We're all pretty good at reading facial expressions. We know when someone is happy and we know when someone is sad or upset. But here at the Joey D Golf Sports Training Center, we know a very unique facial expression. And we see it every time someone comes into the facility for the first time. They may have read our blogs and books and they may have seen Coach Joey D or Coach K-Wayne Tullier on TV, but nothing prepares them for those first initial steps onto the training floor. Everyone gets that same look on their face. It's a look that says: "Whoa! This is much bigger and much cooler than I ever expected!"

I've been in the fitness industry my entire life and I've been working with professional golfers for over 20 years. I'm proud to be the strength, conditioning, and biomechanics coach who helped three phenomenal players reach the number one spot in the World Golf Rankings (Vijay Singh, 2004, Dustin Johnson, 2017, and Brooks Koepka, 2018).

To paraphrase Jim Nantz, 2020 has been a year unlike any other. And, generally, not in a good way. While we could go point-by-point through everything that was wrong with the past year, we'd rather take this holiday season to look back at all the things that went right in 2020. Here's a dozen things we're thankful for...

In a lot of parts of the country, the golf season ends right about the time you're finishing the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers. Depending on your winter plans and travel restrictions, you may get in a few rounds in Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head, but for the most part, once the calendar gets flipped to December, your golf season is over. 

If you've read any of our blogs or eBooks or hung out with any of our coaches for more than 30 seconds, you're probably familiar with one of our primary philosophies: you can only swing the club as well as your body will allow you to. Usually, when we say this, we're referring to the bones, muscles, and nervous system that make up the human body. When they've been optimized to play the game of golf, they'll allow you to swing the club pretty efficiently.

People don't think enough about balance. Most folks assume that once, as toddlers, they're able to successfully stand on two feet and start to walk, they've mastered balance and don't have to think much about it from that point on. Unfortunately, balance is the least understood component of sports performance. And no sport will expose your inability to maintain your sense of balance more quickly or more profoundly than golf. That's the bad news. 

If you've been reading our blogs and eBooks for any length of time, you know that when it comes to training our players we take a Big Picture look at how the body factors into the golf swing. And it doesn't matter if that player just won $15 million and the FedEx Cup or if he just won $80 bucks and his weekly foursome. If you're looking to play your best, you have to train your entire body to be successful. But while a lot of players may do some quality upper-body training and lower-body training, many may be sabotaging their game by not focusing enough -- or correctly -- on the thing that ties the upper-body and lower-body together: the core.

In the fitness world, there’s a lot of emphasis on building strength through resistance training, whether you’re pumping iron or using your own bodyweight. There’s a good reason for that: increased strength comes from lifting increasingly heavier things over and over again. But strengthening alone won’t necessarily translate into bigger drives. To get the most out of your body, you also need to be focusing on flexibility.

If you’re an adult reading this, can you imagine your body being completely different 6 months from now? I’m not talking about packing on a few pounds; I’m talking about gaining 3-5 inches in height, dealing with those long, gangly teenager arms, and having a center of gravity that’s constantly changing as you get taller.

Golf has a lot of rules and we don’t always want to follow all of them. You don’t want to be the party pooper and ruin all the fun. We get it. But what if there was a way you could exercise good golf safety without being a stickler for the rules? Even the thickest skulls can be seriously hurt by a golf ball hitting them in the back of the head. Golf safety is a no-brainer (no pun intended).