I Predicted These 3 Things About Bryson Dechambeau in 2020

 

It’s June 2020, Bryson has just won the Charles Schwab averaging 345 yards off the tee…

I’d listened to 4 days of commentators talk absolute nonsense about him gaining 3 stone of muscle in a matter of months, so I decided to write this blog about it.

In that blog I spoke about what I thought Bryson would do over the following years to refine his approach to Training and Nutrition more effectively.

Having just watched him win his second US Open since that original blog, I’m going to cover whether the 3 original predictions I made came to fruition…

1: He’d burn-out and get injured from training as much as he was.

This wasn’t a particularly hard one to call, anyone with a few brain cells devoted to understanding stress would know that 3 hour training sessions every day, 100’s of max-speed swings each week, and competitive golf would over-tax his system.

In late 2021, early 2022 the injuries started to mount…

First it was an injury to his wrist:

“It started with me not taking care of my hand like I should have, not training it correctly, me not giving it the proper rest. Just hitting golf balls.”

Then it became a tear in the labrum of his hip through a fall sustained playing Table Tennis (of all the ways!) and excerbated by the volume of his speed training.

This is an injury he was still managing daily as he splashed out a 55 yard bunker shot to 3 feet to seal the US Open last Sunday.

Injuries like the one with his wrist are common amongst golfers, hours and hours spent hitting balls off of mats and hard ground will apply a lot of impact to the joint.

Overuse injuries like this one simply come from the stress applied being larger than a tissues ability to tolerate it. In Bryson’s case, a combination of trauma from a fall and excessive volume of training/practicing contributed to these niggles lasting far longer than ideal.

2. He’d realise he didn’t need to gain as much weight as he did.

“I ate improperly for almost a year and a half and I was starting to feel weird,” DeChambeau said. “My gut was all messed up”.

“We trained really hard and I ate things that were not great for my system that I was very sensitive to,” DeChambeau said. “And ultimately it got to the point where it was a little too much. And that’s when I started to back off of that.”

Theoretically the human body can gain a MAXIMUM of around 0.5–0.7kg of muscle per month as a new lifter.

Bryson gained, on average, around 4kg a MONTH over the course of the first 6 months of 2020.

Meaning that he was gaining body-fat at around 7 times the rate he was gaining muscle!

I’m all for people making sure they eat enough to gain size but this was excessive. Reminiscent of the ‘dirty bulks’ that most bodybuilders will remember from their first foray into an ‘off-season’.

Alongside that, the sheer amount of lactose and sweetener from all those shakes was undoubtedly leading to digestive issues. It’s amazing to think he managed to play 5–6 hour rounds in the heat with that much going on downstairs!

Since then he’s dropped at least 20lbs, going from a height of 5000 calories a day (and 6–8 protein shakes), to roughly 2800–3000 currently.

3. He’d realise it’s not about just being big and strong when it comes to adding speed.

Since losing a substantial amount of bodyfat, Bryson has actually become FASTER not slower.

His average ballspeed in the final round of the US Open was around 190mph, and by his own admission this is keeping plenty in the tank compared to what he can produce.

In 2020, when he began strength training his program was actually pretty ‘general’. It didn’t contain much in the way of plyometric/ballistic training, but was instead more based around getting the body stronger through full ranges with a lot of isolation exercises.

This is an effective way of gaining distance for those new to weight training, it’s akin to increasing the size of a cars engine.

BUT after a while, just adding muscle will not contribute to more distance. Otherwise elite bodybuilders who play golf would also be the worlds longest hitters.

This is where training for ‘rate of force development’ AND ‘peak strength’ starts to come in. You can think of those 2 things as the 2-punch combo for increasing your power.

• RFD: Imagine you’re at a stoplight in a high-performance car. When the light turns green, you press the accelerator, and the car jumps forward instantly. That immediate burst of speed is analogous to high RFD — it’s about developing force rapidly.
• Power: Now, consider a drag race. The car needs to not only start quickly but also maintain high speed and force output to cover the quarter-mile distance in the shortest possible time. This is analogous to power, which combines the amount of force the engine can produce and how quickly it can apply that force over a distance.

It’s clear that Bryson is not done yet, the Scientist of golf is constantly looking for new ways to get the most out of his game…

Whether it’s 3D printed irons all the same length…

Or utilising a Krank driver with a longer shaft…

It’s safe to say we could be seeing a few more major wins in his future.

Want to create some extra distance yourself with some strength training custom-built for your needs?

Head to www.forefathers.info and you’ll be able to access my ‘Bombers Blueprint’ guide to help you get the most out of your body and your swing.