Golf Fitness Best Practice: Create a Golf Performance Culture at Your Facility

Ambrose Coleman is the Director of Biomechanics at Integrity Golf Performance in Frisco, Texas.

Ambrose Coleman on the importance of creating a golf performance culture at your facility:

I have been tasked for the past year and a half with redesigning our golf fitness space, enhancing our golf-specific programming and methodology, and generally adding direction to our golf performance culture. I felt from the start that it was important for us to embrace new things and maintain an open mind in this evolution. We adapted our space to create a golf performance lab with technology and analytics that are the foundation of our work in converting golfers into athletes. My clinical background as a kinesiologist, working with sports-related injuries, enables me to present a more customized approach, rather than just a broad overview. We are data-driven, using force plate technology, strength-testing platforms and 3D motion capture systems to put every new golfer through a complete and precise biomechanical assessment. This is a dramatic shift from the industry standard. We want to understand who they are as individuals, learn about their work-to-sports background and injury history and discuss what their goals are. We analyze their kinetics and kinematics, and talk with their golf coach to pinpoint where they’re struggling. We dissect what they need and help them understand their deficiencies and how they tie into specific performance aspects of the golf swing. With this vital information, we then transition to remedying these issues by developing a team of golf coaches and kinesiology professionals to facilitate these enhanced initiatives. This collaboration is a necessary component of the growth and game improvement of the athlete.

Ambrose Coleman on the business impact of creating a golf performance culture at your facility:

It is important for me to communicate to our clients that they are more than a regular golfer; they are athletes. Once they experience the lab setting, it is clear to them that we go well beyond basic workouts or cookie-cutter fitness regimens. Creating awareness that we’re working with the analytics and data, and eliminating the guesswork and opinion, is a significant promotional tool, and sets us apart from some others in the industry. After all, most of our athletes have gyms at home – they don’t need to come to us to work out. We’re here to troubleshoot, provide direction and accountability, fill in gaps and solve problems in a highly-specialized manner. We get into the weeds with them – moving past the buzzwords that consumers think they know – and into an extensive analysis of their personal performance. As golf performance training continues to evolve, what is generally accepted as the standard is not always sufficient. We’re trying to bring a fresh set of golf practices and establish the art and science of kinesiology as the new approach that veers away from the ‘one size fits all’ philosophy, diving in headfirst with each client as an individual. We have the lab, the technology and the processes to achieve this goal.

If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email ambrose@igp.golf.