There is a difference between going to the range without a plan and practicing with a purpose.
If you go to the range, get a large bucket and randomly hit all 14 clubs in your bag, you’ve come to the right place. Almost everything works out better when you are prepared with a plan. You can focus on benchmarks, improvements, repeatability and consistency.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how to structure a week’s worth of practice that yields results.
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It’s time to eliminate three-putts on the green for good.
Eliminating three-putts can make the largest difference when it comes to reaching that next milestone with your scores. Three putts typically occur in the five feet and under range around the hole.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates three simple tips to help master short putts. These tips will help amateurs combat common habits and mistakes.
Say goodbye to anxiety or the yips around short putts and get ready for your scores to drop.
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Eluv.io won the Innovation Hub grand prize at the SEICon conference in Las Vegas.
Serban Simu, co-founder of Eluv.io, explains their video technology platform that simplifies video and allows for targeted content and ads. Simu’s company won the Innovation Hub grand prize at the SEICon conference in Las Vegas.
Eluvio is the creator of the Content Fabric, a next-generation software protocol solving the generational challenges of video on the Internet including distribution, monetization, provenance, and authenticity. The Fabric runs as an open global network and replaces brute force legacy streaming distribution (ingest, packager, transcoding, origin server, and CDN segment distribution) with its ‘content-native’ end-to-end protocol.
You don’t always have to swing easy when it’s breezy. Being able to create different flighted golf shots will change the way you combat weather conditions.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how to execute a stinger with a few simple steps. These simple steps will have you hitting this shot like a professional.
Practice these steps to hit a stinger next time you are at the range to build up confidence before taking it to the course.
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When the difference between an Olympic medal and being left off the podium can boil down to hundredths of a second, every little detail matters on race day. Perfect execution, no unnecessary drag and, of course, a racing suit.
Tech suits, as they’re called, can impact everything from how swimmers move through the water to how they feel mentally preparing in the final minutes before taking their marks.
“The first time I put on a tech suit, I felt like Superman in the water,” said Ryan Murphy, now a three-time Olympian headed to Paris. “I felt like I was flying.”
Speedo is a global leader in developing tech suits for elite swimmers with the Olympics always front of mind. From the first non-wool swimsuit in 1928 to debuting its Fastskin suits at the 2000 Olympics, the 110-year-old innovative teams aim to push the boundaries of what’s possible in swimming.
Along with Speedo, TYR and Arena are also popular tech suit brands seen at elite competitions, including the Olympics.
“The performance is won and lost by the athlete,” Speedo senior vice president Simon Breckon told For The Win. “Our job is just to enable them on that journey.”
At the 2024 Paris Olympics, Speedo swimmers will race in two new tech suits: the Fastskin LZR Intent 2.0 and the Fastskin LZR Valor 2.0. Designed with input from elite swimmers and inspired by sharks (seriously!), athletes can pick the most comfortable — though still skin tight — and buoyant option, depending on their events. The more coverage of a suit, the more efficient it is.
Team USA Olympic swimmers Kieran Smith, Regan Smith, Caeleb Dressel and Ryan Murphy (Speedo)
“For me as a sprinter, I’m looking for compression,” said Abbey Weitzeil, a lifelong Speedo wearer who’s headed to her third Olympics.
“My favorite thing about it is that when I dive in — I wear the closed-back Intent — I feel like I have good body position, and it holds my body position and my body line.”
Speedo’s 2024 Olympics suits incorporate elements from sharks and space exploration
There’s a noticeable difference between a regular training suit and a tech suit. Murphy said in a tech suit, he glides further off the wall compared with his regular practice one, estimating it probably shaves about a second off his times for every 50 meters.
For Speedo’s tech suits, the goal is to reduce friction in the water and improve hydrodynamics. Teams of designers, scientists, materials experts, garment engineers and researchers want it to feel like a second skin, locking swimmers into a smoother shape and lifting them in the water.
Team USA Olympic swimmer Ryan Murphy (Speedo)
Speedo actually does draw inspiration for textiles and design from one of the scarier sea creatures: sharks.
Led by Aqualab, the company’s central innovation team based in London, researchers examine how sharks and other creatures move through the water, said Coora Lavezzo, Speedo’s head of innovation. The Fastskin LZR Intent, for example, mimics sharks’ skin with optimized textured panels to maximize efficiency in the water.
“When you look at sharks, you notice that their scales, essentially — we call them denticles — they’re different across the body of the shark,” Lavezzo said. “So in some areas, they’ll be bigger. In some areas, they’ll be really small, and they’ll vary according to the curves of the shark. … We try and take that thinking and apply it to a person’s body.”
It’s not a new concept for Speedo, however. The first Fastskin suit that debuted at the 2000 Sydney Olympics was a full-body suit inspired by shark skin to reduce drag.
Speedo’s latest innovation for both the Intent and Valor suits is a “bespoke coating” inspired by protective coating developments for space exploration, Lavezzo said. She and her team poured through 50 of Lamoral Space Tech’s coating recipes to find the most water repellant one for the 2024 Olympic suits.
Team USA Olympic swimmer Caeleb Dressel (Speedo)
“When you see athletes splash themselves or you see them getting out of the water, they’re glistening because you see these water droplets kind of running off of them,” Lavezzo said. “And that’s really down to the water repellency that we use.”
But designers, researchers and engineers can’t work in a vacuum, so they enlist athletes early in the development process. They share designs, swatches and as many prototype suits as possible with swimmers and ask for feedback.
“It’s normally about how I feel [about] my body alignment in the water, or whether there’s too much compression or not enough,” Weitzeil said. “They’re always changing seams. They’re always changing fabrics and how to put those together. So if I feel like something’s not as compression-y in a certain spot, or if I feel like my body alignment’s falling out of place, I’ll tell them that for sure.”
Speedo testing its suits with elite swimmers (Speedo)
The future of Speedo’s tech suits in a post-technical doping world
Innovation in tech suit designs can produce truly exceptional results. Famously, Michael Phelps won his record-breaking eight Olympic gold medals in 2008 in a LZR Racer suit. The suit included polyurethane panels, which were impossible for water to saturate, trapping air and leading to increased buoyancy.
The suit’s popularity exploded, and competitors tried to replicate it with neoprene, Breckon said.
Michael Phelps competing during the men’s 100m butterfly swimming semifinal at the National Aquatics Center during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in Beijing on August 15, 2008. (FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)
But the “super suit era” caught the attention of World Aquatics, swimming’s international governing body, over concerns about them being akin to technical doping. So new rules were established, like no more full-body coverage and suits must be entirely made of fabric, no plastic or rubber panels.
Speedo works closely with World Aquatics to ensure new designs remain within the rules, Breckon said. But sometimes, there’s a little lobbying too.
“Technology now has kind of outpaced some of the guidelines in our sport, and we need to look at the balance of that,” he said.
Lavezzo and her Aqualab team have been working on suits for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics for about a year and are already looking ahead to the 2032 Brisbane Games.
Team USA Olympic swimmer Abbey Weitzeil (Speedo)
Future developments could include suits tailored to varying body shapes or event- or stroke-specific suits, Lavezzo said. One already existing suit features power bands specifically to aid hamstrings when the power dynamics shift for backstroke.
Suits could also provide real-time biometric data to swimmers, but unlike many sports, that practice currently isn’t allowed in swimming. Perhaps Speedo can convince World Aquatics to move the goalposts.
“The layman’s example I give — which my innovation team laughs at — is basically the Black Panther, the suit that returns the energy,” Breckon said. “And how do you actually get the energy and put it back into the muscle groups? How do you isolate the muscle groups and drive power [where] it needs to be, depending on your stroke?”
Chipping into the grain can cause a lot of unpredictable and frustrating shots. Your club may get stuck in the grass resulting in a chunk or sending it over the green.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and professional long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how to combat that stubborn grain with a small swing adjustment. It all starts with being intentional with the shot shape you are trying to create.
It’s time to feel hopeful around the greens and sticking your chip shots close.
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Delivering the club head through impact straight and efficiently during the golf swing can be difficult when your arms are working against you.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates a tip to help get rid of the dreaded ‘chicken wing’ in the golf swing. This forces the golfer to flip the golf club through impact with inconsistent results.
Oftentimes, this causes the golfer to top the ball and deliver the club too early or late.
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There is nothing worse than being uncomfortable while doing what you love to do.
There is nothing worse than being uncomfortable while doing what you love to do. This week we are talking about hip pain, and how to alleviate some of that pressure while playing golf.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how to adjust your foot placement in your set-up to combat and relieve some of that stubborn hip pain.
We recommend seeking a professional medical opinion to see if this fix is right for you.
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Perfecting your start line when putting can make all the difference in your game on the greens.
Whether you have a long or short putt, it’s important to have a consistent stroke and start line to better line-up and read your putts.
This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek demonstrates how to perfect your start line at home using only a quarter. There is no better way to work on your putting while watching TV at home, and all you need is a piece of carpet.
If you’re interested in any of Averee’s fitness content, click here.
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This week, Golfweek’s fitness guru and long driver Averee Dovsek and Bradley Borne from Lab 18 are in the gym demonstrating a quick and easy dynamic warm up that can be done anywhere with just a golf club. This exercise is great for extension and rotation.
