When the weather outside is frightful, but a game of golf sounds delightful…  Try these indoor tips to get that golf fix without getting wet.

1. Practice putting. This is an easy one to do as long as you have some carpet – or even hardwood floor – somewhere in your house. Use patterns on your carpet or any straight edges (walls or doors) to focus on making a good straight stroke. If you have a hardwood floor that is very flat, try some slow putts and see how your ball rolls.

If you are imparting any sidespin or jumping the ball it will show up. Most carpets or rugs will have a grain on them. This can be a great educational tool to see how the ball reacts across, up or down the grain.

2. Work on your posture and alignment. Posture and alignment are some of the first things we work on when starting to play golf and also some of the most important. Touring pros will never stop working on posture and alignment.

Every day you wake up, your body will most likely have a slightly different posture. Some nights you sleep funny and one side of your body feels stiff. This can throw off your posture and alignment. So take the time on those rainy days to check yourself out in front of a big mirror and find out what posture pitfalls you are prone to.

3. Work on developing swing feelings. When we get to the practice ground it is very easy to just start hitting balls without any intention. Sometimes this can be good. But when you are working on swing changes it can be great to have the time without the temptation of hitting balls to just play around and feel.

See what you can feel when you try different movements, watch yourself in the mirror and experiment. You may just find that feeling to take with you to the course.

Note: If you live in the San Diego area, be sure to check out my post “Scratch Golf Moves into the Great Outdoors”!

It’s not too late to set goals this year. The New Year has passed, but year-round goal setting can help you immensely to achieve what you want.

One key aspect in health and fitness is consistency. Set a goal to work out a certain amount of times each week for the next month. It doesn’t have to be a hectic schedule. Just figure out what is manageable for you and try to stick with it. After a month, review to see if it’s working in your schedule and if you are getting the results you want.

Life is unpredictable, so it’s important to review. Your schedule might have changed, or you might want to add in another workout if you have the time and want to get better results.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

A great way to set goals that works with the above is setting S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Smart goals stand for:

Specific

Measurable

Appropriate

Realistic

Time-Bound

Here’s an example of a S.M.A.R.T. goal:

Specific: You want to lose 5 pounds.

Measurable: You should be able to objectively measure your progress. Weigh yourself weekly and also measure yourself. If your weight is staying the same but your measurements are going down, you’re losing fat but gaining muscle. Therefore, you’re healthier and could still be considered achieving your goal.

Appropriate: The goal should be appropriate for you. For example, if you’re considered underweight for your height or your doctor is telling you you’re too thin, then this isn’t an appropriate goal for you. If you’re carrying an extra 5 pounds, then this would be an appropriate goal for you.

Realistic: If you have a health issue that makes losing weight difficult for you or you tend to struggle with losing weight, set your goal longer than the typical goal of losing 1-2 pounds per week. Also, you don’t want to be losing more than 1-2 pounds per week because you’d be losing muscle and not fat. That would be detrimental to your health and not a realistic goal to improve your health.

Time-bound: If you lose 1-2 pounds per week, set your goal for a month or 5 weeks for losing 5 pounds. If you’re 150 pounds, you would write your affirmation or goal as “I am 145 pounds by February 11, 2012.” If you’re planning to ultimately lose more than 5 pounds, you could say, “I am 145 pounds or less by February 11, 2012” in case you’re one of the lucky ones who loses 2 pounds per week.

Posts on Goal Setting

Here are some other posts on goal setting you’ll find here and at Christina Chitwood Performance:

Go for It with All Your Energy!

Bring in the New Year with Goals

Challenge Yourself

New Year, New Goals

Scratch Golf Accelerated is going places … Oaks North Golf Course in Rancho Bernardo, San Diego, to be more precise! This move is a very exciting one. Relocating to the 27-hole Ted Robinson designed course gives Scratch an opportunity to provide more on-course teaching and still keep the features that make Scratch great – such as the HATS level system, Scratch Skills Handicap System, Scratch golf curriculum and Showtime!

I am happy to be running the operation at Oaks North and look forward to developing Scratch Golf San Diego into THE place to start, improve or perfect your golf game.

I encourage anyone interested in training with Scratch Golf San Diego to contact me at 619-985-7511 or tomparkingolf@gmail.com. I will be happy to supply you with any information you require or schedule a meeting to show you what Scratch is all about.

Here are a few of the benefits of training with Scratch:

• Scheduled training for putting, approach shots and full swing
• Golf-specific fitness training
• Peformance data collected and tracked via online profile
• Full curriculum of practice drills by world leading teaching pro Rick Smith
• HATS level system makes progression fun and easy for kids
• On-course training

I wish you a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year!

Does cleaning excite you? I know I’m not a person who gets excited about cleaning. However, I do get excited about fitness – especially Zumba!

I’ve always been a busy person, and I was raised in a family who likes to be busy. When it comes to fitting in workouts, that’s a priority for me. My mom feels the same way.

My mom and I love having clean houses, but we found our workouts came first. So we decided to combine cleaning and working out. My mom’s been testing it out to see if it inspired her to clean more often. As her Zumba instructor, I’ve taught my mom many Zumba classes (even on Skype), and she’s learned a lot of the Zumba moves from me.

My mom works out for an hour three times each week. Zumba is her favorite workout (either with me as her instructor or by using Zumba DVDs). We decided to make one of her workouts a cleaning workout where she vacuums, mops wood floors, and dusts while doing Zumba.

This has become a fun way for my mom to do workouts. Plus, her house is looking ever so sparkly! So I want to share with you tips to make your cleaning enjoyable by combining it with dance and Zumba.

1. Go to a Zumba class near you and use some of your favorite moves from that class while you’re cleaning.

2. Buy a Zumba DVD and use the steps you remember – or make a point of learning specific steps to use – while cleaning.

3. Use your hips as much as you can while cleaning. You could have a goal of trying to keep your hips moving the entire time.

4. Play your DVD on a TV or nearby sound system. Or you can use my mom’s technique and play the Zumba music in your head. If you really want to go for it, sing or hum the Zumba music.

5. See how much you can work up a sweat. Try setting a timer for a specific amount of time, and keep on cleaning and dancing until the timer goes off.

Enjoy staying in shape and having a cleaner house!

When you think of ways to improve your performance, fitness might be one of the first things you think of. How about flexibility?

Improving your flexibility lengthens your muscles and helps your posture, making you appear more confident. So working on your flexibility is actually one of the more important things to do when working to improve your performance.

Here are 5 ways to improve your flexibility:

Read the entire article

Now that the winter months are upon us, I wanted to share some tips with you to help you score well and enjoy the game.

Lots of layers – OK, it might sound like a no brainer, but wrapping up warm is a must for when the colder weather arrives. To help keep you at the perfect temperature, wear several layers rather than one thick, bulky one. This will help you stay mobile, and you can add or remove layers to stay at the right temperature.

Play the yardage you are hitting that day – When the weather is cooler and wetter the air becomes thicker and denser, so the ball won’t travel as far. If you hit your 7 iron 150 yards on a hot summer’s day, be fully prepared to see that same club fly 135-140 yards in the winter. Warm up on the range and try to gauge how far you are hitting the ball that day.

Adjust your clubs – A lot of modern drivers and woods are adjustable. You might consider playing around with the loft and weighting to maximize ball carry, as with wet fairways you will lose distance from lack of roll. A golf simulator is the perfect place to do this. Try adding some loft if you can and add weight to the bottom of the club. These will both promote a higher ball flight and more carry. There are a lot of factors to consider here though. Your personal swing, driver head, shaft and ball will all affect the outcome of a drive.

Get a grip – With wetter ground, it can be easy to slip mid-swing and make a mess of things. Make sure you have shoes with sufficient traction. Golf shoes are more affordable now than ever and comfier to wear. So staying as steady as a mountain goat has never felt so good on the feet.

I hope these tips help you stay on the fairways and greens during the next few months. Stay warm, have fun and have a great Thanksgiving!

Photo Credit: Photo by Ard Hesselink at Flickr Creative Commons.

With the summer gone and holiday season approaching, fitness may be out of mind. But that doesn’t mean it has to be. You can keep fit and healthy this holiday season by getting involved in fitness for a cause.

That way you’ll be training for and participating in an event that you feel strongly about, whether the actual event is this fall, winter, spring, or summer. Training for a cause will motivate you to do more fitness this fall.

Here are some ideas of fitness activities I’ve seen as part of a cause:

• Running
• Walking
• Biking
• Swimming
• Triathlon
• Zumba
• Dancing
• Aerobics
• Ice Skating

Any kind of fitness style that you can do can be done for a cause. And about any sport for fun or as a more serious sport can be done for a cause. There are many different causes you can get involved in, such as research for birth defects, Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis, or various types of cancer.

My mom told me about a timely idea of someone involved in fitness for a cause. The Love Rally mission for November is in support of Ed Roshitsh Running for Vets from Sea to Shining Sea, who’s training for a Run Across America in March 2012.

Check my post on Top 10 Ways to Perform for a Cause for more ideas.

Happy training for a cause!

Photo Credit: 2010 Race for the Cure by Diogo Vieira at Flickr Creative Commons.

Picture an archer competing in the Olympic Games. His first arrow of the competition and he says to himself, “Well there’s a board. I’ll just aim to get it somewhere in there.” You can imagine him probably not having a good performance that day.

Now picture another archer who walks up, first arrow and confirms to himself which part of the bull’s-eye his arrow will hit before he takes aim. This guy is so much more likely to put in a good performance!

OK, now transfer this logic to your golf game. On the tee on a 380 yard par 4. You could pull a driver straight away and aim for the fairway. Or you could decide that you want to play your second shot from 130 yards and that you would prefer to be on the left half of the fairway, 5 yards in from the rough for the best angle to the green.

The first guy’s target was the fairway – a target that is around 30 yards wide and 300+ yards long. His target was nearly 2 acres! That really doesn’t help your body send the ball to the target. The second guy was much more specific. He aimed for a pinpoint target 250 yards down the left side of the fairway. Chances are he was able to picture his shot a lot more vividly.

Picturing a shot in your head will help you create that shot!

Pick a SPECIFIC target for every single one of your shots.

Doing this will definitely help your game and make it more enjoyable. It won’t guarantee every shot you picture will come off just as you saw it, but it should help!

Enjoy!

Photo Credit: Photo by diskychick at Flickr Creative Commons.

Halloween = Candy. Or does it? Halloween is very much associated with lots of treats – treats around the house, kids trick-or-treating, and eating treats yourself. You can do some of this and still have a healthy Halloween. But I’m going to give you some tips on how to have an even healthier Halloween.

If you are supervising trick-or-treaters such as your own kids or a group of kids trick-or-treating, enjoy the exercise you will get walking from house to house or shop to shop.

If you are in charge of choosing the trick-or-treating route, choose a route that is safe but will give you lots of exercise, such as hilly areas. If you’re trick-or-treating at the mall, switch between upstairs and downstairs often and take the stairs when doing so.

If you are spending your Halloween at home, which means you will have trick-or-treaters coming to your house, try to do an exercise DVD in between trick-or-treaters. If you don’t have a break, alternate between standing and sitting for 15-minute periods. You could walk or jog in place while waiting for the next trick-or-treater. Also, you could keep a jump rope in your entrance hallway and jump rope while you wait for the doorbell to ring.

Make some healthier Halloween treats for your kids.

Here are a few ideas:

• Melt a healthy dark chocolate (high percentage of dark chocolate) and dip apples into it.
• Pop popcorn kernels and add butter and salt (sparingly). If you have a popcorn maker, use that. If you don’t, put the kernels in a paper lunch bag with the top folded over, and pop in your microwave. You can have this on its own or with something else. For a fun activity, make a healthy version of popcorn balls, such as Bite-Size Honey Popcorn Balls or Sticky Sweet Popcorn Balls. As wonderful as homemade treats are, though, I wouldn’t give these to trick-or-treaters (since you don’t want to give homemade treats because of others’ safety concerns).
• Try a Pumpkin Protein Smoothie.
• Check out 15 Hauntingly Healthy Halloween Snacks.
• Experiment with a no-bones-about-it vegetable skeleton or one of the other Healthy Halloween Treats.

If you are working in an office building this Halloween, try to walk the stairs during your breaks. If you have enough time, walk outside. You are most likely going to be tempted with candy in the office, so plan to earn each piece of candy through a certain amount of exercise.

Once Halloween is over, try to be creative with ways to get candy out of the house. A great way to get your kids involved in keeping a very limited amount of candy is to do what my mom did with my brother and me and let your kids choose a certain number of favorite candies while you buy back the rest. Your kids can use that money to buy a toy or something else they want or save it up. Give the extra candy to people who want it. My mom has a link to a character-developing activity for sharing surplus Halloween stash at Raising Figure Skaters.

Have fun with your Halloween activities! Try not to go too overboard with the sweets, but enjoy them when you have them. Try to do a certain amount of exercise to help you feel good and make up for any candy and extra treats you do have.

Happy Halloween!

Here are a few descriptions of terms you will probably come across when playing golf.  

Airshot – Ooops! After you set up to the ball, if you swing and try to hit it that’s a shot. Even if you miss it. An airshot.

Backspin – Pretty much all golf shots have backspin. From chip shots to drives. The more loft a club has, the more backspin it will give the ball. Put simply anyway….

Chip – A chip shot is a shorter shot from just off the green that stays low and runs along the ground.

Fat – When the clubhead hits the ground before the ball. Usually leaves you with half the fairway stuck to your club and lengthy shot to follow.

Gimmie – When a playing partner says “that’s a gimmie” they mean that your ball is close enough to the hole that you don’t need to putt it out.

Hook – A ball that curves to the left in the air (right-handed golfer).

Hosel – the part of the clubhead that connects to the shaft.

Loft – Loft is the angle of the clubface from vertical. Different clubs have different lofts. The the higher the number club the higher the loft it has. A driver has around 10 degrees loft; a lob wedge has around 60 degrees.

Pitch – A short shot, usually from 10 to 80 yards. A pitch will go higher than a chip shot.

Pitchmark – When a ball lands on the green from a height, it will make a mark on the green. Use a pitchmark repair tool to flatten down the mark.

Pull – A shot that goes to the left in a straight line (right-handed golfer).

Push – A shot that goes to the right in a straight line (right-handed golfer).

Shank – Not to be confused with a prison stabbing, but nearly as ugly. When a ball is struck too close to the heel and catches the hosel, it shoots off at 45 degrees and looks nasty. Not pretty.

Slice – A shot that curves to the right in the air (right handed golfer).

Thin – The opposite of fat. When the leading edge strikes the ball near the equator. Gives a low shot that probably shoots through the green.

Photo Credit: Photo by New Brunswick Tourism at Flickr Creative Commons.