Ask a golfer what they want more of and the answer is almost always the same. Distance. Speed. Carry.

But here is the question that rarely gets asked: where does your speed actually come from?

Clubhead speed is not one thing. It is the end of a chain that starts at the ground, runs through your legs, gets transferred through your trunk and arms and finishes through your hands and thus the club. Power can be produced or lost at every link. So before we chase speed, we measure the chain.

Power Is the Output

In the Functional Profile, power is one of the five spokes we test on every golfer. It measures how much explosive output your body can produce. Not how strong you are, but how fast you can express that strength. Those are two different things, and the difference matters more than almost anything else in your training.

To see the whole chain, we test power in three regions. Upper body, trunk/core and lower body. We then put it all together and do a full body power test to see how it works as one unit in a rotational manner.

The Five Tests

Lower Body

How much force can you put into the ground, fast? This is the engine of the golf swing. Ground force is where every powerful swing starts, and players who produce more of it swing faster. Simple as that.

Recreational golfer, two ACL surgeries, testing countermovement jump on force plates to measure what the eye cannot.

CMJ Positive Impulse

This one comes off the force plates. During a countermovement jump, positive impulse measures how much force you actually apply to the ground over time, beyond just supporting your own bodyweight. Jump height can lie. Positive impulse does not. It is the purest read on lower body explosiveness we have.

Player on Korn Ferry / PGA Tour Americas testing vertical jump height, a measurement of lower body power.

Upper Body

How explosively can you push through the upper body? The upper body is the last link before the club, and it either delivers the energy the lower body created or it dilutes it.

Trunk-Core

The middle of the chain. Your core does not just hold you stable, it transfers energy from the lower body to the upper body. A powerful core keeps the energy moving. A weak one lets it drain out in the middle.

Rotational

The integration test. A rotational throw demands lower body, core and upper body working in sequence. Not exactly like a golf swing however same concept. You cannot fake this one with one strong region. It only scores high when the whole chain works together.

Power is direction specific. Here is a Korn Ferry / PGA Tour Americas player testing lateral bound distance, a measure of lower body lateral power production.

The Power spoke, broken into its own radar. Each score is compared to the field.

Finding the Leak

Here is where the chart earns its keep. We are not just looking at how high the numbers are. We are looking at how close together they are.

Think of your body like a car routing horsepower to different systems. If your lower body tests great but your trunk lags well behind, energy is leaking out of the chain right at the transfer point. You are creating power you never get to fully use or express. That shows up on the course as a swing that works hard and produces less speed than it should.

A big gap between regions is an energy leak. Find the leak, fix the leak and speed you already own shows up at the club.

This is why two golfers with the same clubhead speed can need completely different training. One needs a bigger engine. The other already has the engine and needs to stop the leak.

The Question This Sets Up

Power is the output. But when someone’s power is low, the next question is: why? Is it because they cannot produce enough force or because they cannot produce it fast enough?

One answer means we build strength first. The other means we train speed. Getting that call wrong wastes months. Getting it right is the difference between grinding in the gym and actually getting longer off the tee.

That is the strength question, and it gets its own deep dive next.