Tales from the first tee
Stories about my life experiences and others as I work at one of the premier golf clubs in Charleston, SC. Interviews with golfers around the world that have one thing in common...the pursuit of excellence on a golf course and everything else that happens along the way.
Tales from the first tee
The Fourth Pillar: Why Golf Fitness Matters More Than Your New Driver
Kerry O'Rourke, founder of Core Golf Fitness, shares her expertise on golf-specific fitness training designed for golfers 45 and older. We discuss how proper physical conditioning can help you enjoy pain-free golf longer while potentially improving your scores.
• Golf-specific fitness differs significantly from general workouts or other sports training
• Core Golf Fitness programs can be done at home, while traveling, or in a gym with minimal equipment
• TPI (Titleist Performance Institute) certification focuses on the science of how the body and golf swing interact
• Golfers fall into two categories: "gazelles" (flexible, tall, smooth swingers) and "gorillas" (powerful, muscular players)
• The pandemic forced a pivot from in-person training to online coaching, creating more accessibility
• Equipment alone won't improve your game if your body lacks proper mobility and rotation
• The "fourth pillar" of golf is physical fitness, equally important as swing mechanics, equipment, and mental approach
• New Year's resolutions often fail because they're simply excuses to delay starting for two months
• Motivation doesn't appear magically—it begins with deciding you're worth the effort
If you're interested in improving your golf fitness, visit CoreGolfFitness.com to connect with Kerry for a free consultation and learn more about her 12-week program.
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Welcome to another episode from Just Tales, a monthly hybrid of fictional and non-fictional stories that compel me to rant. There'll always be a golf story or two laced into my blog because, well, it's where I spend a good amount of my recreational time. So, whether you're a golfer or not, if you're a skeptic, doubter or open-minded, this is the place for you. So kick back and listen. Well, welcome to the end of January 23. How many of us have kept up with our New Year's resolutions? Eat less, move more, drink less, save more, complain less, shag more. I just saved a quarter from my swear jar there.
Speaker 1:Resolutions, as you'll hear from my guest Kerry O'Rourke, are a thinly veiled excuse during the holidays to prolong certain behaviors that got you to a point of dissatisfaction about something, about yourself, your relationship or your finances. I used to work with this marketing guru who used to always say, if not now, when. I always thought that was a great call to action to stop procrastinating, because for most of us, when you say if not now, when and we're in the winter time it's like well, let's wait until January 1st and then we'll set some goals Sometime. In mid-November last year, when that daylight savings time hit, the early sunset just drove me to get hungry early, like 4.30, 5 o'clock, so I eat earlier and then I exercise less and I probably drank more as well. At the same time, I started to get these Facebook posts from a golf fitness professional. That provoked a thought in my head why not re-engage myself into better fitness so I could play more pain-free golf longer Also? Hey, if I did that, maybe my scores would come down. But there's a lot more that goes with that, like other golf professionals swing coaches, golf fittings, things like that but I think it's multi-pronged and one of them is fitness.
Speaker 1:I happen to play with a few guys that walk every time they go out and play, and when I started walking with them, I found that as we're getting up to the green, I am 30 yards behind them. I'm a slow walker. I'm a slow walker because I'm not used to it and I'm not fit. So I reached out to Carrie O'Rourke from Core Golf Fitness and if you want to contact her, you'll be hearing me say this throughout the podcast CoreGolfFitnesscom, and Core is C-O-R. That's kind of her initials that she got froma girlfriend, keri O'Rourke coregolffitnesscom. So I reached out to her and after a 30-minute consultation on what she provides.
Speaker 1:I made a sizable commitment to myself to re-engage my engines and commit to a 12-week program. So this week, carrie was kind enough to carve out some time out of her insanely busy schedule to talk about her commitment to helping others find better balance in their lives. And so, without further ado, here's. Carrie is Kerry. So I have the pleasure of speaking with Kerry O'Rourke, founder of Core Golf Fitness, who over the past eight weeks, has assumed the role of my golf fitness guru and trainer, providing me specific exercises, eating tips and motivation to approach aging in a way where it no longer gets in the way of golf. It actually helps golf. So welcome to the podcast, keri.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that wonderful introduction.
Speaker 1:It's my pleasure. Yeah, there are a bunch of topics that I'd like to cover over the next. Call it 30 minutes or so. Most importantly, importantly, I'll just go through a few of them and we'll get to them what core golf fitness provides, how golfers can connect with you for a free consultation, and what can a golfer expect of you and the course, and what can they expect of themselves over a 12-week program. So so let's start with. What is Core Golf Fitness? What's it all about?
Speaker 2:Core Golf Fitness is about how to create your best body specifically for golf. So this is a fitness program-based company and it is all for golfers, and I specifically guide towards golfers that are age 45 and older and what the needs are for that age group and population of golfers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's my target audience as well.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so when your students connect with you and decide this is the right thing for them, where do they practice the stretching, the exercise program? Is this something where they have to go to a gym, or can they do it at home?
Speaker 2:This is 100% designed to be a program that you can do at home, but also, more importantly, a program that you can do while you are traveling. Most of my clients are either very busy at work because they're at their height of their careers or they are retired. In both of those cases, I have found that my clients are traveling quite often for pleasure or for work, so very specifically designed that you can do this in your home in a small amount of space. You could do it in a gym if you already have a membership, and you can 100 percent do all of this in a hotel room.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would have been me 10 years ago, like I traveled 50%. It would have been great to have a motivation and an option instead of thinking about where you're going to go to dinner or where you're going to go have drinks for at least a half hour to do something that's good for yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, you would probably still be thinking about those things while you're traveling, right?
Speaker 1:But at least it offsets it, right yeah.
Speaker 2:And it does keep you on track and an eliminated excuse of I'm traveling and I don't have a place to go do this. And when you're traveling for your career and you're doing it on a weekly basis, it's really easy to fall off track because you're going to restaurants, like you just said, and you're not at home. So I'm providing you the tools the tools to stay on track and continue to be a good golfer. Which is also an important part of a lot of people's careers is the golf, the time on the golf course.
Speaker 1:So you're TPI certified. Explain a little bit about what that is and what was the process like for you to become certified.
Speaker 2:TPI stands for Titleist Performance Institute and it's the world's largest organization that actually studies the science behind the golf swing and how the body and the golf swing are related, and again sponsored by Titleist. And how to become certified. Actually, it was pretty tough. I would say it was harder to become certified as a TPI trainer than it was for my initial personal trainer certification, because they're really digging into the body for golf, for example, the kinematic sequence, which is how the energy travels through the body. Tpi has taken the data from hundreds and hundreds of golfers PGA golfers to everyday weekend golfers and looked at exactly how energy transfers through the body. So what's really cool is just getting the science of what we need to do for our bodies in order to be better golfers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just think of so many times when I was younger, I used to be a gym rat and uh and golf became a sport of mine when I, you know, thirties on, uh, it became important for business and so I wanted to get better. So I'd go to the gym and I do what I thought were like really good exercises, and then, after I think I'm in my eighth week now with your um 12 week program and some of them are the same but many are not Um, like I would focus on biceps, um, because who doesn't want that beach bicep, right? But in your program you're focused on other connective tissues, other muscles, other joints, and biceps just doesn't seem to be one of the things that you focus on.
Speaker 2:I do not focus on biceps in this program because bicep flexibility does not affect the golf swing, but, to your point, having beautiful biceps on the beach is important. So the the thing is that with you that before I went through the TPI certification, I thought I knew what was important for golf. And it's just such a nuanced sport because you're moving your body in a way that's completely different than any other sport. It's different than a basketball player who's running and jumping and changing directions, or even a tennis player it's not exactly the same, but most similar to a tennis or a baseball pitcher. But any sport that's involving running, throwing, catching, it's using your body in a more traditional way, and I have two sons that are college golfers, so I spend a lot of time with college golfers. I've talked to a lot of them. They're being trained in the gym by the exact same trainers that are training the football team.
Speaker 2:And power is important. All that strength, the deadlifts, the things that you did when you were younger in the gym. They are important, but they're missing the key components to golf. So, as you said, as you went through the program, some things are similar and, of course, some things are important to our body, regardless of our sport or activity. But you are also learning those special little pieces of the golf game that the college golfers are missing from their trainers, that you've been missing as a power lifter throughout your life. So that's what I'm focusing on this program so that it can serve somebody who's never gone through a fitness program before, but it also can fill in the cracks for someone like you who has a history of understanding what to do in a general fitness workout.
Speaker 1:You know what's interesting? You said something about baseball and pitchers. So we've got a guy who works over at the golf course across the street from me and he was an ex. He pitched for Clemson, then he pitched in the minors in the major leagues and this guy has a move to the ball like not many other people I've seen. He just seems to know how to use the size of his body and how to use the force of the club. So it just seemed like and I've seen this before pitchers seem to pick up golf quicker than a lot of other athletes.
Speaker 2:It's a similar movement pattern. So the pitcher is also winding up like our backswing and then releasing their power when they pitch it, like as we do our downswing. So it's similar. There's also a weight transfer. It's also using a single side of your body repetitively, so you're going from zero to a hundred very quickly in the golf swing as well as in the baseball pitcher movement. So a lot of our speed exercises that we use for golf are based on the same type of speed exercises that baseball pitchers use, and in fact in TPI we had an entire lesson from a popular baseball pitching coach.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting. You say that because I think it was last week when I did it, where you had this thing where you actually have either a towel in your hand or you've got weights or cans or something like that and you actually go through this fake throwing with each hand. You do each one a few times the other one and you know it was interesting. I started doing it. Then I saw you do it and the follow through like what I noticed with that is the follow through just gets you to torque and rotate your body in a certain way, but not your entire body, like your legs do a little bit of it.
Speaker 2:And then the torque. You know, I guess it replicates what a pitcher would do, right? And I also want to emphasize what you just said doing both sides of your body, because it is important. We create a lot of imbalance in our body as a golfer going on one side, so even a tennis player is swinging on the right side and the left side, forehand and backhand, but in golf we never switch positions. So when you are working on your body, you want to work against those imbalances that are created on the golf course in order to keep your body, even just for the rest of general life.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. So are these stretches and exercises similar to the ones that the PGA pros practice year-round?
Speaker 2:ones that the PGA pros practice year round. I will tell you that I personally am following every golf fitness group there is and over and over and over again, I see the players doing the exact same moves, because most of them are working with TPI professionals at this point and we're all trained in the same fundamentals. So occasionally I'll see Dustin Johnson doing a workout and I'll send it to my kids. You guys do this exact same workout. So, yes, there's over time, with this creation and the popularity of TPI, we've been able to standardize the golf workouts so that it's becoming more knowledge to the population of what's required for golf. So, yes, you'll see a lot of the same things over again. You'll see college players warming up on the golf course. In the same way I'm showing you how to warm up on the golf course. So that should give you some reassurance that what we're doing is working, because it's become standard for the professionals and the college players.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the um, a few things about that. So the performance of pros, college players and pros has changed and I think, uh, and changed to the better, and I think too, there are two parts of that. Certainly, everybody likes to talk to equipment, and we'll get there in a second. I have a little uh, a question to ask you about that, question to ask you about that. But I think I'm seeing much fitter golfers than I did, like the Walrus when I was a kid growing up, and Lee Trevino Great golfers, great hand-eye coordination but they didn't seem to be as fit as guys like Gary Player and people that took fitness very seriously.
Speaker 2:Well, I wish this would be in a situation where I wish I you could see what I was doing. But I'm trying to describe, describe this the best I can is over the history of tracking athletes and athletic performance. I'm going to go back to pitchers. The athletic performance of pitchers has increased exponentially in a straight line over the years. So very slowly and steadily uphill. As in all athletes, they've become stronger, faster, better in all the points that they're measuring.
Speaker 2:So if you look at golf as a sport, the improvement of the athleticism of the professionals stayed pretty stagnant for a very long time. It slowly increased. But then you know who we got Tiger Woods, who created this whole. Golf is a sport and golfers are athletes. So there is actually a huge jump in our athleticism from the data, from the speed of your body, from the strength of your body, from the distance that they're hitting. So what was the year of Tiger Woods? 19, 20 years ago or so. So you saw this jump in the athleticism of golfers and that's also when we started tracking golfers as athletes. So it went from stagnant for 50 years to huge jump with Tiger Woods and now our levels of athleticism are mirroring the increase of other athletes. So we finally caught up as a sport in improving our athleticism of our golfers and our professional golfers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting when you listen to some of the sports announcers and they'll see some of the really fit golfers. They'll say something like well, he could have been a good defensive halfback.
Speaker 1:You know it's funny they're now comparing them to other physical sports athletes in other physical sports, which basically underscores your point is athletes, really people that like golf now and want to do well, have to be a better athlete for themselves. They have to train themselves better for the long term of what it takes to be, because the other guys out there are doing it and they're hitting the ball. Look what happened to Bryson DeChambeau after the pandemic when he comes back and he has this whole different fitness regime and he became a force to be reckoned with.
Speaker 2:For sure, and there's exceptions to every rule, but that's going to hold true for every single sport.
Speaker 1:There's always exceptions.
Speaker 2:There's always going to be a great baseball player who is overweight and eating a cheeseburger, and there's always going to be a golfer who, along the same lines, is eating Snickers and cheeseburgers on the golf course. But if we want to look at, if we want to look at generalities, that golfers are taking a much closer look at their bodies, their fitness, their warmups, their recovery as well and their nutrition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let me touch on a few personal things about Carrie O'Rourke.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Has fitness been a driving force in your life, your entire life? Or is it something that you, uh, you adapted to later, you know, as you got older?
Speaker 2:Um, well, in high school I was a dancer, so I wouldn't say I was an athlete, but that's still fitness and exercise At the time that I was doing it, and dance has changed so much as a sport as well as a time that I was doing it. It wasn't as competitive as it is now, which is probably true for every sport. For me, it's always been a lifestyle, a part of life, I would say. I had my kids. It became more important because I had to have a more structured schedule than when you're in your 20s and all you have to do is go to work. So it's just a part of my life. It's been a part of my family. It wasn't unusual, when my kids had their friends sleeping over, that I was doing a workout in the kitchen on a Sunday morning because they were too young for me to leave at home. Because it's important to me, it's always been important to me.
Speaker 1:So how do you get exposed to golf then?
Speaker 2:Oh well. So when I was a child, my mother was determined to make my brother and I country club kids. She grew up lower middle class, her dad was a mailman and her mom worked in a bakery, so it was always her dream to provide a better life for her kids. So my brother and I had tennis lessons, golf lessons, you name it from a very early age, but I would say when I became an adult and got married, my husband was a scratch golfer. So I picked it up to do with him, join the ladies league and then eventually having kids of my own. It's a sport that both of them picked up and really took to and have been successful in. So it's, it was really a matter of happenstance that it's a part of my life. It was never my first choice, but sometimes you go along for the ride and find something that you enjoy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had the same experience. So both my parents same thing. My dad. Dad all of a sudden starts doing well, they decide to join a country club and expose. It's the same thing tennis and golf and I thought golf was okay but it didn't become something.
Speaker 1:I really wanted to do a lot until I got into business and I saw one of the ways that I could get with some of the decision makers, to a lot of these customers I was in consumer products so we would deal with these We'd go to a lot of events, a lot of charity events that they'd hold, and one of the ways that I could get in front of them was by being a better golfer and have them want me in their foursome and then get to know them and then it became an addiction for me. So both your boys, max and Ryan, are competitive golfers. Now obviously their bodies respond differently than your target demographics of golfers 45 plus. They're younger, they're more flexible. You were saying something about one of your boys is like Gumby, I mean he could really twist and turn his body with ease. Do they subscribe to some of the TPI exercises despite the fact that they're so limber?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to expound on that. So TPI puts golfers into two categories gazelle and the gorilla. So I am lucky enough to have two sons that fit each of these categories, so I've been able to experiment on both of them as I've honed in on my fitness skills. So a golfer would be.
Speaker 2:Who is a gorilla is somebody who's stockier in build. Their power is really coming through their muscles. You can just see someone's muscles creating the power in the distance in their golf swing, and that's my older son, max. So he's 5'10". I think he's about 190, 200 pounds right now. He hits the gym hard. He likes to do deadlifts and really heavy weighted squats.
Speaker 2:He's a lot less flexible, though, and he's one of the reasons I got into TPI because he had a swing coach when he was in his middle school years who said your kid needs to get more flexible, and I had no idea, even as a personal trainer, how to do that for golfers. So he's a gorilla. When I watch him swing, it's just full power that comes through his hips and his glutes. My younger child, ryan, six foot three, 150 pounds, tall and super skinny, and he just has a giant lever and he makes the swing look easy, he's calm, he's smooth, he's so flexible he can put his body into a pretzel. So I've been lucky that I've learned how to work with them differently in the gym. And yes, they both subscribe to the TPI philosophy. We talk about it frequently. I'm so lucky that they look to me for advice as a parent of teenagers on anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, so it's fun and they're pretty capable of doing their workouts on their own, but quite frequently they'll just come back and say, hey, what can I do differently this week? What can I work on? We do their TPI evaluations on a regular basis, just to see where they're at. So does that answer your question?
Speaker 1:Oh, it's really good. Well, it's interesting that two types of interesting Cause. When I was younger I was a gazelle and then, over time, my body changes and I become a gorilla that thinks he's still a gazelle, and it's it has. It's led me to a lot of pulled muscles, it's led me to a lot of thinking my body could do what it used to do, and so what I'm finding with your program is it's actually helping me get more towards gazelle. Now are they doing similar exercises? The fact that one is categorized as more gorilla, strong, stocky, and the other one's a gazelle.
Speaker 2:The fundamentals are the same when you're looking at the weightlifting aspects of it squats, deadlifts, some powerlifting, shoulder presses, chest presses With Max, my older one, he has to work a lot more on flexibility, so he does spend a little bit more time on his mobility work based on his body. The younger one has to spend a little bit more time on the weightlifting because his body's still developing. And when you see those tall and lanky boys, and they're when they're 17, 18, and then they go to the gym for three, four years and their body finally catches up and they're 22. And they get those muscles. So he's working on some muscle strength right now and trying to build his chest muscles. His biceps and triceps have really grown the last few years.
Speaker 2:But your body, biologically, is going to react in certain ways too. So you have to kind of look at where you're building and where it's not going as fast and concentrate on those areas. And same thing in flexibility and mobility as well. So where are you lacking? It's so much easier to go right to the things that are easy for us.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say that. I was just going to say most people. There's more pain and learning curve in doing the things that are harder for you and it's easier and you feel like doing the things that come naturally and you actually think you're doing something because you're working out and you feel actually think you're doing something because you're working out and you feel good when you're done, but you're missing something that could help you. So how do you coach people that try and avoid the things that are more difficult for them?
Speaker 2:It's a matter of the person one being open to coaching, and that's that's the primary reason why somebody would join a coaching program with me because they value the accountability, the group aspect and the coaching aspect. Some people are intimidated by having someone looking over them because then you're held accountable and responsible and as an adult, you have the choice of whether or not you want to be held accountable. That's totally up to you. That's the thing. It's a matter of repetition. It's a matter of me checking in with people, and sometimes those methods work and sometimes they don't, but I'm just going to keep chugging away and watching out for my golfers.
Speaker 2:I do care about people's progress and I celebrate everybody's wins, and I'm here for when you have a struggle or if you even have a question.
Speaker 2:As far as like, I can't figure out how to fit this in my day and sometimes we go through those conversations and come up with a solution that we didn't know we were going to have in the beginning. So, for example, I was speaking to a golfer this week and as we were going through his week, I discovered him saying over and over again that he has an hour drive in the car and that was exhausting to him. So we decided that he was going to try and do our 20 minute workouts before he left his office. So at the end of the day, everybody cleared out For whatever reason he had a responsibility to be there for an extra hour. I don't know if it was to answer the phones or what the reason was. So he said I could actually do it then, and so that's what he started doing and it's worked out because he knew for him getting in the car at six o'clock, driving home, getting home at seven there's no way it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:And it seems like an obvious answer looking backwards, but at the time in our phone call it took us some time to just get to that conclusion. It's sometimes it's just a matter of two brains working together to try and find a solution that seems obvious at the end and that's part of coaching, versus purchasing an app that gives you no personal no feedback feedback, no feedback, no accessibility to anybody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really so, so interesting. I agree with you a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:And I will tell you that my clients who are whether it's been golf or general fitness for the 15 years that I've been doing it, my clients who are the busiest, who the husband and wife both have big full-time jobs, They've got kids in middle school or high school and their in-laws are living with them those people who make the effort and make the time are the most successful compared to. I'm allowed to say this because I've been a stay-at-home mom before. My stay-at-home moms are the worst clients for me because, although they do have a lot of things to do during the day, their schedule is less structured and it's very challenging for those people to find one hour a week to do a workout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an interesting lesson to learn, but the busiest people are the most successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's talk more, a little bit more about you. You, uh, you trained as an engineer in college. You actually went into the field as an engineer. So you must be a linear thinker. How do you go from engineering to a profession of fitness?
Speaker 2:I was a civil engineer when I graduated from college and for many years I was a construction engineer and then I had babies. So that is a turning point in many women's lives and I chose to be a stay-at-home mom, and I was lucky enough to have that option. But as I got a little bit older, I wanted to get back to something for me and I did not want to work 50, 60 hours a week as an engineer. So I was at the gym, taking my boys to Lifetime, putting them in the daycare every day, doing my workouts. It was fun for both of us. It got us out of the house and I happened to meet a man there who was a personal trainer and he suggested it to me. He said hey, kiri, I see you here every day. Why don't you be a personal trainer? And that was the first time I'd ever thought about it. Coincidentally, he was planning to move to California to become a fitness model, so he was selfishly looking for some trainers to take over his book of business. So I did go to the local college here, became certified in personal training. I received some of his clients. That was 15 years ago and I still have two clients from that original group of people that work with me.
Speaker 2:From then and as time went on and my, my children became older and my time became more available, I did go back and interview for jobs back in the engineering field, but I still didn't want to.
Speaker 2:I would be starting over again in the beginning of the process of a career at that point 35, 40, whatever different ages I looked in my personal training career was moving forward. It's an extremely difficult business to create a living. It takes time, but I had the time to do that. So I built up my personal training and eventually that became my full-time job. And then when I became specialized in golf fitness, after that it was 100% feasible for me to have that as a full-time career and full-time income. So it was a progression over time from engineering to training. But also I think that logical mindset, my education, has helped me be an entrepreneur, because not only am I just giving people workouts but I'm running a business which is similar to a doctor. They're going to med school not realizing that someday they're going to have to know about accounting and most are not good at it.
Speaker 2:Right, All that other stuff, the scheduling and the computer systems and the billing and the finances. They just want to help people. So I feel like my background has helped me to be able to be structured in my own life, to be in my own schedule and to run a full business, not just give people workouts.
Speaker 1:That's a great story. So then 2020 happens and there's this pandemic shutdown. How did that affect your ability? Because you do a lot of personal one-on-one training, not just what we'll talk about in a second. Is this connection through Facebook, social media and your videos. How did that affect your business?
Speaker 2:In one day I had a business to having no income. We literally in Michigan. Here I walked into the gym for clients. The manager said the governor just announced that all gyms are closing at 3 pm today. And that was very scary because I was also an independent contractor and unemployment originally did not cover independent contractors, it was only actual employees. So, like many people, we all struggled to figure out what to do and to pivot, and most of my clients were willing to try online Zoom training. So I went in my basement and I did a workout with my clients that they were doing from home and it turned out.
Speaker 2:A lot of people enjoyed that, especially, I would say, my moms, who didn't have the time to really drive to a gym. So now suddenly, let's say, you're my 5pm client, you can put your lasagna in the oven, do your workout with me. Leave your workout, lasagna done you, go on with your life. So people really enjoyed, started to enjoy the flexibility of doing something virtually. It was a time saver. They were still seeing the results of the fitness, we still were able to interact, and it was at that time that I was forced to look at my own business and what I was going to do, moving forward. And also I really liked the.
Speaker 2:I also liked the flexibility of not being tied down to one-on-one training where somebody's dog got sick and they decide not to come train with me and then I didn't get paid for that appointment. So anyone who lives by appointment whether you're a massage therapist or maybe a hairdresser or even a plumber somebody cancels on you, you lose that appointment, you lose that income, and that's a hard place to be, and especially during COVID when we were all shut down. So that was a slow evolution of my business and I knew for myself personally I need something different in my life. My kids were going to be graduating from high school soon and I was going to be filled with the opportunity to do whatever I wanted for me, and I wanted to create a life that would give me a lot more freedom than what I had from being tied down to one-on-one appointments in the gym. So that's how I pivoted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it just seems like your attitude is more instead of woe, is me, it's okay. Now what? Oh?
Speaker 2:Rich. I cried at home plenty of times.
Speaker 1:But maybe that's what drew, maybe it's the crying and it's like, okay, I gotta stop the pity party. Um, because I have a really good friend. She's a yoga and pilates instructor and had the same situation. What she's found now interesting is a lot of her clients still prefer they got so used to the zoom thing that it's like wait, I don't have to put this, I don't have to get in a car. You know all of these, uh, what became inconveniences are like I could get the same out of this by doing it from home.
Speaker 1:So I don't know if you said yeah, well, obviously you're now your business model. Uh has gone to an online. You know you've added online, which is how I found you, um, or you found me. I'm not sure who found who or how you ended up on my feeds, probably because my algorithm is golf, golf, golf.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's yeah, Golf golf golf Guys over 40.
Speaker 1:People over 40. And that's kind of my. That's also my target for my podcast. It's the same thing.
Speaker 2:And it's learning how to manipulate the use of social media. The rules keep changing, so when you're running a business through advertising and social media, that's a challenge in itself, but it has a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 1:Are you only using Facebook or are you using other social media sites?
Speaker 2:Primarily, facebook is where I get the most feedback. I've tried Instagram and other venues of marketing, but because of my target market being a 40 age, 45 to 70 market, that's where those people are.
Speaker 2:They're not really on Instagram and they're not on Tik TOK. So some other fitness coaches that I know who are doing virtual training, but they're targeting 20-year-olds or 30-year-olds. They're primarily finding things through Instagram. But I also know that my audience is consuming my content. They're watching it, they're learning from it. So whether or not they interact does not necessarily mean that they are or are not going to join me as a customer and a client.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get it. So what is the number one reason someone should consider your 12-week course?
Speaker 2:The number one reason is because I know how to give these very specific results. I am offering a very target market and target set of results. So if you are an older golfer, well, I don't even want to say older, because I'm 48. I don't think I'm old. So if you're in that age category, you're a baby. It's so funny, Everything's all relative when you, when you turn 30, you think you're so old.
Speaker 1:But you're not relative, right, right, well, it's also. You lead a very fit life, so age becomes. Uh, is is a non, it's a non-conversation.
Speaker 2:Uh, to me, I think, all those, you know, leading a healthy lifestyle will always help you feel more energetic, which is also helping you feel and look younger. But back to your question yeah, Number one reason.
Speaker 2:The number one reason is because you're looking for the very specific results that I am delivering, and that is to improve your golf flexibility, your golf mobility, to have better rotation in your swing, to feel like you have better endurance, specifically for golf. So, although you are getting some general fitness benefits, at the same time, if you're looking to feel better in your body for golf so that you can continue to enjoy the game for the rest of your life, really, this is why you come to me. You come to me for those specific reasons.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I know why I came to you and it's, it's, uh, it's been very effective, particularly as we get into the winter months. So the golf industry does a great job of luring golfers to buy this year's new drivers, putters, wedges, irons. The seduction is the hope that all this new computer assisted technology is going to improve your game. How do you compete with that?
Speaker 2:Well, computer technology 100% will improve your game, but I'm not here to compete with them, because I'm offering something different than that. So it's the same thing as your cardiologist is not competing with your anesthesiologist they're both in the medical field but they're offering two completely different things. So if you decide to purchase your brand new driver, your brand new putter or a beautiful bag, a new pair of sunglasses, a hot new shirt from the country club that you got to visit, that's all great and that's going to make you look sexy and and sophisticated on the golf course. But if you step up to that first tee and you've got half a bit of rotation and your swing looks bad, nobody's going to care how nice your driver is and that driver is not going to help you If you your body is slow, if your body is stiff, if you're tired, if you're not warmed up.
Speaker 2:So there is value, of course, to having equipment and you do want to have properly fitted equipment, but you need to buy something new every year. No, you want to concentrate on all aspects of your golf game. So, just like you're going to go see your cardiologist if you have a heart issue and your asthma doctor if you have asthma issues. You need to see a golf fitness professional to make sure your body's tuned up. You wanna go to a swing coach to make sure your swing mechanics are correct and that your swing is efficient, based on what your body can and can't actually do. And you do wanna have properly fitted equipment. Whether or not you buy something new every year or the latest technology or something more reasonably priced, that's a personal choice, but at least make sure it's the proper equipment for you.
Speaker 1:Bam drop the mic, Right answer.
Speaker 2:That's the right answer.
Speaker 1:So I got one more thing. So January is resolution month. You know things like dry January. People lose weight, exercise more, get organized, learn a new skill, live life to the fullest. It's now getting towards the end of January and most people that have established those resolutions have given up on their resolutions. So what do you—because I've heard you speak about that too. We talked about it in December. What are your thoughts on resolutions?
Speaker 2:My first thought is that the new year's resolution used to do nothing in November and December because all of a sudden I like that's true.
Speaker 2:Cause that's what it is. It's the oh, it's the holidays. I'll just start in January. That is, two months out of 12. Resolutions are total bullshit. They are, first of all, an excuse to delay the start for the two months and they are a reason to feel guilty and bad about yourself on January 5th because you've done nothing, nothing. So let's just get rid of this idea of resolution altogether and let's just talk about creating habits in our life.
Speaker 2:And motivation does not come out of thin air. So if you want motivation, first of all it comes from your brain. Your brain says hey, I've been thinking that my body feels a little stiff in my swing. I'm not as flexible as I used to be. Maybe I should do something about it. You'll probably think about that for realistically, six months a year, two years, five years, and then you see something that sounds like it could help solve your problem. You come across my Facebook page, my website. This sounds interesting.
Speaker 2:I've been thinking about making this change. Nothing's going to force you to start One day. You just have to start. And the hardest part of any new fitness program, of a diet, of even a new job or starting a new hobby, even deciding to start, and once you commit to yourself to start and do it and make changes and follow through for you, then it's all easier. But that first day, the first day you walk into the gym to meet me, everybody's nervous. The first day that you get into a call with me, people are nervous. I get it. I'm nervous too when I start new things. But you just have to decide that you're worth it and that's it and you want it. But you just have to decide that you're worth it and that's it, and you want it.
Speaker 1:Teach a person a fish and they eat for a lifetime, and that's I think that's what your program does. So how do people? What's the best way for my listeners to connect with you so they could have a consultation and decide whether this is the right thing for them?
Speaker 2:The easiest way is to find me on social media.
Speaker 1:Core Golf Fitness. There's no E in core.
Speaker 2:It's core right.
Speaker 1:C-O-R. Which kind of are your initials, right Carry?
Speaker 2:O-R-K. Yeah, I like it. Yeah, one of my clients came up with that when I was trying to think of a name for my business, so I thank her every day because sometimes other people have ideas. Yeah, so I do have a website and you can message me through the website, but the best way to get a hold of me is either through Instagram or Facebook Hergolfitness or Keri O'Rourke.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so for all my listeners, I've been doing this for eight weeks. The reason I have Keri on the podcast is because it's working for me. It's done a lot of things. I have walked more, as, which is part of it. There's an ancillary part of this. One is the, the actual the clinic, the things that you're doing with her through her videos. But then there's this other part of walk more and there are some nutrition tips as well that also help. And then and then last week I ended up getting a dog that loves to walk. So I am all in. I think it's a great program and give her a call. Give her a call, and I think your secret sauce is like it's twofold One is your expertise, but the other is you're kind of self-deprecating. You laugh at yourself while you're doing the exercises and it kind of makes it fun. It's not serious, but yet fitness is a serious matter, but you come off so lighthearted and I think that's part of your secret sauce. So, for everybody listening, give her a call, connect with her.
Speaker 2:Well and to your point, whenever you're looking for a coach, find someone that you mesh with, that you enjoy spending time with, whether virtually in person, whatever the case may be, that's an important factor in success is having the correct mentors in place to help you move forward, make improvements and find success in your goals. Well, thanks for having me and keep up the good work.
Speaker 1:You too. Thanks, Carrie.
Speaker 2:All right, thanks, rich, bye-bye.
Speaker 1:If you're happy with your golf stamina and fitness and want to improve your game, I suggest finding a swing doctor that speaks your language or a golf equipment fitting professional that can help select the best equipment for your specific swing. But I think there are four pillars of golf to continue to have a good, long-term golf game the swing mechanics, the equipment, the mental aspect of control and the physical aspect. None could be substituted for the others. If you're serious about training your body to hit the ball further with less pain and fatigue, particularly at the end of your round or your three-day golf trip, connect with Kerry and explore the fourth pillar.