Rashmi Attarde, our resident Physiotherapist conducted an engrossing lesson on the body’s energy systems during a recent player meeting at Tarun Sardesai Golf Academy (TSG). She explained how the anaerobic, aerobic, and ATP systems collaborate to fuel every movement during your game. Gaining an understanding of these systems is crucial for long-term consistency on the course, wiser training, and quicker recovery, in addition to performance. So let’s read more about what she had to say.
The Significance of Energy for Golfers
The basic unit of exchange for movement is energy. Your body needs fuel for every swing, putt, and even walking on the golf course. You must understand that your body is a powerhouse and your muscles contain small energy “batteries” called ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which serve as fuel to the body. However, ATP is limited and needs to be continuously refilled with energy from food, which is made up of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates that are further broken down into smaller molecules like glucose.
The intensity and duration of your exercise determine how quickly and effectively your body makes ATP, which is where the three energy systems are helpful.
- Your Turbocharger: The ATP-CP System
This technology gives you quick energy boosts, like the turbocharger in a sports automobile. Your body primarily uses this system when you undertake brief, explosive movements in the game like a sprint, a heavy swing, or a one-rep-max lift. Muscle creatine phosphate aids in the rapid regeneration of ATP, enabling maximal power for a brief period of 0–10 seconds.
The catch?
This energy doesn’t last long. It’s momentary!
It takes some time for your muscles to recover from a series of intense motions before you can resume producing the same level of intensity again. By increasing neural efficiency of your body, training this system enables the brain and muscles to work together more effectively, resulting in stronger and faster motions in the game.
- The Anaerobic System: A Reliable Source of Energy
Next up is the anaerobic system which comes into play for exercises that last between 10 and 2 minutes, such as repeated back-to-back swings or high-intensity interval drills. Lactic acid is the result of this system’s oxygen-free glucose breakdown. Although it’s sometimes misinterpreted, lactic acid isn’t bad for you in reality. In fact, it helps you endure tiredness when you exert yourself repeatedly.
During the meeting, Rashmi also highlighted that golfers must maintain their energy levels throughout challenging swing sequences or while navigating the course during rigorous practice sessions. And to increase the fatigue tolerance levels of the body, golfers must regularly train themselves to this system for sustaining performance without sacrificing their form.
- The Aerobic System: Your Long-Term Power Supply
Lastly, the slow-burning engine of the body is the aerobic system. It gives you the energy you need to function for long-term, continuous activities, like walking the course for hours or playing the entire tournament round. This system guarantees a consistent supply of energy to the body by converting carbohydrates and lipids into ATP, utilising oxygen.
Aerobic system training increases fat utilisation, postpones tiredness, and speeds up recovery. In addition to improving stamina, a solid aerobic base helps golfers focus, think clearly, and make decisions under duress.
The Brain and Energy
Performance goes beyond the physical realm for a sportsperson!
As a player, for your brain to work at its best, glucose is necessary. Focus, memory, emotional regulation, and decision-making are all the essentials of a good golf performance. But the hard reality is that it can be hampered by low energy levels and backfire your performance.
Maintaining optimal nutrition and recuperation aids wonderfully in preserving mental acuity during practice and competition.
Rest and Diet
As we all know, energy replenishment is critical to recovery for a player. Meals after a workout or competition of a game or a practice round should be high in proteins and carbohydrates to replenish ATP and eliminate waste products like lactic acid. Meal skipping can impede recuperation and increase weariness, which will impair the performance of a player in the longer run.
Keeping an eye on your energy systems
Golfers can now track their heart rate variability (HRV), resting heart rate, VO2 max, and strain via technologies like Whoop. Through real-time insight into how your anaerobic, aerobic, and ATP systems are reacting to training, these figures will assist athletes in modifying their recovery and intensity for peak performance.
Smarter, Not Harder, Training
Rashmi’s session’s main lesson was to get the golfers at TSG to train their systems intelligently. Anaerobic workouts increase fatigue tolerance, short bursts increase explosive power, while aerobic exercise increases recovery capacity and endurance. By combining these strategies, golfers may continue to play at their best throughout the round and throughout competitions.
In conclusion
Knowing the energy systems in your body changes how you practise, recover, and play golf. Through efficient use of the ATP-CP, anaerobic, and aerobic systems, golfers can increase their endurance, sustain power, and stay focused under duress. At TSG, knowledge transfer like this session encourages athletes to maximise their performance on every swing and every hole. All thanks to the smart training techniques that we incorporate, we as coaches and mentors are able to guide our young golfers to use their body energies more effectively and efficiently, thereby resulting in better golfing.
We hope this session helped you understand your body mechanics better. For more such insightful sessions, stay tuned. Our next learning session will be out soon!
