Jack started with us in June 2025, an 18 year old golfer at 140 pounds with a max clubhead speed of 106. Jack’s limiter was simple: not enough body to work with.

Four months later, in October, his max clubhead speed was 114. And in August 2026, right before he left for his first year of college golf, it was 120 at 158 pounds. Fourteen miles per hour in fourteen months, close to no speed training.

Where He Started

Here is the part that makes Jack’s case instructive: he was not new to golf fitness. Before coming to us he had been working with a well known golf fitness trainer, doing what most golf fitness looks like. A lot of core work, rotational golf specific exercises, balance drills. The kind of training that looks like golf and feels productive. This is not a knock on anyone. It is the standard approach in golf fitness, delivered by someone good at delivering it.

Then we tested him. At 140 pounds: split squat 45 pounds on the left and 55 on the right, cable pull 34, sit up and throw under 16 feet. The vertical jump was already decent at 22.25 inches, which told us the lower body springs were ok. There just was not much engine attached to them. All that golf specific work had been refining the output of a body that did not yet have much to output.

So we went the opposite direction. Put muscle on. Learn to move properly. Build strength on top of that. And only then start sprinkling in speed and power specific work, at low volume, roughly 10% of the total training. For a golfer built like Jack, the prescription is the least fashionable one in fitness: eat, lift, sleep, repeat.

What Fourteen Months Built

June 2025 against August 2026. All ten paired measures improved.

Split squat: 45 and 55 to 80 and 80. The biggest change in the profile, and notice the second thing it did: the left-right gap disappeared on the way up. He is not just stronger, he is even.

Cable pull: 34 to 55 pounds, up 62%. Pulling strength holds posture and protects the shoulders through the swing, and his now clears its bodyweight target comfortably.

Core power followed the strength. Sit up and throw up almost four feet, from 15’10” to 19’7”, into the target range. This is the sequence we keep writing about: strength first, power following behind it without being chased.

The Speed

Both lines up. For a 140 pound golfer, mass was the missing ingredient.

Here is where Jack’s case completes the picture alongside the other two. In the distance post we said mass is not the enemy in golf, and that bigger, stronger players tend to swing faster. Max was the exception that proves the rule: he carried mass that produced very little, so losing it helped make him faster. Jack was the rule itself. At 140 pounds there was no mass to spare, so the fastest path to speed was building more of the kind that produces force.

Eighteen pounds and fourteen months later, every strength measure is up 12 to 78%, and the speed tracked it the whole way: 8 mph inside the first four months, then 6 more as the strength kept compounding, out the door to college golf at 120.

Golf specific training was refining an engine that did not exist yet. We built the engine first.

None of this means core work, rotation drills or balance training are useless. They have a place, and so does speed work, which is why it eventually entered Jack’s program at about 10% of the volume. The problem is the order. Those tools polish qualities that have to exist before you can polish them. Fourteen months of building the base did more for Jack’s golf than the polishing ever had, and the sequence is the whole difference.

Watch His Story

What This Case Adds

Three case studies, three completely different bodies. Max lost 47 pounds and gained 12 mph. Mason grew 27% through a growth spurt and got faster and springier the whole way. Jack added 18 pounds of muscle to a frame that needed it and gained 14 mph.

Here is the detail that says the most. Max and Jack both left for college golf in August 2026, and both left swinging 120 mph. Max got there by dropping 47 pounds. Jack got there by adding 18. Same destination, opposite prescriptions, because their limiters were opposite.

But look past the bodyweight, because that is the surface of it. Both golfers got dramatically stronger. Max nearly doubled his split squat and put 176% on his press. Jack put 78% on his split squat and 62% on his pull. And both did it with very little speed work in the program. The bodyweight went in opposite directions. The strength went the same direction for both, and so did the clubhead speed.

The weight is the variable. The strength is the constant.

No two of them followed the same plan, because no two of them tested the same. That is the entire point. The system is not a prescription. It is a process: test, find the limiter, train it, retest. The limiter was different every time. The process never changed.

If you want to see what the testing looks like, start with the functional profile. If you are wondering whether you need to get stronger, more flexible or more stable, that is exactly the question testing answers.