Nick Randall is our resident golf fitness guru here at GolfWRX. The strength and conditioning coach is also the creator of the golf fitness app Golf Fit Pro, which allows users to view and design golf-specific exercises and workouts.

Randall’s articles are currently approaching more than 300,000 view on the site. A sampling of his work for GolfWRX includes:

• Rotation in the golf swing is about quality, not quantity
• The 3 most important areas of your golf body
• Equipment For Golf Fitness: The 5 Best and 5 Worst
• 5 things I learned traveling with a Tour player
• How does strength training REALLY help your game?

I spoke with Nick about his background in the game, his work in golf fitness, his writing for the site, and what we can look forward to seeing from him.

Nick Randall with tour pro Cameron Smith.

His background…

My background is being a golf nut from about the age of 13. I’ve been completely obsessed with the game since then. Got as low as a handicap of two…I’m a rusty five…at this stage.

I got into fitness for my own interest at 20. I pursed that without getting career focused until my mid-20s. I tried to put the two things that I really enjoy doing together. Used my degree and did some qualifications here in Australia with the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association. So, I moved into the golf fitness space…five years ago.

His app, Golf Fit Pro…

The app came about from me getting frustrated about how long it was taking me to write comprehensive training programs with exercise guides. I was spending a lot of time in the evenings having to catch up on a day’s work.

I wanted my clients to get a program that was going to explain the exercises they were doing were….Not just having them listed on a piece of paper. We developed it with exercises first so they could look up their exercises. My imagination just started to run wild, and I thought “Maybe we can create programs on this app?”

People can pay a little bit of money and access some of the programs that I’ve already written. The new feature, which is coming out, is a “My Progress” feature. People can track their daily wellness, muscle soreness, and training load. I’ve introduced features for coaches: You can create a program using the app. You can monitor players. You can create your own exercises.

The first version [launched] 18 months ago. And it’s been a steady process of trying to improve the app.

The in-person personal training side of things…

That side of the business is steadily growing as well. I’ve been really lucky with the people I’ve come in contact with in Australia. I’ve come in contact with excellent coaches who are part of the state and national bodies for high performance: Golf Queensland and Golf Australia. I’ve been lucky enough to establish good relationships with them and provide services. It’s exciting being involved with high-performance stuff.

Writing for GolfWRX…

I really enjoy the writing. I’d written for some smaller publications, both online and print. But writing for GolfWRX I really enjoy because there are very few restrictions. I can basically write what I want, how I want, and include the photos that I want to really try to get the message across. Other publications seem to be quite restrictive…”This many photos, this many words, we need to aim for this kind of audience,” you know. GolfWRX is pretty cool with letting me express what I feel and the stuff I’m passionate about.

I feel as though I learn something about what I do every time I write an article. It gives you the opportunity to really examine what you do. It encourages me to get a clearer idea of what I actually believe and enables me to explain it in more coherent and easier to understand terms than if I was just explaining it one-on-one. I feel very lucky to have built the relationship.

Randall training with a Ramsay Posture Belt, which he sells on his website.

Favorite pieces?

The thing I’ve probably enjoyed writing the absolute most has been one of my worst received articles in terms of views: “How does strength training really help you game.” I teamed up with a statistician from a company called Shots To Hole. He loves to dig through statistics and look at how different factors — periphery factors like strength training, sports psychology, physio — can impact one’s scoring.

We looked at a few case studies and sort of crushed some numbers overall. We looked at how strength training…where does it really benefit? Does it benefit you off the tee? Does it benefit people in their approach play…short game…putting? What’s the area that’s really going to improve from increasing strength? We found that it wasn’t off the tee, it was actually with approach play…more from 100 to 150, 160. I really enjoyed the article because it was a challenge for me to write it.

And the article I put the least amount into was 5 things I learned traveling with a tour player. I didn’t have to do much homework, it was just based off some stuff I saw on tour. And it’s had by far the highest views.

What’s next?

I’ve got five articles in the blocks ready to go. It’s a series of five articles. It’s a guide to golf fitness for…kids, teens, club golfers, elites, seniors. Each article gives basic recommendations and guidelines for that specific stage and what will benefit you most.

Coming up on the app: New features. The Track My Progress feature and then the features that are fit to trainers and coaches. And then, we recently launched the online personal training…we have limited spots and they’re going quickly to be trained by me remotely, one-on-one.

Long term, I’d like to start doing some more articles using evidence-based stuff. Pulling on bits of data we’re collecting on the state and national levels. Providing examples of what we’ve done and why it’s helped. And then the other thing is keeping up to date with Cameron Smith. He’s currently second in non-member PGA Tour earnings this year. He’s a kid I’ve trained since he was 16, and I’d like to keep you guys updated on what we do and why we do it.