Clubhead speed is climbing everywhere you look. Watch a golf tournament broadcast and you’ll see bombers galore, as more and more professionals seem to get faster every year. It seems like that because they are; average clubhead speed has been creeping ever higher on the PGA Tour for over a decade now.
The pros are adding speed. So can you, but there’s a right way and wrong way to go about it. It takes some effort, dedication, and prioritizing the right things to get it done. Here’s how, and we’ll spoil the ending a bit: it isn’t speed sticks.
Clubhead Speed Requires a Runway
Some professional golfers on tour aren’t exactly imposing physical specimens. We won’t name names, but there are some bombs being launched by some rather slender figures. How do they do it? Several factors, with highly-efficient swing sequencing being at the top of the list. Another big factor: tons of mobility.
A golfer who can rotate their hips and shoulders, and do it while maintaining a wide swing arc with high hands, is going to launch it. That’s because that kind of backswing creates a long runway for the club to accelerate. If your ability to rotate is limited, you’ve shortened the runway. Adopt a mobility program that improves your ability to make a full shoulder and hip turn, and the clubhead will have more time to accelerate across a greater distance. That will produce faster speeds.
If you’re reading this and your reaction is to point at Jon Rahm or Tony Finau and comment on their short abbreviated backswings and still-prodigous length, we got it. Now, name a few more with that combination. You probably can’t, because they are the exception to the rule. For the bulk of professional tour players, accomplished amateurs, and weekend hackers, more rotation is better. Build that ability to rotate by dedicating yourself to a regular mobility routine.
Mobile enough already? Good, but make sure you put in the effort to stay that way. Regular mobility work may not seem overly beneficial in your younger years, but it will pay HUGE dividends when you’re older. Nothing will ensure your ability to hit it past your other retired buddies than your ability to rotate while they can’t.
Strength & Power
We’ve been preaching the benefits of hitting the gym for a while now, even going so far as to suggest the staple exercises you should be incorporating. That’s because if clubhead speed is your goal, building your capacity for strength and power is how you do it. There’s no benefit to building a long runway if you don’t have the horsepower to get the airplane up to speed, after all.
Let’s be clear on one thing: you don’t have to build yourself into a veritable powerhouse to gain speed. If fitness has never really been your thing, congratulations, because you’re now in line for “newbie gains.” You’re going to gain a ton of strength and power just by going from doing nothing to doing something, so don’t feel like you have to dedicate hours upon hours in the gym to start making clubhead speed gains. If you’re a regular gym-goer the gains won’t be as noticeable, but there are still plenty of strides to make if you move to a more targeted approach that prioritizes speed.
Speed Sticks are the Last Resort
Speed stick products like the Stack System, Super Speed, or Rypstick can be effective training aids for helping a golfer gain clubhead speed. They are a supplement to a foundation based on mobility and power, however. Too often golfers go to speed sticks as the first and only training option, a problematic approach at best.
For starters, the well worn phrase “you can’t fire a cannon from a canoe” applies here yet again. Never mind being great for your overall health and well-being, your biggest rate of return for improving your body’s ability to swing a club fast will come from the gym and building your strength and power capability. Speed sticks can’t do that for you. In fact, speed sticks don’t actually make you faster at all, they just help you access the clubhead speed you already have.
Speed sticks are also going to increase your risk of injury. There’s a growing sentiment among golf performance experts that at higher speeds, dry swings without impact might be contributing to injuries for lack of the decelerating benefit of impact. It’s one reason why long driver competitors might use speed sticks sparingly, but their real speed training sessions involve actually hitting balls with their driver. The fact is, if you haven’t increased your capacity for clubhead speed through gains in strength and power, speed sticks may strain what capacity you do have.
If you want to add clubhead speed, make mobility work a regular part of your routine. Add in strength and power training to take advantage of that newfound mobility. Then, consider a speed training system after you’ve built a solid foundation. You’ll be on your way to hitting bombs, or at the very least hitting it past your buddies.