Fairway Performance Podcast

Shaun Diachkoff

Conversations to help you improve your golf, your fitness and your health! 

  1. 12h ago

    Why Your Sore Back Isn't Actually a Back Problem

    Here is an idea that will change how you think about your body and your golf game forever: where the pain is, is rarely where the problem is.Most golfers, and honestly most of the fitness world, treat the body like a collection of separate parts. Sore shoulder, work on the shoulder. Tight back, stretch the back. But your body does not work like a set of separate boxes. It works like a chain. When one link cannot do its job, another link picks up the slack, and eventually that other link is the one that breaks down.In this episode I walk through the kinetic chain from the ground up: feet, ankles, knees, hips, pelvis, spine, shoulders, arms. In the golf swing, force travels up that chain and every link has a job. If one link is stiff or weak, the force does not disappear. It gets dumped onto the link next to it, which was never built to handle it. A stiff hip does not just give you a bad hip, it overloads the lower back above it and the knees below it. A locked-up mid back forces your shoulders and lower back to do jobs they were never designed to do.I make it real with a golfer who came to us with serious shoulder pain, knots, and the need for treatment just to function. The easy answer was to rest the shoulder. But the shoulder was screaming because it was compensating for what was missing elsewhere, and the pain kept coming back until we fixed what was forcing it to compensate. It is the same story with lower back pain, where the cause is so often stiff hips or a locked mid back robbing the spine of rotation.This is exactly why we screen the whole body before we build anything. We play detective and track the symptom back to its real source, because chasing the symptom is a treadmill. You never go anywhere. So next time something hurts or part of your swing keeps breaking down, do not just attack the spot. Ask what is making that spot do too much. That one question is the difference between spinning your wheels for years and actually fixing the problem.Want to find where to start?  Take our free mobility self-assessment: https://golf-performance-call.vercel.app/free-assessment Follow Shaun: https://www.instagram.com/shaun.diachkoff/ Learn more: https://www.fairwayperformance.com Have questions, feedback or suggestions for future episode? Click here to send me a text!

  2. Aug 24

    Why Your Lessons Never Fixed This Swing Fault

    If you have spent years and thousands of dollars on lessons trying to fix the same swing fault, and it keeps coming back, this episode explains why. Today we go deep on the single most common swing fault I see in amateur golfers: early extension. That is when your hips and pelvis push toward the ball in the downswing instead of rotating and clearing out of the way. If you have ever been told you stand up out of your shots, that is early extension, and it triggers the whole menu of inconsistency: blocks, duck hooks, thin shots, fat shots, and last-second hand compensations just to make contact. Here is the headline. Early extension is not really a swing problem. It is a body problem wearing a swing problem's clothes. And that is exactly why the lessons never stick. You cannot coach your way out of a physical limitation. I break down why your body extends toward the ball for a reason, usually hips that cannot rotate enough, an inability to separate the upper and lower body, or a lack of stability to hold your posture under load. When a coach says "stay down and rotate" and you manage it for one swing then revert on the next, that is not a discipline problem. Your body physically does not have the room to do what is being asked. You are trying to override a physical limitation with willpower, and willpower loses every time. Then I walk through what actually fixes it: freeing up the hips, unlocking the mid back so the upper and lower body can separate, and building the strength and stability to hold your posture. Once the body can do that, the swing change becomes easy, because you are no longer fighting your own limitations. This is why we assess before we train. The limitation driving early extension is different for every golfer, and if you are not assessing, you are just guessing. Fix the body first and you fix the swing. It goes in that order. Want to find out what could be limiting your swing? Take our free mobility self-assessment: https://golf-performance-call.vercel.app/free-assessment Follow Shaun: https://www.instagram.com/shaun.diachkoff/ Learn more: https://www.fairwayperformance.com Have questions, feedback or suggestions for future episode? Click here to send me a text!

  3. Aug 17

    How a Man With a Rebuilt Body Gained 50 Yards at 69

    "I'm too old. I've had too many surgeries. My body is just done." These are the most expensive sentences in golf, because the moment you believe them, you stop trying, and then they come true. This episode is for the golfer who has quietly decided their best golf is behind them. In it I make the case that your history is information, not a prison sentence. It tells me where to be smart and where to build, not whether you can improve. The body adapts at every age. It gets a little slower at 70 than at 30, but it never stops. Then I tell you about Dan. When Dan came to us he had two hip replacements, a knee replacement, a spinal fusion in his lower back, and a triple bypass. If anyone on earth had a reason to say he was too broken for this, it was him. His driver was going about 180 yards, and he was starting to wonder if it was even worth continuing. So we did what we always do. We did not guess, we assessed. We found out exactly what his body could and could not do, respected every one of those surgeries, and built the plan in order: foundations first, then strength, then speed and power. Five to six months later Dan was hitting his driver 220 to 230 yards. That is a 40 to 50 yard gain from a man with two new hips, a new knee, a fused spine, and a rebuilt heart. Not from a new club, but from a body that could finally do the job. If Dan can add 40 to 50 yards, the story you are telling yourself about being too old or too broken probably does not hold up. Drop "I'm too old" and "I'm too broken" from your vocabulary. They are not assessments, they are assumptions. The only way to know what your body can do is to test it and build from there. Want to find out what is actually possible for you? Take our free mobility self-assessment: https://golf-performance-call.vercel.app/free-assessment Follow Shaun: https://www.instagram.com/shaun.diachkoff/ Learn more: https://www.fairwayperformance.com Have questions, feedback or suggestions for future episode? Click here to send me a text!

  4. Aug 10

    Why Your Desk Job Is Quietly Killing Your Golf Swing

    Stand up, put your feet together, and try to touch your toes. Can you do it? If you cannot get close, this episode explains exactly why your swing feels cramped, short, and stuck, and it probably has nothing to do with your technique. In this solo episode I break down the real reason most weekend golfers lose power and consistency. The modern golfer sits for eight, ten, even twelve hours a day, and the body is brilliant at adapting to what you ask of it. Ask it to sit all day and it gets very good at sitting: tight hips, a rounded upper back, and locked-up shoulders. Then you head to the course and ask that same body to make an athletic, full-range golf swing, and it fights you the whole way. I connect the dots between the desk and the tee, from how a short hip turn steals your backswing, to why a locked mid back kills your separation and coil, to how tight shoulders send you over the top and the ball sideways. None of that is a swing flaw. It is a body shaped by your week. But I also push back on the mobility hype, because it gets taken way too far. Mobility is the foundation, not the whole house. Touching your toes will not make you a great golfer on its own, but not being able to will absolutely cap how good you can get. I walk through why we always start with foundations, then build strength through that new range, and only then add speed and power. Your stiffness is not a character flaw and it is not permanent. It is a predictable result of how you spend your days, and your body will respond fast to the right work. Want to find out exactly what is locked up in your body? Take our free mobility self-assessment: https://golf-performance-call.vercel.app/free-assessment Follow Shaun: https://www.instagram.com/shaun.diachkoff/ Learn more: https://www.fairwayperformance.com Have questions, feedback or suggestions for future episode? Click here to send me a text!

Ratings & Reviews

4.4
out of 5
9 Ratings

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Conversations to help you improve your golf, your fitness and your health! 

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