Movement matters – Bradley’s enduring passion
19/08/2021
By her own admission, PGA Professional Caroline Bradley has never wanted to be only a golf coach. Her enduring fascination with human movement, accompanied with a desire to build continually her own skill set has led to her creating an innovative situation at Crews Hill Golf Club.
In association with Lee Fickling – the Middlesex club’s head PGA Professional – Caroline has developed a gym with swing biomechanics tech to assist her work with golfers of all ages and standards.
A qualified personal trainer, she is also a lower back specialist. But by no means, is Caroline confined to only the gym. She is still just as active on the grass with players, putting into practice her vast acquired knowledge from several different fields of learning.
Bradley confirms “I am a PGA teaching pro who is a movement specialist. I’ve amalgamated the two. I teach and I do fitness. I’ve always been a little bit of a book worm when it comes to human movement.”
Caroline has built up her teaching around the concept that no two individuals are the same when it comes to how they move. The inference from there is that she has to teach each person differently to align with their specific physical requirements.
“You’ll have some people that have back discomfort, some that have hip issues, shoulder issues,” says Bradley. “So you can’t just go down one street and say, ‘this is the way I see it, this is what you do’. You’ve got to adjust.”
It’s why Bradley responds in a compassionate and intelligent way when golfers relay tales of how they’ve struggled with certain movements requested of them at previous times in their golfing journey.
“You can’t do it because you physically can’t – your skeletal system, muscle system will not allow it,” she says. “Your muscles will keep pulling you into that neurological pattern that you have trained for years.”
In recent times, Bradley has found her work shaped by leading thinkers in golf swing biomechanics. As a result, she invested in a state-of-the-art system that gives incredible details on the body’s efficiency – or otherwise – from start to finish in the swing.
In 3D multi-colour, supported by high-tech graphs and charts, Caroline can assess what is really happening inside an individual through space and time as they turn back and through.
Caroline explains: “We wire a player up and see how they move intrinsically – pelvis, ribcage, spine. You start to get the intrinsic values of how they’re moving as opposed to the extrinsic. Once we discover how they move, we can – if they wish – put them into a personal training programme. That will help them to move away from lower back pain – or any discomforts they have and – perform better.”
Biomechanics and the accompanying tech are an important asset to Bradley and have helped to provide her with a lot of answers when it comes to her teaching. But they’re not the only tool at her disposal. Equally key is her own expertise in evaluating how a person moves. Call it ‘coach’s eye’, only with Caroline it extends way beyond the usual practice ground observations, right from the moment her client arrives in the car park.
She says: “I watch them get out of the car, watch the way they walk, shake their hands and feel their grip. In here (Bradley’s gym), I ask them to take their shoes off and watch… I watch the way they do everything.”
Caroline also asks her clients for a full case history into injuries going back to childhood. She also likes to tap into a person’s character, how they think. It’s an in-depth process in which she aims to put together all the pieces of what equates to a complex jigsaw puzzle. And everyone gets the same level of commitment from her, whether they are an elite golfer or a beginner. It’s more than just a job for Bradley – it is her passion.
And the good news is, she is in demand. But her present situation would not be possible without the support and interest of her fellow PGA Professional, Lee Fickling. When Caroline’s 15-year stint – ten as head professional – at nearby Finchley Golf Club came to an end in 2018, Lee was swift to offer a route forward. Initially, Caroline just taught at Crews Hill before the two broadened the arrangement to include personal training and, later, golf swing biomechanics.
Caroline says: “Lee started to get quite interested in what I did and keen to get some form of gym up and running. We had the room at the back of the pro shop and I said it would work. He has been fantastic – an absolute gentleman.”
As for the future, Caroline has no plans to slow down her learning. For her, when it comes to human movement there’s always another question that needs answering. It’s just the way she’s wired…
