Baseball Cross Training

Video Transcript

Let’s have a little fun and talk about some cross training. I have my daughter here, Lindy LaBauve, she is a senior in high school and headed to LSU next fall to play on the women’s golf team. I want to share with you how I got Lindy playing golf. First of all we played softball, Lindy show us a couple of swings just like we used to do in the backyard. I had a batting tee in the backyard and a net and we used to make about 100 swings a night, trying to make a good level swing. With golf in mind I actually had Lindy practice to be a front-foot hitter in baseball. A lot of baseball players hit off their back foot but I actually had Lindy hit off her front foot with golf in mind. We would try to increase the speed, really snap the wrists going through the swing. Now give us a hit, let’s see a nice line drive. Very good, that would take the pitcher’s head off. Now let’s try it with a golf club. When it came to playing golf we did not do anything different, we had the same feelings with the hands and the arms, the only thing that was different was that in baseball we had a strike zone that was up around her waist and now in golf we have a strike zone down on the ground, so she had to bend from the hips to get down to the golf ball. Her swing is very rounded. I often get comments that people think that her swing is somewhat flat, but it is just rounded and she is bent over. She has a classic one-plane swing. The whole time in baseball we had the back elbow up in the air and back behind her where she could swing. We do the same thing with golf, we get the right elbow back and then we release the golf club all the way through. Best of luck to you with your kids. You can do cross training with hockey, baseball and tennis. Pull those good movements from those other sports and apply them to golf, it will be a lot simpler for you.

Mike LaBauve
Kierland Golf Club
15636 N. Clubgate Drive
Scottsdale, AZ 85254
Tel: 480-922-9283

Mike LaBauve is one of the world's greatest short game instructors and teacher to LPGA phenom Grace Park. He is listed as one of Golf Magazine's Top 100 Teachers and Golf Digest's #31 instructor in the world.

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