Your body has all the answers and it knows what to do, it’s very similar to a golf club in that respect. The issue with our bodies (the way they function) and our golf swings is that we get in our own way. We do things that create bad habits.
I have now been for 3 sessions of Muscle Activation with Johny Grigg of Evolution Fitness in Basingstoke www.evolutionfit.co.uk. I went initially because I had an acute shoulder pain and I wanted to see if Johny could help my golfing fitness.
In a nutshell this is my understanding of MAT and what Johny does:
Your body is a linked system of muscles and nothing works in isolation.
Certain muscles have certain jobs and when we become lazy key muscles don’t work as well. The result is that other muscles will then work harder and take over the job.
A common example of this is the Glutes which should form the makings of your bodies hub.
How you think, feel and handle stress will affect your movement.
I thought I had shoulder pain, in reality it was my body letting me know that it was not working as a whole and sooner or later something will have to give!
Johny uses a series of tests to determine the function of your bodies hub. He scores these tests out of 10 and for each one I scored a ZERO!
Session 1:
After the assessment Johny went on to ‘work’ certain activation points on my body. As an example push your thumb into your sternum and do this up and down your sternum. You may find a few spots that feel sore when you push them. When you find these spots really push hard and massage your thumb around. Trust me, you won’t apply the pressure that Johny will and it does hurt, however the pain is not lasting at all and the benefits are huge!
Following a series of activations I got up form the massage table to find that my shoulder felt perfectly fine and I almost felt like I was floating around as my body was working so much better.
The following day a very small percentage of the tightness in my shoulder returned.
Session 2:
Part of this session was focussed on my feet! I run a bit and so I got custom fitted trainers which have an element of stability to them. By working on a series of points from my groin to my feet I could almost feel my feet and legs aligning!
We also did some work using the Butt Bungi and swinging a golf club. The difference in stability throughout my swing was remarkable.
Session 3:
Johny was really honest because if we repeated the activation work from the previous sessions it would have a positive effect and I would feel great afterwards. However, the down side would be that it would be temporary.
To make a permanent improvement would need ME to be able to do a series of activations on myself. From a golf swing perspective the best thing for me to do is complete the series of activations before hitting balls.
The results in this session were staggering. We re-ran the tests from session 1 and the results were between 7 and 10.
Below is my list of activations that will take me about 2 minutes to run through.
So that just leaves it down to me to commit and try to repeat the process 5 or 6 times a day.
neal granville golf 