. Winterize Your Body for Better Golf By Eli Haskell MPT of Body Balance For Performance MTT Contributing Writer It's hard to believe that winter is now just around the corner. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were all dusting off our clubs and working the kinks out, looking forward to another spring and summer on the golf course? As winter weather moves in, a select few will be afforded the opportunity to vacation or travel to warmer destinations, thereby keeping a pulse on their golf game. However, most residents of this beautiful state concede that cooler temperatures and less daylight hours end up significantly decreasing our time on the golf course, enabling us to have a great excuse for rusty play in the spring. While winter may keep us off the golf course regularly, it doesn't have to keep us away from golf, and certainly doesn't have to result in poor spring play! So how do you stay connected with golf without playing? The first step is to take an honest and accurate account of your game this past season. Many of us have certain swing tendencies that repeatedly appear and are detrimental to our game, yet we find the summer season is not the appropriate time to make refinements and mechanical adjustments to our swing. The offseason provides a perfect opportunity to get with a PGA teaching professional and fully incorporate the necessary swing changes without sacrificing performance on the course. The second step is to take an honest and accurate account of how your body held up this past season. That's right-your body! Tiger Woods is proving that your body is your most important piece of equipment, and who is arguing? When looking back on the past season, do you recall episodes of generalized fatigue or weakness that affected your performance? What about stiffness or tightness of joints and muscles? Maybe pain or injury caused you to lose crucial strokes. These, and many other physical issues, can all be rectified in the winter months, which proves to be an ideal time for work on fitness. So how do you begin, and what sort of workout program do you need? Well, it is an absolute necessity for golfers to do "golf-specific" exercises to truly maximize performance. To best achieve this, find an exercise specialist who understands the detailed biomechanics of the golf swing and can recognize any underlying physical causes that may be contributing to your swing inconsistencies. The ideal exercises should reinforce correct golf postures and positions and be unique to each individual golfer and his/her existing physical capabilities and structural makeup. A good start is to focus on exercises to release the tight muscles of the chest wall (pectorals and latissimus dorsi) and then strengthen the muscles between the shoulder blades (lower trapezius and rhomboids). This will improve your spinal alignment, which is crucial to increasing shoulder turn potential and efficiency. Ultimately, this improved spinal position will lead to improved distance, accuracy and consistency. So say goodbye to wintertime blues and poor spring performance by fine-tuning your swing and your body this offseason. The result will be better health, a better swing and the potential to play the best golf of your life in 2001! Eli Haskell is a licensed physical therapist and works exclusively with golfers to improve performance and treat golf related injuries. For more information call 1.877.764.0361 or email COGolfFitness@aol.com. Additional golf fitness tips on the web: www.BodyBalanceGolfFitness.com