Scott Stallings: Combining Pro Golf and CrossFit (Podcast)

 We were carrying a bunch of odd objects: sandbags, plates, kettlebells, water bags –whatever you could think of — 50-pound med ball. We’re on the two minutes training, and one of my buddies is, “Man, don’t you ever do anything like this and realize that you carry this around every day?”

I’ve never been one for nostalgia workouts or whatever, but I did that for a long time of my life. I don’t want to remember it. [laughs]

Welcome to the BarBend Podcast, where we talk to the smartest athletes and coaches and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbend.com.

Today, I’m talking to professional golfer Scott Stallings who has three PGA Tour wins. Stallings may be one of the golf world’s elite, but he has also been making waves in the fitness community or his physical transformation.

About two years ago, Stallings made a commitment to lean out in order to boost his longevity in professional golf. Since then, he’s trained with some of the Fitness and CrossFit world’s best, including four-time CrossFit games champion, Rich Froning.

They’re both Tennessee residents, which has become a new epicenter of functional fitness and strength sports. We chat about how strength training impacts golf performance, the movements Scott actively avoids as a professional golfer, and the complex training schedules Stallings and other golfers have when active on tour.

Ever wondered if professional golfers lift before or after rounds on the course? How does their travel schedule impact training? We chat about all that and much, much more. Also, I want to take a second to say, “We’re incredibly thankful that you listen to this podcast.”

If you haven’t already, be sure to leave a rating and review of the “BarBend Podcast” in your app of choice. I’d also recommend subscribing to the “BarBend Newsletter” to stay up to date on all thing’s strength. Just go to barbend.com/newsletter to start becoming the smartest person in your gym today. Now let’s get to it.

Scott Stallings, thanks so much for joining us today. The first question I have for you is, with a lot of sports events, including all the PGA Tour on hold for the time being, how are you staying in shape? What’s your routine look like heading into this summer?

We moved into a new house in June of last year, and I built a gym in my backyard. It’s been 50 feet from my back porch. Golf is a unique talent. I’ve been a professional for 13 years. I’ve never really had this much time off especially in the middle of the season when everyone else is forced to take it.

We got to train with. We’re got on a call. Sadly, we’re never going to have a chance to do this again in our career probably. We’re going to get after it and we did. [laughs] It’s been fun. We’ve pushed each other a lot and started with some baseline workouts and see our…

We’ll get closer to the end. We’ll do these workouts again and see how far we’ve come, but it’s been good. For the first tries, six to seven weeks, golf was very much of our priority, just literally working out at least once a day.

If not, twice a day, depending on what we were doing. It’s been a unique time. It’s been nice to be able to walk out my back door and walk right into the gym.

It’s certainly a time where everyone who has a home gym or was hoarding fitness equipment. You don’t look so crazy now for taking all that time to build that home gym, do you?

No. I had a garage gym, my old house. We’d have four or five guys running in there. We have some land in the country and always like the idea of a barn or some type of accessory building on a piece of property where people come and go when they wanted.

I have a pretty unique training group. We’ve got the guy that catches for the Washington Nationals. Then, another one of our really good friends is a lightweight 135-UFC fighter. Then, we have the guy that introduced us as our trainer and PT, the guy that travels with us on a tour. His name is Adam Caroli.

He’s the guy that got us all hooked up together. [laughs] It’s been four guys that just push each other. There’s a lot of trash talk. Everyone that comes in and we’re all going push each other to try to get better. It’s been a good time we all look back to in. We remember it forever.

It’s neat that you have professionals from all these different sports training together, because it is kind of common ground that you can compete in. You said you were testing a lot of baseline workouts with these guys heading into this period of quarantine and social distancing. What are some of your favorites? I have to ask, which are you best at compared to these guys?

Anything like longer cardio intervals. It’s kind of where the sweet spot is. I’m not great of anything, but I’m pretty good at a lot if that makes sense except for pull-ups, especially Murph, Kali.

I drew the short straw. We had a bunch of vests with seven guys on Monday to do Murph. I have three vests. I’ve two 20-pounders and one 30-pounder. I said, “Man, I’m the host. I’m not going to be fixing guy with this 30-pounder.” I did it. I was like, “Man, I’m feeling it right.”

We did a bunch of core workouts throughout the course and season Wednesday and a tournament round, basically just pure cardio day, reset, where the earlier part of the tournament week is slower, heavier, longer and as the week progresses, to shorter, faster, lighter.

We did a bunch of renditions of this workout that I made up on Wednesday. It’s called The Holy Trinity. We did it at Rogue with Dan Bailey. The original workout is 400-meter run, 30-cals bike, ski, row, 400-meter run, 20-cals bike, ski, row, 400-meter run, 10, 400-meter run.

You run a mile, then do 30-20-10, progressively down on each one. We came up with a much awful versions of that. I told Mike we’re going to do a 150s version of the Trinity where the ski, different time to main as far as work to rest, and partners.

I had my UFC buddy. He was probably three weeks’ out of his last fight where he won. If you know anything about fighting, they take a downward turn [laughs] in their nutrition and everything. This was his first workout back. I was like, “All right. Let’s see where we are.”

It was a 30-30, 2-person interval with a seven-minute cap, trying to get 150. If you went seven-minute cap, 30 on, 30 off, in alternating rounds, 150-cals ski, 3-minute rest, row, 3-minute rest, then bike. We finished every single one but the ski. We got 146 calories and seven minutes in the ski.

We retested it prior, three or four weeks ago. We got them all done with under six minutes. It’s just crazy to see how you progress.

That’s amazing. That’s very amazing and measurable progress. It seems like you’re attracted to sports and activities where you can measure your progress numerically. [laughs]

Honestly, some of the lifting and stuff, we’ve been squatting, deadlifting quite a bit, a little bit careful with some of the upper body movements. I’m pretty big as it is, probably don’t need to get any larger.

I can always get stronger, but some of the lifting, as far as I don’t want to lift because I don’t want to get bulky. I don’t think it’s this or that mentality, but I know what things I can benefit from and things that could potentially be detrimental, so focusing there. Golf’s a unique sport where you can always continue to get better. Fitness is the same way.

I did [inaudible 8:27] live. I did Sevan’s Podcast last week. I like the whole idea of CrossFit where you could take the same workout, do it seven different ways, and get seven completely results just by the way that you implement it time to mains, caps, rounds per time, whatever it is.

The same workout that looks on paper, then you change up a few different things, and it’s completely different. That appeals to me tremendously.

You’re talking a little bit about Wednesdays as a reset day when you’re on tour, heading into golfing events starting on the Thursday of that week. What does a normal week schedule look like in season for you, as far as training?

You’re out there on the course for maybe four days, Thursday through Sunday. How are you fitting in your workouts and training around that schedule?

A lot of people don’t understand the easiest part of our week, from the tournament standpoint, is Thursday through Sunday. The travel, the logistics of getting to and from an event, how all that stuff works, I’ve been on the road for 12 weeks straight at one time, managing all that.

With the way that we play, the totality of a season is the same as NASCAR. There’s 49 events. There’s a couple weeks where there’s multiple events in one week. For the most part, we had the same length of season as NASCAR. The idea of having some periodized strength schedule, phase out, and phase back in is absolutely a fabrication.

It’s a pipe dream, pretty much. You have to basically fit in how you would build a traditional strength training cycle into a week.

If you had a sliding scale of, as the week went on, you would have heavier volume, longer, slower, heavier weights, and as the week progresses, shorter, faster, lighter with, especially with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is the biggest part of my week where I have the most control. Thursday through Sunday is based on my tee times and when I’m doing this and when I’m doing that.

I have the most control of that. We always reset everything. It’s mostly some kind of fast cardio, some intervals, running, depending on what equipment we have access to, and resets. Thursday through Sunday is more runner-specific, with respect to when I’m playing and when I’m traveling again and go from there.

When you actually have a round on a given day, are you doing a workout before or after your round?

It depends. If I play in the morning, I’ll train in the afternoon. If I play in the afternoon, I’ll do some, maybe a little bit of, I would call it a very light session, mobility, work on everything, get everything ready to go. Try not to take anything away from when my name’s called on the first tee, just add to it, to where I’m ready to go.

Say I play in the morning on Thursday and I play in the afternoon on Friday, I’d have a pretty good training session Thursday afternoon. I just got to the point now where, you hear all the games’ athletes and everything like, “I only have to work out twice a day?”

They’re like, “I have to do a 9-minute M-Wrap and a 15-minute round for time. That’s all I have to do today?” Not that I have achieved any sort of level even remotely worth putting myself in that, but when you get to the point of training and playing and practicing to where we are, a 30-, 45-minute session in the gym is only going to add to it.

It’s become so much more of a mental side than a physical side. A good day, a bad day, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just kind of where I go to get away and reset the mind and be ready to start up fresh the next day.

You very famously — this has been covered. We won’t go into it too, too much but — dropped a good bit of weight. I think it was 50 pounds, in the last couple of years.

I’ve gone through that. I’ve dropped 50 pounds a few times in my life for various sports and then regained it. It’s a great accomplishment, but I’m curious as to the direct impact it had on your golf game.

I can do a lot more with a lot less effort.

We had a group of guys that we did Murph with. We were all in town for Memorial Day. Things in Tennessee are trending back to whatever normal looks like. A friend of ours has a fitness trail on his property.

It’s a mile, but it is Tennessee hills. And you’ll hear, “What’s your time?” You’re like, “22 minutes. It took me 22 minutes to run a mile?” It’s like, “Yes.” With some of this stuff, it’s some steep up-hills, some dirt. You just go with it.

We were running. Running, we were carrying a bunch of odd objects — sandbags, plates, kettlebells, water bags, whatever you could think of, 50-pound med ball. We were on the 2-minutes training, and one of my buddy’s like, “Man, don’t you ever do anything like this and realize that you carried this around every day?”

I’ve never been one for nostalgia workouts or whatever, but I did that for a long time in my life. I don’t want to remember it. [laughs] It affected a lot. The ability to handle the wear and tear of what we do. I’m not getting any younger. I’m 35.

Knowing the longevity and how long you can play professional golf. You take care of yourself, man, you can do it for a really long time. I wasn’t a very good steward of that. I took what I had for granted in terms of my body and what it was capable of.

Had a lot of people come around me, helped me make good decisions, and point me in the right direction. Here we are. Able to have a lot of cool conversations, meet people like yourself, and I tell stories so hopefully people don’t make the same mistakes that I did.

What is the prevailing approach to fitness and strength training among professional golfers in your experience? Do you think that it’s trending more toward functional fitness? Are you seeing a lot of professional golfers doing things like CrossFit and training like you, or do you stand apart in that approach?

I’d say a little bit yes and no. I’ve had quite a few guys reach out and train with me and dip their toe in and be like, “I’ve seen the changes you’ve made. Let me try this. Let me see what that’s like for me. Is it really this and that?” It just depends.

Golf is very counter-intuitive of my personality. It’s very long. It’s very slow. There’s a lot of monotony that goes into it. Because ultimately, if you break it down, you’re trying to hit the ball straight, you’re trying to hit the ball to the green, and you’re trying to make as many putts as you possibly can.

It’s pretty simple. Now, it’s very complicated to get to the highest level, but golf in its simplest form is that. The idea to a way that you can improve fitness and overall body function is just endless. I like the way that you can constantly change things and get completely different results, as we were talking about the workouts before.

From the pure physicality standpoint too of, man, you treat your body the right way and put yourself in some opportunities to be successful, it’s amazing how well your body will respond to those things. There’s a bunch of guys that do a bunch of different things, and there’s a bunch of super-fit guys on tour as well that I would want no part of training with.

My buddy, Camilo Villegas, was asking me to go on some bike rides. I’m ready to ride down the beach, and he’s ready to go do the outline of Florida. [laughs] I don’t want to do that.

I recently ran a half-marathon with some of my training buddies that turned into almost 18 miles because I’m an idiot. A friend of ours gave us a running route mapping app. For all those people out there listening, the trail that you’re running and the road are not the same.

I was like, “Ah, it’s close enough.” It’s a quarter mile here, half a mile here. Next thing you know, you get off, and you’ve gone on this tangent. Thankfully, my UFC buddy was so tired, when we got done, he couldn’t fight me, but he would have if he could.

There’s just a bunch of different ways to do it, and you find what works best for your personality and what you get the most out of. It’s something that I’ve enjoyed. I enjoy running workouts. I enjoy figuring out ways to push myself. That seems boring what can we do?

Trying to see different ways to keep it interesting, where you almost constantly guessing at the end result until you go in there and try to do it.

What are some movements that you think you might emphasize a little bit more in training as a professional golfer. What are some movements that — you mentioned upper body, not really having a goal of putting on a lot of upper body mhttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zVCInrK_5Ar6Uw8eglk3U788jUV3Yvs1jRw3Svznfc0/edit#gid=0ass right now — you might dial back a little bit or do with a little less frequency or intensity or load because of how it might impact your performance on the course?

A lot of it is risk versus reward. I can train the shoulder movement of a snatch without the risk of a bar snatch. I can train the muscle groups of a handstand push-up without running the risk of me breaking my neck or just weakness and just those awkward movements.

The same thing of I can recruit the same muscle groups of a bar muscle-up with a bunch of different isolated movements without any risk on my shoulders at all. I’ve spent a few training sessions with Rick [inaudible 18:46] at his house. He’s like, “If I ever see you do this…there’s no reason you should ever do this.”

If someone’s going to snatch, I’ll just dumbbell snatch with single arm. I can still go fairly heavy with that. The risk is way less than a bar. It’s easy to get away, it’s easy to drop, and just figure out the way to keep the integrity of the workout but minimize the risk from an injury standpoint and different things like that.

We’re predominantly pull-based in everything. I do a lot of pulling out of the ground. There’s no rotary base in anything of crossfitter, any type of lifting. You get basically someone that’s the straight-pulling guy or traditional Olympic lifter.

We went to Las Vegas and we did some stuff with Margaux Alvarez. I was getting her to do these rotational kettlebell cleans off the ground. She was like, “I’m not gonna do this.”

 I was like, “You never control-load laterally. You only do forward and backward.” If you have a lateral force, you have the counter on the other side. It literally takes unilateral movement where you have to load and control in the rotational plane.

The idea of that, especially what I do on a daily basis, that’s every day, you’ll be able to train both sides of that, which has been very interesting to figure out. We do a lot of landmine stuff. We do a lot of single-arm kettlebell stuff, isolated overhead holds, and try to ingrain some ability through that.

There’s a bunch of different things we do. We’re traditional. We squat. We deadlift. I’ve just got a belt squat. Holy cow, man. [laughs] For the spinal load of a traditional back squat, I know that’s not necessarily functional for everyone, and it’s expensive, it’s a huge piece of equipment, but the protection of my spine, of what it deals with on an everyday basis, if I could take that out and still squat heavy, that’s a win-win.

I had never been on one, and when we played Memorial in Columbus, Dan took us into Rogue, and we went in and I got to mess around. It was like, “How could I not have one of these?” [laughs]

You’re like, “I’ll take that one! That one right there!”

Yeah, can I leave with this thing now? Then I was like, “Yeah, it’s 1,200 pounds. How about you ship it to my house?”

Just some different things like that, a bunch of traditional CrossFit movements. I’m not going to handstand-walk. I referenced handstand pushups. Not going to bar-snatch, not going to bar muscle-up, but pretty much everything else is right in there.

Anything lower-body, I have no problem with. The stronger your ground base can be, the better. Controlling rotation off the ground as fast and efficient as you possibly can is what we’re trying to do. There’s a bunch of movements, man, that you have to be able to do, to control and to be able to do all that, to be able to do what we do at the highest level.

I’m curious. I’ve actually had Margo on the podcast. She’s a ton of fun, one of the smartest people you’ll ever talk to and just brings energy to everything and is also great at everything, so I’m not surprised she was a little frustrated when she didn’t get a movement immediately because she’s good at everything. Were you helping her with her long-drive training? I know that’s something she’s taken up recently.

Yeah. Actually, we went to the range in Vegas, and we brought all this equipment from her house. We brought it to the back of the range, and I was basically showing her how we can take a CrossFit methodology with a little bit of rotary focus and put it in where it would both benefit her fitness and her golf.

We took a landmine, some banded stuff and a single heavy kettlebell and some different things and it was very few places where that would be acceptable, but putting her and I in a range in Vegas with hitting drivers and training and doing all this, it was great.

The first hour before we even started recording, she was like, “All right. It’s going to take me a minute to figure all this stuff out.” I did a thing with the RP Strength guys at Fredrick’s house. It was he wrote a workout, then I wrote a workout. Then, he wrote a workout. Then, I wrote a workout.

I said, “You know the landmine thing attaches.” I said, “You got bazillion dollar of road equipment, surely there’s a landmine attachment in there somewhere.” The next thing you know, one of the guys that was in there training with us said, “Oh, I think we have one of those.” He goes and it’s still in a box. No one knows what it is. [laughs]

I said, “All right, man. It’s my turn. We’re going to do some alternating landmine off the ground rotational presses. He’s like, “What’s that?”

It hasn’t been unpacked yet. It’s still fresh in the box.

No. Literally, I was the first person that had ever used it. We did it. When you get someone that’s in their traditional — not that they’re traditional by any means — but this is the way we train.

Then, you show them a new modality or new something that changes up a little bit, the next thing you know he’s sending me videos of how he’s doing landmine rainbows to warm up before or warm his shoulders up, different things like that.

It’s funny to take two super, super, super-fit people and take them through some different things. Dan was the same way, but Dan of all people got it faster than anyone. He was recovering from a couple of surgeries. He is now getting back in. He wasn’t on any kind of program or anything.

He was like, “I want to train like you do for a whole tournament week and see what that’s like.” He did every workout that we did. Man, he’s doing alternating rotational snatches off the ground into a split-back lunge. After 10 minutes he’s like, “This is great.”

I’m like, “Man, of all your friends you can give them a bunch of crap because you did it better than all of them.”

You got to start charging people for this. You got to host a camp, find a farm, host a week-long camp, and take people through a week in the lifestyle of a PGA pro. People will pay for that, man. You add the fitness element to it as well.

We’re trying to figure out my real job gets in the way of that.

I would like to do a golf and fitness thing where people get trained in the morning, play golf in the afternoon, do a three to four, very similar to how Rich does. Then, incorporate a little bit more golf. Then, people would go into his house and workout for about 10 hours a day.

Which is cool. I have done that. From my perspective, the golf side and show how they both go hand-in-hand would be pretty cool. Hopefully, we’ll have an opportunity to do that down the road. I need to get back on the golf course for a little bit for the next time being, hopefully.

You’ve had a chance to train with it’s like a who’s who people who have been on our podcast. You’ve trained with Rich. You’ve trained with Margaux. I’m like, “We haven’t interviewed Dan Bailey. That might be one. I should reach out to him.

Is there any athlete…it could be in the CrossFit space, it could be in the professional sports space in any realm…any athlete you haven’t had a chance to work out with that you would like to?

I would love to work out a few different ways. I’d love to do the Laird Hamilton XPT thing with all the breathing and underwater stuff. I do a lot of cold exposure so that would be super interesting. Anything with William [inaudible 26:47] , that guy is insane. [laughs]

It would be very cool to understand the mentality side of, “Hey, we’re just going to embrace suffering and deal with it and come out better on the other side.” I would like to work out with Jocko. That would be great. His warm-up weights would be my max.

That would be super cool. Across the sports may be anything. Tiger would be awesome. I had a chance to train with Rory. He was awesome, a completely different mentality — not wrong or right — he knows what works best for him and was very, very cool. We trained together earlier this year and it was great.

Man, anyone who pushes himself to try to get to the best version of themselves whether you’re a sports person or not. Man, I trained with some guys who are typical nine-to-fivers. They’re getting after it, Man. I like people who are trying to push themselves.

Ignorance is not an excuse. They take a good amount of ownership in everything that they do. People that are going to step into the gym with that mentality, I’ll train with anybody.

You talked about the longevity in the sport of professional golf, earlier. You talked about this being a sport where you can play for a long time. I remember, was it Tom Watson at the British Open 10 or so years ago? He was in contention. He was in his late 50s, in contention on the final day for a major championship.

There is a lot of longevity in this sport compared to something like fighting in the UFC, compared to professional basketball, compared to CrossFit, in many ways. How are you approaching your future?

Do you have a timeline in mind when you think to yourself, “Hey, here are the amount of years I want to be able to perform at this level.”?

Yeah, I think that’s changing because have you ever done any of those biological age tests, and everything, where you figure out…They test the age of your mitochondria and people way smarter than me.

When I was 29, my biological age was 42. Now I’m 35 and my biological age is 26. From a physicality standpoint, I feel like I feel great. The idea of having some kind of physical barrier just stopping me from playing is not necessarily outside of my mind because anything can take place.

That’s not necessarily how I think about it. I think about as my kids get older. I have a seven-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. The opportunities that’d come before us in the next few years with golf, and have an opportunity to be a little bit more of it in the dad role, appeals to me a lot. Doing some stuff outside of golf.

For now, man, my job is a professional golfer. I’m going to try to be the best steward of that. Be a good dad and a great husband. I try to manage to help my family as much as I possibly can. Those questions, I’m sure will get further along later in life. Right now, that’s my focus. [laughs]

I’m sure, maybe in a few years, I’ll have a better answer for that. Right now, I’m going to enjoy what my body’s able to do. Hopefully, be able to do this for a long time.

I’ve got to ask, I asked Rich Froning the same question about his kids and CrossFit. Have your kids shown any interest in golf?

Not really. They’ll always have an access to it, just like Rich’s kids. Hey, I’m going to show them this is what dad does for a living. They also know that…especially my son’s old enough, “This is why dad is gone a decent bit.” It’s a give and take.

My son will go hit balls. My daughter is a danger to everyone on the golf course when she’s out there.

Including herself. [laughs] That’s going to be a little bit…but just all sports in general. I wasn’t specialized in any form or fashion growing up. I played everything. I think all kids should be able to do that, as well.

Like I said, they’ll have access to golf for a long time. If that’s what they decide to do, great. I’m going to push them along to be everything they possibly…or whatever they decide to do. The fitness aspect is something that I hope to carry on more than the golf side. Just like I said, “You take good care of your body, it will take care of you.”

I wish I could push them into a little bit more of gymnastics because every person I’ve ever trained with has a gymnastic background is an absolute freak and are graded everything.

I wish I had the body awareness. You are training with a guy, you watch him warm-up and he just ripping out muscle and just like, “Oh, this is what we do in gymnastics to get ready.” I was like, “To get ready? For what?”

The most humble that I’ve ever been in the gym and I’ve trained with a lot of people, was at the University of Auburn. We thought it was their gymnastics team. It was part of their gymnastics team but they were borderline cheerleader and they were doing the tumbling.

They were warming up and the girl’s like, “Oh, I’m like the thin person on our gymnastics team.” I bet she did 50 muscle-ups in 10 minutes. She was just cruising like it was nothing. I’m like, “You’re not even the best, what does that look like?”

She’s like, “Yeah, it’s just something I do.” If I did that, I would tell every person I knew for every day of my life. [laughs] It’s like it was no big deal. If there’s any part of the sports or fitness that I could push on my kids, it would be some type of gymnastics movement. I can care less if they competed at it but just learning the training and the body awareness at a super young age.

Yeah. It’s a lot easier to learn that when you’re young and small, than when you’re grown and…

Oh my…

It’s a further distance to the ground when you fall down. Let’s put it that way. [laughs]

Yeah, your fear of everything bad that can take place in the reality that you’re human…

…is a real thing. The help that my kids will take on. My son will dabble in a little bit.

Scott, thank you so much for chatting today. Where is the best place for people to keep up to date with you, your playing schedule, with your training, anything like that?

Yeah, my Instagram, Twitter, @stallingsgolf, and then my name, @scottstallings. We have a good amount of golf stuff on there, a good amount of fitness, life. You see my crazy kids on there. This is who I am. A pretty simple guy and I like to train hard. I like to make a lot of birdies, hopefully.

I love spending time with my kids, being a dad, and being a husband. If that’s what people are in to and want to see a guy that learned a lot about life, in a real short amount of time, it’s all out there.

You can’t ask for much more than that. Scott Stallings, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate your time.

Thanks, man.