The one piece of gym equipment that can lead to real distance gains on the golf course

Did you ever notice in those big-box commercial gyms that there always seems to be a few pieces of gym equipment no one ever uses? Perhaps you're guility of breezing past an aparatus or two that you can't quite figure out what it's used for.That is often the case with flywheels, which are truly unique and useful machines in terms of training. If you're not familiar, flywheels use inertia instead of gravity to challenge you to move in certain ways. You pull the cables attached to the wheel (concentric movement) and the wheel pulls back (eccentric) with the same amount of force you apply. In other words, the machine adapts to your current strength capabilities while challenging your muscles harder than can be achieved in more traditional workouts.

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Eccentric training, the lengthening phase of muscle contraction, has long been considered valuable in training for golf, not to mention other sports. In terms of injury prevention, the goal of being able to safely decelerate a golf swing comes from your ability to eccentrically move. The lengthening of muscles and other soft tissue such as tendons helps prevent the tears and dislocations that come from quick, jarring movements. As famous speed coach Tom House has often said, you can only move as fast as you can slow down. The same is true of a golf swing. If you want to swing faster, you can't do it safely unless you know how to apply the breaks, so to speak."Golfers need to learn to brake eccentrically and store energy before they can explode concentrically," says Paul Gozbekian, a Golf Digest Certified Fitness Trainer who works with golfers in the Boston area. Gozkebian is recognized by Golf Digest as one of the Best Fitness Trainers in America."For eccentric exercises, there is nothing better than the flywheel. It emphasizes eccentric control and the exercises can be adjusted to transition focus to concentric muscular action. I like a belt or harness squat with rack support for my older golfers. As they get stronger and more confident, I transition them to a split squat with dowel support and then no support."Gozbekian, who demonstrates three of his favorite flywheel exercises in the YouTube videos below, said perhaps the best feature of this gym equipment is that it can be used by begginers and veteran gymgoers alike, because it's self-regulating.