Golf Fitness Platform for Coaches

How Niklas Eriksson created a successful winter training program

Every industry needs innovation and new ideas to survive. Golf is a sport made for the summer, but teaching and coaching professionals can help their players prepare for the season ahead with winter training programs. Kinexit was founded in Sweden, a country that has long winters cutting the golf season short compared with many other countries. This means having a winter training program becomes so much more critical, both for teaching and coaching professionals and players. Find out how one of our clients created a successful winter training program at their facility.

How it started

In 2012 when winter training programs weren’t yet a thing, Niklas Eriksson, PGA, started his indoor center in Jönköping, Sweden. He received plenty of comments saying the idea would never fly and that he should do other things during the winter. However, as every successful entrepreneur would do, Niklas believed in his concept and trusted the process.

The first winter saw 20 brave players turn up, and they had a lot of fun and became better golfers during the program. Niklas was excited about the response he was getting from participants, and other coaches were starting to pay attention. The following years saw participation grow steadily, and this winter, 225 golfers participated in the winter training program with Niklas and Jakob at A6 Golf Center.

What is a successful winter training program?

We asked Niklas what the keys to the success of his winter training program are:

It’s a combination of several factors. First of all, you need to have a facility in an area with many golfers. The facility must be a place people want to come to; they feel at home and at ease there. Secondly, we’ve found created our training groups based on handicap. That’s been very well received as players don’t feel intimidated practicing with much better players than themselves. They know they can ask questions that are relevant to the whole group.

The third part is the content of the program itself. As we’re indoors, we need to make sure it’s fun, varied, challenging, and measurable. I believe a good combination of swing technique and fitness exercises is the best recipe for success.

How did you add the fitness component?

We started working with Kinexit last year, and it’s really been a great value add to our program. I’ve always focused on the importance of fit and healthy players, but until now, I haven’t found a tool where I can screen my students and hand over a training program to them quickly and efficiently. With Kinexit, I can screen multiple players simultaneously, and they’ll have four personalized fitness programs in 15 minutes. I have been able to help students implement swing changes that were not possible before due to stiffness and poor range of motion.

What do your students think of Kinexit?

Because the interface and the programs are intuitive, our students have taken to working out really fast. There is acceptance and understanding that to become a better golfer, they must work on their fitness: no matter age, gender, and handicap. Sometimes we spend up to 50% of our sessions working on improving the students’ fitness.

What are the benefits of using this platform?

Students can work out where they want when they want. They can do it while watching the golf Saturday evening, or as the first thing, they do when they wake up on a Monday morning. This is a real benefit, both for the player and for me as a coach. One of the features I’ve used extensively during the winter is the video library. By creating one video for each group with a summary of the week’s activities and instructions and reminders for the drills and exercises we used during our sessions, I can upload it to my Coach Dashboard and distribute it to my users.

All golfers I know want to improve fast. By including golf fitness in our program, our players have gained a better understanding of swing technique, what fitness exercises to do, and how important it is to work on these two components simultaneously. This makes the actual golf instruction much easier as students better understand why they should do the things we tell them to do.