More Clubhead Speed

During my early years of competing in long drive, I went to an event in Nevada and ran across Mike Dobbyn for the very first time. Believe me, the first time you see Mike you never forget it. He is roughly 6-8”, roughly 280 pounds and has roughly six percent body fat. In other words, pretty much everything that I’m not. Mike would go on to win the RE/MAX World Long Drive Championship a couple of years later. My first thought when I saw him was that if he and I picked up the same driver it was going to feel a whole lot lighter to him that it did to me. My second thought was maybe I needed to get stronger in the hands, wrists and forearms so that my drivers felt light to me as well. Prior to this revelation I had worked hard on my core strength and leg strength and was doing quite well given my size and age limitations. After working on this missing link, I did even better. Here are the two things that I incorporated into my workouts which I highly recommend to anyone looking for more distance (and who, by the way, isn’t looking for more distance?): I had this old training club which consisted of a grip, a shaft and a very heavy weight at the business end. Using my normal grip, I held the thing horizontally to the ground until my hands, wrists and forearms were screaming bloody murder. And subscribing to the theory that what gets measured gets improved, I used the timer on my phone to see how I was doing. Gradually I worked from two minutes up to four minutes and this resulted in at least 10 yards of additional distance. You can easily accomplish the same thing holding three or four wedges together simultaneously. Another great way to strengthen these important, but often overlooked, muscles is to take a bath towel and completely saturate it with water. Then squeeze as much water out of the towel as you possible can. Believe me your forearms will be begging for mercy. But if you do both of these drills on a regular basis, I absolutely guarantee you that your golf ball will be flying farther than ever!