Reaching 180mph will require more than swinging harder. Here's the thinking behind the programme — assessment, testing, mobility, rotation, strength versus speed, warm-up protocol and recovery data.
When I first started thinking seriously about my Quest for 180mph ball speed, the objective seemed fairly simple. Swing the golf club faster. That remains fundamentally true — there is no escaping the fact that producing 180mph ball speed requires serious clubhead speed. But the deeper I get into this project, the more I realise that simply trying to swing harder is probably the least interesting part of the challenge.
What does my body need to be capable of doing if I want to create significantly more speed without compromising the golf swing that has to accompany it?
I have already reached 126mph clubhead speed during dedicated speed training, so there is clearly speed available. The objective is not simply to see 180mph flash on a launch monitor once and declare the project finished — I want that ceiling to make a 116mph on-course swing feel smooth and repeatable.
That is where my recent deep dive into the work of elite golf performance coach Kolby "K-Wayne" Tullier has significantly changed my thinking.
Tullier isn't simply trying to make golfers stronger. He is trying to make them better athletes whose physical improvements transfer directly into their sport. One of his best analogies: you can't shoot a cannon out of a canoe. You might build an enormous engine, but without the physical platform underneath it, much of that horsepower is wasted. I want a bigger cannon. But I also need a much better chassis.
Before discussing golf speed at all, Tullier's assessments start with hip rotation, glute function, foot stability, knee stability, thoracic mobility, vertical force production, left-to-right asymmetry, rotary power and anti-rotation strength.
When golfers want more distance, we almost always look at the swing first — turn more, use the ground, rotate faster, make a bigger backswing. But what if the body cannot physically do what we are asking it to do? In one of Tullier's assessments, the golfer already possessed good speed despite restricted hip rotation, poor glute contribution and significant physical asymmetry. The answer wasn't to tell him to swing harder. It was to remove the physical restrictions preventing him from accessing more of his existing athletic potential.
Instead of constantly asking "How can I swing faster?" I also need to ask "What is preventing me from swinging faster efficiently?" Those are two very different questions.
Two golfers could have exactly the same ball-speed target and require completely different training interventions. One might need significantly more strength. Another might already be strong but lack mobility. Before the serious training block progresses too far, this is the baseline I want established.
Instead of merely asking whether I am getting faster, I can start understanding why I am getting faster. If rotational power improves alongside clubhead speed, that's useful. If trap-bar strength increases dramatically but golf speed doesn't move, that tells me something too. Over time this becomes a personal speed profile — feeding directly into the monthly log on the 180 Hub.
Mobility is not just stretching. If my body cannot access the positions required by a fast golf swing, it has to find another way of achieving the movement. Humans are extremely good at compensating — golfers might be even better. If I cannot rotate deeply enough into my trail hip, I don't simply stop my backswing. Something else moves: the pelvis, the upper body, the arms, pressure. It's very easy to spend months fixing a visible swing fault without addressing the physical reason it was happening.
Stability comes before more horsepower. The golf swing is not a symmetrical two-legged gym movement — one side loads, pressure moves, the pelvis rotates, the lead leg stabilises and extends, all extremely quickly. Tullier calls this "controlling the chaos." That means more unilateral training than a traditional strength programme: split squats, single-leg Romanian deadlifts, reverse lunges, loaded single-leg balance, split-stance presses and rows, anti-rotation work — not because standing on one leg is automatically golf-specific, but because removing the second leg's support exposes whether the system can genuinely stabilise itself.
Golf is rotational, so the gym has to be too. A huge amount of conventional gym training — squats, deadlifts, bench press, rows — involves very little rotation. That has to change: medicine-ball scoop throws, rotational medicine-ball throws, split-stance band rotations, step-and-rotate movements, anti-rotation exercises.
A deadlift tells me something about how much force I can produce. A rotational medicine-ball throw tells me something about how quickly I can express that force in a movement far more relevant to golf.
A powerful golf swing also has to resist rotation — the pelvis, trunk, arms and club all accelerate and decelerate at different times, and segments have to stabilise so energy keeps travelling through the chain. Core training therefore can't simply be abdominal exercises. If I develop far stronger legs but cannot efficiently transfer that force through my torso, a significant amount of potential speed is lost.
It is entirely possible to become stronger without becoming much faster. The nervous system has to learn to move quickly — jumps, medicine-ball throws, fast rotational movements, maximum-intent golf swings.
Maximum intent. High-quality movement. Full recovery. Repeat.
A good speed session shouldn't necessarily leave me exhausted. Once movement velocity starts dropping significantly, I am no longer really training maximum speed.
Contrast training will become part of this later — a heavy strength movement immediately followed by an explosive one (trap-bar deadlift → vertical jump, or split squat → rotational medicine-ball throw). The heavy movement recruits high levels of force; the explosive movement asks the nervous system to express it rapidly. First, though, comes movement quality and strength.
Around these sessions sit dedicated golf speed training, golf practice, Zone 2 conditioning, mobility work and recovery. The programme won't remain static — the six-week testing cycle determines what happens next.
Mobility prep, hip & thoracic work, glute activation, trap-bar strength, split squat, single-leg hinge, anti-rotation, low-volume jumping.
Movement prep, rotational mobility, medicine-ball throws, band rotation, upper push & pull, single-leg stability, rotary & anti-rotary core.
Movement prep, explosive jumps, contrast training, medicine-ball power, fast rotational movements, selected strength work, high-quality speed exposure.
Sagittal, frontal and transverse movement — plus adaptability across uphill, downhill and sidehill stances, not just perfect gym positions.
Most golfers warm up to play golf by playing golf — a few wedges, then irons, eventually driver. But if I am serious about physical performance, why would I use golf swings to prepare my body to make golf swings?
Maximum-intent swings are valuable, but I only have a limited number of genuinely high-quality maximum-speed swings before fatigue reduces output. I do not want to waste those swings warming myself up — the first genuinely maximal swing should be part of the training stimulus, not part of the warm-up.
Cardiovascular fitness won't directly make the club travel faster, but it supports almost everything around the speed programme — Zone 2-style conditioning improving recovery between sessions, tournament endurance and general work capacity.
I have used WHOOP for a number of years, so this isn't about suddenly introducing recovery tracking. The opportunity is connecting the recovery history I already have with the new performance data I am about to collect.
The question is not whether my HRV is objectively "good" compared with somebody else. The question is what my normal looks like, and how my golf performance changes when I move away from it.
Alongside WHOOP, I'll keep simple subjective markers too — how fresh, how sore, how energetic, how motivated, does my body feel fast. If WHOOP says recovery is poor, I feel poor and clubhead speed is down, that's a meaningful pattern. If WHOOP says recovery is poor but I feel excellent and produce one of my fastest sessions, that's useful information too. The point isn't to be controlled by a recovery colour. It's to understand how my own body behaves.
Every six weeks or so, the major performance markers get retested — hip mobility, left-to-right stability, jump distance, medicine-ball throw power, strength, peak and average clubhead speed, ball speed, strike and dispersion — alongside the recovery data around those performances.
If strength keeps increasing but speed doesn't, perhaps adding even more strength isn't currently the answer. If rotational power improves and clubhead speed follows it, keep developing that quality. If speed rises but strike quality collapses, the next phase needs greater emphasis on transfer. The results of each cycle feed straight back into the monthly log on the 180 Hub.
Imagine a golfer whose absolute maximum speed is only fractionally above the speed he is trying to use on the golf course. Every fast drive requires near-maximum effort — timing, balance and strike all become harder, and pressure makes the entire movement more difficult. Now increase that golfer's physical ceiling significantly. The same on-course speed becomes a smaller percentage of maximum capacity. The golf swing does not have to become more violent. It simply costs less.
That is what I am trying to create. Not a golf swing that permanently looks like a long-drive swing. A bigger physical reserve. More horsepower available than I actually need.
180mph remains the number. But becoming the golfer capable of producing it may prove to be the far more interesting journey.
The scorecard lives on the hub. The session-by-session detail lives next door.
Log mobility, stability, power, rotation and strength numbers directly on the page — split across two testing days, retested every six weeks.
Log a session →The live scorecard — ball speed, on-course club speed, personal bests and every testing day logged since the programme began.
View the hub →TPI research, the governor effect, long-and-loose speed, and a six-stage framework — Capacity, Force, Timing, Transfer, Ceiling, Cruise.
Read the framework →Full exercise lists, sets and reps for Gym Session A (Strength) and B (Power), the speed-session protocol, progressive overload plan and the weekly structure.
View workouts →How to keep the programme going while travelling — jumps, throws, heavy lifts and assistance work, all with towel-and-bodyweight alternatives.
View the protocol →