Dr Ben Langdown, Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching with #TeamOUsport, recently had an Open Access paper published for a project that he and his co-author Dr Alex Ehlert ran during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
The paper, titled ‘An investigation into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon golfers’ strength and conditioning and golf practice’ has been published in the International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching.
The COVID-19 restrictions very quickly turned golfers’ routines on their head and forced them to adapt to different practice and training environments and ways of interacting with their strength and conditioning coach. This mixed-methods study surveyed amateur and professional golfers (n = 107), to examine the applied impact of the pandemic on their strength and conditioning, golf practice, tournament engagement, levels of stress and motivation and the impact upon diet and sleep.
The research highlighted that, although training and practice continued to some extent, there were increased levels of stress and disturbed sleep. The lack of equipment reported by over 71% of the participants led to perceptions of reduced physical gains from training during this period where maintaining ‘progressive overload’ was challenging (i.e. with a lack of weights to lift at home). Furthermore, the research highlighted that coming out of lockdown posed a potential for increased risk of injury when normal practice and training resumed. Coaches were advised to monitor workload carefully, especially in future situations similar to the stay-at-home orders (e.g. when golfers are travelling for an extended period with restricted access to training / practice facilities).
This project also involved surveying strength and conditioning coaches during the same period and Ben and Alex hope this will be published soon too.
Congratulations to Ben and his co-author Alex!
Langdown, Ben and Ehlert, Alex (2022). An investigation into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon golfers’ strength and conditioning and golf practice. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching (Early Access).