Scotty McAlarney is the owner and Director of Golf at Scott Greens Golf Club in Scott Township, Pennsylvania.
Every winter, I head south for two weeks in January and four weeks in March to host four-day boot camps that kick off on the beach in Hollywood, Florida and end on the golf course. After the beach, we have breakfast and head to the range. Each subsequent session starts early in the morning, and all of these sessions begin with various PYGO (Pilates, Yoga and Golf Positions) exercises to warm up.
I created PYGO and the HZ (Hitting Zone) Golf Swing Trainer seven years ago as a way to maximize the development of my golf students with fitness principles instilled in the program.
I limit registration in my Florida boot camps to four participants, though I have implemented the program with a college team that recently traveled from upstate New York to better their bodies and minds, as well as their golf swings. The curriculum includes on-course play and course management mid-week to break up the technical range and swing instruction.
We do a lot within each session, and as a result, our students are tired after four days of instruction. Everyone benefits from the golf instruction and PYGO training, no matter what their skill level may be.
We host a variety of students, including husbands and wives, friends, couples, buddy trips, and more. It’s always inspiring to witness the progress in their swings from the beginning of the clinic to the end. They’re always grateful for the improvement and leave very motivated to continue their golfing journey from there.
As you might imagine with the travel and advanced registration required to participate in our Florida boot camps, our students are serious about golf and committed to their game improvement. Whether or not they are fitness-minded when starting out, they certainly leave more knowledgeable about golf fitness, and they understand the importance of proper warmup and stretching after learning the PYGO principles that we instill into our sessions.
Students are trained to apply these fitness concepts afterward and can go online and access my other fitness programming on YouTube to continuously better their bodies to secure a better golf swing.
I teach balance and ground pressure in the sand to start the week, and once students access the stable ground of the practice range, implementing the actions comes a little easier. I use Pilates and yoga techniques in our exercises and body motion drills. Sometimes my students don’t even realize the progress their making in the mechanics of the golf swing. I’m instilling the right body movements and positions in the swing using specific muscle groups that make these motions more natural and repeatable.
Back home in Pennsylvania, we host a four-week women’s clinic that attracts more than 40 participants to every weekly session. The 90-minute clinics are facilitated by me and my six golf instructors, and they always start with a PYGO warmup period.
Not only is every one of these clinics initiated with PYGO movements to warm up, but all of my group clinics begin with PYGO training. We rehearse some very important swing positions using the slow-motion concepts that are implemented in my PYGO training program.
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