The Golfer's Two-Minute Workout

Rating:
Summary: Simple, interesting, but ineffective for me
Review: My first thought when encountering this book was that the claims were too outrageous. Thirty yards is a lot, especially after only 6 weeks. However, I think it's silly to spend thousands of dollars on clubs and green fees and not be willing to spend a few bucks for a book.

I have worked out off and on for many years with weights. I stopped my routine and dutifully followed the book. I worked out once a week, doing the exercises as outlined. After about 5 weeks, I didn't notice any appreciable increase in my strength or my driving distance. Yes, the amount of weight that I could lift using their static technique had increased quite a bit. However, the same thing happens when I lift weights normally. Anytime I start a new exercise, I am initially very bad at it and improve quickly to a plataeu.

On the book itself. I was really disappointed that the authors made their claims based on a study of 6 golfers. Just 6! That's hardly enough for any kind of reasonable statistics. Furthermore, they didn't use any kind of control group to verify that it wasn't simply a placebo effect. I would also have like to seen a control group to verify that the extra yardage wasn't caused by people simply trying harder because they were part of an experiment. I kept wondering if these people were practicing at the range more often because of this experiment.

Also, the exercises are hard to perform without a partner. They seem to work better if you have someone to put the weight into position for you. Also, I found that some exercises were hard to do with the equipment I had at home. It seemed like I was expending a fair amount of effort using other muscles just to hold my position. Sometimes, I didn't feel that the target muscles got exercised as much as they were supposed to be.

What will probably interest most people more is that I did indeed increase my driving distance anywhere from 30-50 yards, but it had nothing to do with the book. First, I bought a Momentus weight club. It easily gave me another 10-15 yards. A weighted club exercises muscles which don't get exercised with normal weights. Secondly, and even more important, I discovered that I was hitting all of my shots on the heel of the club. Once I fixed my address position to account for that, I started bombing my drives. For most of the year, 250 yards was about as far as I could drive. Not long after I fixed my address positions, I hit a couple of 300 yard drives and my 3 wood is consistently in the 240-250 yard range. At the beginning of the year, my 3 wood was about 220 yards.

The only thing I did like about the book was the explanation on why static exercises work. They talk in a fair amount of detail on how muscles work. It made sense to me.

Unfortunately, I just didn't see any results.

Rating:
Summary: Simple, interesting, but ineffective for me
Review: My first thought when encountering this book was that the claims were too outrageous. Thirty yards is a lot, especially after only 6 weeks. However, I think it's silly to spend thousands of dollars on clubs and green fees and not be willing to spend a few bucks for a book.

I have worked out off and on for many years with weights. I stopped my routine and dutifully followed the book. I worked out once a week, doing the exercises as outlined. After about 5 weeks, I didn't notice any appreciable increase in my strength or my driving distance. Yes, the amount of weight that I could lift using their static technique had increased quite a bit. However, the same thing happens when I lift weights normally. Anytime I start a new exercise, I am initially very bad at it and improve quickly to a plataeu.

On the book itself. I was really disappointed that the authors made their claims based on a study of 6 golfers. Just 6! That's hardly enough for any kind of reasonable statistics. Furthermore, they didn't use any kind of control group to verify that it wasn't simply a placebo effect. I would also have like to seen a control group to verify that the extra yardage wasn't caused by people simply trying harder because they were part of an experiment. I kept wondering if these people were practicing at the range more often because of this experiment.

Also, the exercises are hard to perform without a partner. They seem to work better if you have someone to put the weight into position for you. Also, I found that some exercises were hard to do with the equipment I had at home. It seemed like I was expending a fair amount of effort using other muscles just to hold my position. Sometimes, I didn't feel that the target muscles got exercised as much as they were supposed to be.

What will probably interest most people more is that I did indeed increase my driving distance anywhere from 30-50 yards, but it had nothing to do with the book. First, I bought a Momentus weight club. It easily gave me another 10-15 yards. A weighted club exercises muscles which don't get exercised with normal weights. Secondly, and even more important, I discovered that I was hitting all of my shots on the heel of the club. Once I fixed my address position to account for that, I started bombing my drives. For most of the year, 250 yards was about as far as I could drive. Not long after I fixed my address positions, I hit a couple of 300 yard drives and my 3 wood is consistently in the 240-250 yard range. At the beginning of the year, my 3 wood was about 220 yards.

The only thing I did like about the book was the explanation on why static exercises work. They talk in a fair amount of detail on how muscles work. It made sense to me.

Unfortunately, I just didn't see any results.

Rating:
Summary: Too good to be true or everyone would be doing it
Review: Not realistic, as most athletes train pretty hard for their spor

Rating:
Summary: Flawed research; not recommended.
Review: The authors' claims are based on a flawed research project. They did before-and-after measurements of driving distance, and found that all eight golfers increased their distance after doing the static exercise program. But almost all of the gains were less than ten yards; only one had the 30-yard gain that is mentioned in the book cover hype. The problem with the research is that it did not include a control group that did everything else the same but did not do the special exercises. The reported gains might have been due to nonspecific effects such as increased concentration or increased confidence. Also, the actual time to do the exercises is a good deal more than two minutes a day: two minutes is the total time with tense muscles, but after each exercise you have to rest, move to another station, change weights, etc. Bottom line: If you are seriously out of shape, probably any kind of exercise will be better than none. If you want to improve your driving distance, take a lesson and cure your slice!