Miguel Tabuena Training through a Pandemic
Sports in the Philippines has been put on a standstill due to the current Covid-19 pandemic. But even with postponed tournaments, and closed facilities, we have relentless athletes who doesn’t let this hinder their growth and performance as they continue with their training remotely.
Miguel is a professional golfer and has represented the Philippines in numerous tournaments. He started to represent the country internationally at the young age of six. It was through his parents love for the sport that has gotten him involved in it. “I’ve been playing golf since I was a year and eight months old. I remember my parents would watch golf tournaments every night, so it sort of became my lullaby. I would fall asleep watching golf, and I memorised the lines of the commentators on the tapes we would watch over and over again.”
Miguel regularly plays on the Asian Tour and European Tour, and has won numerous tournaments as a professional golfer. He considers winning a silver medal for the Philippines in the Asian Games, and representing the Philippines in the Olympics as two of his highest achievements. He adds, “I would love to keep representing the Philippines on the world stage.”
As a professional golfer, his tournament preparation entails a mix between technical golf prep— making sure every area of his game is in good shape, as well as mental, and physical preparation— proper nutrition and exercise. He shares that before the pandemic he competes in about two or three tournaments in a month, which also served as additional preparation for bigger tournaments.
Miguel shares that he joined Pinnacle Performance in July 2019 to get in better shape, to improve his fitness and for injury prevention. “Prior to the lockdown, his goal was to make it back to the World’s Top 100 Golfers, and to stay injury free throughout the season.” Coach Bernice Atienza, Miguel’s Lead Coach at Pinnacle, adds. “To be honest, his hectic golf and travel schedule has been an unavoidable obstacle in ensuring his consistent progress.”
With golf tournaments on hold, giving Miguel more free time on his schedule, he and Coach Bernice are even more determined to keep him on track of his goals. At the beginning of April, Miguel transitioned from Group Development Sessions in a Standard membership to One-to-One sessions under a BLACK Tier Online membership, completing an average of 5 sessions weekly. This enabled him and his Lead Coach to have a more focused approach to his training and programming with the guidance and support of Pinnacle Head of Strength & Conditioning, Tom Summers, through regular consults with Miguel and his team.
“With the commencement of the lockdown and the realisation that he had time to prioritise and work on his health, Miguel’s mindset changed. He began to work with a nutritionist and we started doing his strength and conditioning trainings online. His goal didn’t necessarily change but he sought for a bigger goal—making it to the World’s Top 50. To enable him to actually get there, we had to work on building strength, explosiveness, and stability to give him a faster and more powerful swing,” coach Bernice shares.
In the beginning, Miguel and Coach Bernice had to overcome simple problems like internet stability, ensuring camera angles were good, and working with body weight exercises since working remotely was new to them. Eventually they overcame these and also learned to understand each other well while just using visual and auditory cues. Coach Bernice shares, “Miguel helped a lot with the transition to online sessions since he was very receptive to the cues, exuded motivation, and was competent in following and executing instructions.”
Through Pinnacle’s Engineered Strength and Conditioning, Coach Bernice took baseline measures to ensure that they are able to track Miguel’s progress starting with the Pinnacle Movement Rating (PMR). The PMR uses different movement competencies, and provides an objective measure to see the athlete’s current abilities.
Furthermore, a golfer’s training is not only focused on their upper body strength—one swing requires a golfer to use his shoulders, his lower back and hips, and both legs; so a great deal of lower body strength, and overall mobility is also required for a golfer to perform well. Coach Bernice used body weight exercises such as pistol squats, broad jumps, and depth jumps for a more holistic picture of Miguel’s athleticism. And when Miguel acquired more equipment, they measured his strength through different lifts as well.
Coach Bernice elaborates, “We made sure that everything in his journey is tracked and measured, prior to each session, his recovery is tracked through his hours of sleep and during training sessions, with the use of his Whoop band, we are also able to track the strain produced and his caloric burn. A subjective measure of his exertion is tracked through his RPE (Rate of Perceived Exhaustion) which gave me an idea of how strenuous each session was and if the programme’s intensity was efficient enough to provide the results we were both aiming for. Miguel’s training sessions have been more consistent since the lockdown and online sessions began, he’s been able to complete his 4-5 day strength and power training weeks consistently—this is alongside his golf training sessions.”
Miguel affirms his consistency, “I think (the) remote training actually works for me. I had to get equipment for it, but it’s very convenient to be able to work out from wherever I am and have my Lead Coach there to guide me. It works perfectly for my schedule as a golfer since I have to do a lot of traveling between tournaments.” He also adds, “I know a big part of working out is also finding a good match between athlete and coach. I enjoy and am challenged by the program that Coach Bernice takes me through. I like that it is tailor-fit for my needs as an athlete and more specifically a golfer. Basically I’ve put my trust in Pinnacle and coach Bernice for the fitness aspect of my game because I’ve seen the improvements after having joined Pinnacle.”
After four months under a BLACK Tier membership and access to a golf course in the past two months, Coach Bernice shares the results of the sport-specific Pinnacle programme created for Miguel and his consistency and hard work.
The increase in Miguel’s Single Leg Squat, Squat Jump height, and Broad Jump distance correlate to increased lower body strength and are also measures of his ability to produce power which affects swing performance. He is also now deadlifting 170% of his bodyweight that is a good indicator of his overall strength. All in all resulting in a 6% increase in Miguel’s swing speed putting him at par with the world’s top golfers.
“Pinnacle’s programme has been very effective. I have seen the numbers, and notice a very positive change to my golf game overall. With the personalized training, and very knowledgeable coaches, and with goals set and slowly achieved, I feel like I will continue to develop the proper fitness I need to maintain as a professional athlete.” Miguel shares, “I know this will all be put to the test when the tournaments start up again, and I can’t wait to see the results.”
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