are at work.
So the answer to your question “…what martial art does flow training come from?” is as you see very wide because many of these arts use these principles. What I’m trying to do is find a way for people to begin to experience some of the benefits, regardless of sport, although golf is my game, which can be gained by using the body in this way. This DVD is the First Routine of Ten Routines, in the First Level of three levels. In later levels, if the marketplace gives me the opportunity, I hope to explore how the emotions and imagination enter into the picture.
But the problem as I see it right now is one of translation. In other words, how will people from our culture be able to comprehend these ideas which are essentially foreign to them? That’s what I see my job as being, of making these practices accessible.
The answer to your question, Steve, is no. We have a swing speed parameter at Bob Freer’s where I train, but the clubhead speed is calculated backwards from the speed of the ball after the ball leaves the clubface. So this measurement is highly dependent upon purity of contact as well as ball flight trajectory. Over the years Bob’s purchased several devices which claim to measure only clubhead speed but he hasn’t gotten any of these devices to function properly.
Also, to really verify increase in clubhead speed you’d have to be able to test it independently of efficiencies increased through golf swing training. My swing has been developing steadily over the past two years of training with Bob, as have others who train with him, so how can I say how much is the result of the Flow Training and how much the result of better swing mechanics?
I have another point to make which is a little more complicated to put together in 25 words or less. Actually it depends upon your, Steve’s, point of view. If you’re a math and physics guy like Bob who has his degree in these subjects and actually taught at the college level before moving over into golf 25 years ago, then even if you have an open mind, as Bob does, it’ll be simply a case of “the jury is still out.” That’s from a conceptual point of view. From the practical point of view, if you’re willing to do the practices, then the results speak for themselves.
You might say that our Western science has a different concept of “speed” than the Asian fighters. For example, I’ve trained in “soft style” or “internal” Iron Palm, which is an advanced and superior method of breaking objects than what you commonly see at demonstrations, which is the “hard style” method.
In the internal training we don’t train at moving our hand “fast.” We drop the hand down onto the bag and only just at contact do we briefly tense and use our breath in a special way. We also must use certain so-called “meditations” before doing the daily practice. These meditations give a clue as to how soft differs from hard. We’re moving “energy” through the body and out to the hands, but we’re not doing it by using tension and muscular contraction as in the hard styles. This “energy” very definitely is responsible for breaking the object. It’s just a different sort of energy than the other…more highly evolved.
From a purely mechanical point of view, the First Routine will give you great gains in dynamic joint mobility through the Infinity Drills, it will ingrain whole body motion through all the exercises but especially in the Wave Drill, the Kettlebells and Clubbells will give you more functional muscle mass applicable through circular and arcing pathways, and the Gravity Drills will get you started on the mechanics of proper release. If you train regularly you will definitely get increases in all the ways I just mentioned. But translating these increases into swing speed is tightly integrated with efficient swing mechanics.
Also, the First Routine is just that, the “first” routine. When it comes to training I don’t believe in quick fix methods. I personally have never benefited from any “secret” that gave me instant and permanent results. I address this remark to the community at large, not to you in particular. My intention with Flow Training is to create a program that people can work with over the course of a lifetime, a program that will over time grow in sophistication and complexity. And the practitioners will advance accordingly.
Real “secrets” are not secrets because they’re concealed from public view. They’re secrets because the public walks past them and doesn’t give them a second look. My hope is that through the reach of the Internet I’ll be able to find enough like-minded individuals to make a go of this in the marketplace. I do believe it’s an idea whose time has arrived. But these ideas do not belong to me. They belong to many generations of practitioners who have faithfully transmitted them.
The last point I’d like to make is that in my opinion these training methods are just a better way to train, period. Ned Lenny is working to apply these methods -as he says on his page - to many different sports, as well as to rehabbing his patients. These methods do not apply to golf only.
My program is a physical training regime. I haven’t worked with anybody on "fixing" their swing. I do have a “rebuild the engine” swing drill which is time consuming and intensive and takes real dedication. I may post this drill at a later date.
I'll give you my ideas about "slicing" and other swing aberrations, but with the proviso that I'm not a swing teacher. A swing teacher is a “coach” who works with each golfer at a completely individual level, for an extended period of time. There are plenty of good swing teachers out there. A good teacher, regardless of their “swing theory”, has a completely impeccable eye for what’s going on in a student’s swing even without the use of video, although video is highly valuable.
You need to find somebody in your local area. My teacher's name is Bob Freer and you can find him at www.bobfreergolf.com.
What I've learned from Bob -and by the way this is me speaking, I can’t speak for Bob- is that all great strikers of the ball have an amazing amount of clubhead rotation through impact. Inferior ball strikers have relatively little rotation through impact.
My premise is that this lack of rotation can’t be cured by deliberately deciding to use one's hands to rotate the clubhead through impact. There may be some exceptions to this. I see the rotation of the clubhead as being the result of a whole body spiraling or corkscrewing movement.
This type of movement is what generates torque, which is the force that needs to be applied to the club. So if the rotation is not occurring from the feet and working its way up to the hands, then any attempt to manufacture this rotation at the hands is almost useless.
The problem as I see it is that people don’t understand rotational or spiraling movement at a kinematic level. The clubhead is square to the line of flight for a split second only, while the ball is being compressed on the clubface. Any attempt to apply linear force cuts the circuit on the power of centrifugal force. But when you analyze most amateur swings you see far more linear force than rotational force.
Inferior ball strikers don’t swing around their bodies, they swing up and down. The hips lift and slide, they don’t turn. The shoulders don’t rotate levelly around the spine on the backswing, nor do they rotate through impact, they tend to “lift” through impact and only rotate afterwards.
The release of the hands is usually blocked in an attempt to keep the clubface square through impact. The whole thing is a recipe for disaster. The average golfer should think hard and long about what it means to swing more like a baseball player and less like a "golfer." Golf and baseball are amazingly similar when it comes to the "simple" act of transferring energy from the ground up through the body, out the hands, down the club and into the ball.
If you don’t have an "around the body" swing then the slice will be a way of life. The short answer is that I do not believe there is any quick fix, despite the multitude of claims to the contrary. You've got to rebuild your swing from the ground up.
If you decide you want a physical training regime that will complement this endeavor, then I do recommend my Flow Training program. But the truth is that you've got a lot of hard work in front of you.
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