Par Bar
Grade: B
Teacher’s Comments: Nutritionally sound, but could be tastier.

One thing I’ve noticed while attending PGA Tour events is that many pro golfers are grazers. They eat throughout a round, as their caddy pulls out one snack or another from the bag. Often it’s a piece of fruit, but other times it’s an unidentifiable candy or protein bar. The pros don’t generally eat a lot—just a bite or two before moving on with their round. It’s pretty obvious that what they’re doing is keeping their glycemic levels steady, making sure they don’t have a sugar crash when they’re trying to steady a putt.

Keeping up the energy levels also becomes an issue for us mere golfing mortals as rounds of golf increasingly become five hour affairs. I expend a lot of energy walking most of my rounds, but even when riding in a cart, I find that two thirds of the way through a round, I need something to eat.

Golf course food, however, isn’t exactly nutritionally sound, being composed primarily of hot dogs, candy bars, chips and beer. And except on courses with exceptionally well stocked beverage carts, it’s generally only available at the turn.

So in recent years, I too have stocked my bag with an apple or a banana. I’ve also tried a few Clif and other energy bars. Food high in protein and complex carbohydrates are my best options because they don’t cause an immediate sugar hit (and resulting crash), but rather, release their energy over a longer period of time.

The Par Bar is a product from Sun Valley Bar that’s supposed to be specially formulated for golfers. It contains all natural ingredients, eschews processed sugars and emphasizes complex carbohydrates. It’s rated as quite low on the glycemic index and contains Omega-3 oils, which are supposed to reduce inflammation. Taken together, these are supposed to provide sustained energy and avoid the spike-and-crash cycle which can potentially ruin a round.

Here’s the ingredient list from the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip: organic oats, brown rice syrup, peanut butter (peanuts, salt), semi-sweet chocolate (organic evaporated cane juice, chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, soy lecithin, ground vanilla beans), organic maple syrup, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds, apples, brown rice flour, organic ground flaxseed, organic sesame seeds, soy protein, choline-enriched soy lecithin.

That’s a healthy mix. The Par Bars all have 28 - 29 carbs and 6-7 grams of protein. That’s more carbs than I like to consume, but Mrs. Golfblogger assures me that they’re good carbs.

The Par Bar was created by Sarah Walker, a sports nutritionist and registered dietitian, who also has created the parent company’s Sun Valley Bars.

The Par Bar comes in four flavors: Cranberry Almond, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Chocolate Chip and Goji Lemon. Of the four, I liked the Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip best. It was a little dry and chewy, but all of those types of bars tend to be so. The Chocolate Chocolate Chip ranked second on my list, while the Cranberry Almond and Goji Lemon just weren’t my cup of tea. Mrs. GolfBlogger shared the bars with me and commented that she didn’t like the Cranberry Almond at all on first taste, but came to like it by the end.

In taste and texture, I found them to be a lot like the more-well-known Clif Bars. They were, however, smaller, and less filling. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You don’t want to feel stuffed when you’re playing. Sometimes the Clif Bars leave me feeling like I’ve got a rock in my stomach.

If you see the Par Bar on the shelves of your grocery store or pro shop (I have no idea where they’re being sold), I suggest you pick up a couple. They are, at the very least, a huge step up nutritionally from the hot dog and beer diet.

Having suffered for many years from low-grade, but persistent back and neck pain that has failed to respond to physical therapy, I finally took the advice of Mrs. GolfBlogger and went to see a chiropractor. I just finished my third treatment, and it’s been an interesting experience on several levels.

The initial visit was a sort of consultation, and began with a series of rather suspect tests. I filled out a long health questionnaire and then talked to the Doctor about possible stress in my life (there really isn’t any). Then, I demonstrated (or rather, failed to demonstrate) a range of motions involving my neck, shoulders, and arms. The Doc meaured my weight balance on a platform that had a scale under each foot, and checked my posture against a frame that had a series of wires at odd angles at the back. Then, the Doctor ran an electronic device up and down my spine which was supposed to measure temperature and tension or somesuch.

At that point, I half expected the Doctor to tell me that my body was inhabited by Thetans and that I needed to donate to the High Church to cleanse myself.

Fortunately, I was then taken to another room for back and neck x-rays—a technology which I understood.

The final diagnosis was that I’ve got the beginnings of arthritis in the neck and some degenerating parts in the back. It came as no surprise to me, since both my parents have suffered from both since their 30s. More interesting was that the Doctor concluded that my left leg is 9mm shorter than my right, throwing my hips off kilter. That also was really no surprise—I’ve always suspected as much.

The prescription was a series of the usual chiropractor back and neck cracking therapies. The idea, the Doctor said, is to loosen up the stiff and stuck vertebrae, allowing a greater range of motion and permitting the disks to begin to repair. He also suggested that anything else that might possibly ail me—from asthma to infertility to hemorrhoids—also would be cured as the nerves were restored to balance.

Fortunately, I don’t have any health problems (that I’m aware of) other than the neck and back pain, so I won’t have to test that part of the chiropractic theory.

The therapy is for me rather unnerving. I lie on a pivoting platform while the Doctor gets a grip on my hips, back or neck. Then he gives my spine a sharp twist. There’s a loud crack and a discernable feeling of the relief of pressure. I feel somewhat better almost immediately, but just thinking about it is a bit stomach turning.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the eventual outcome of the entire course of the treatment. The initial x-rays clearly showed some mashing of the vertebrae (when compared to the x-ray of a “healthy” spine), and if the only thing that happens is that I regain some flexibility and pain relief, I’ll be happy.

I’m also curious about the treatment’s possible effects on my golf game. Clearly, regaining flexibility will help with distance.

More intriguing is the effect that having a shorter leading leg may have had on my play. My poor shots typically are fat, and if I’m shfting my weight to a shorter front leg, that makes sense.

The Doctor suggested that one possible future treatment may be to insert a “lift” into my left shoe to even out my stance. That could help alleviate the back pain from an uneven gait, but I think it also might improve my swing.

It also makes me think that I might benefit from the recent Stack-And-Tilt swing. Assuming I understand the swing correctly, with my weight starting and finishing over my front leg, the 9mm difference would be made moot.

It’s a lot to think about. I’ll let you know how the treatments progress.

A new study shows that players who push their clubs on a cart, or use a caddy have better golf scores than those who ride. Those who carry their own clubs, on the other hand, score slightly worse.

It’s not a big study, but the researchers found that the average score for 9 holes walking was 40 with a push cart and 40 with a caddy. Riders averaged 43; those with carry bags averaged 45.

It confirms what I’ve always thought—that I play far better when walking. Walking (pushing my Sun Mountain Speed Cart) gets me into a rhythm that I never achieve when riding. The stop-and-start nature of cart golf keeps me off balance. I find it more difficult to concentrate, and more importantly I don’t have as good a sense of the distances, or of the ground conditions.

A University of Wisconsin study has determined that playing golf on a Nintendo Wii burns one fewer calorie per minute than hitting balls at a driving range. According to the results, playing the Wii burns 3.1 calories per minute vs. 3.9 calories per minute hitting balls at a driving range.

It of course does not burn nearly as many calories per minute as walking and playing a course (8), but actually comes close to the energy expenditure of those who ride a cart (5).

Of all the Wii sports games, boxing burns the most calories, at 7.2 a minute. Tennis burns 5.3. 

Note that neither of those is as much as walking through a round of golf.

You can read the whole study here.

Here’s a great idea: at the LPGA Navistar Classic, dermatologists are offering free skin cancer screenings.

You shoot what you eat.

Or something like that.

The New York Times has an interesting article on how the foods you eat can affect your golf game. The experts recommend carbohydrates to keep your blood sugar up.

TRION:Z Bracelet

Grade; Incomplete
Teacher’s Comments: There’s no way to know if these actually work. Still, it can’t hurt, and there just might be something to it ...

In my endless quest to improve my golf game, I’ve not only tried lessons, instruction manuals and hundreds of gadgets, but also a variety of fitness, health and lifestyle approaches.

While I wouldn’t ingest a magic golf pill from a Mexican manufacturer, would never do steroids, and am not interested in arm-straightening surgery, I figure just about anything else is fair game.

So over the past decade—in the interest of improving my game and of having more summers to play it in— I’ve changed my diet, started taking vitamins, practiced yoga and worked with resistance bands. The result: I’ve lost some weight, drasctically improved my cholesterol scores (my doctor said he’s never seen such a big change), and improved my flexibility and strength. I like to think I’ve also improved my game.

One “medical” product I’ve often wondered about are those magnetic bracelets so many pros seem to be wearing. Magnets are reputed to have healing properties, and the ion products claim to help keep you calm and loose.

Figuring that it couldn’t do any harm, I recently I acquired a Trion:Z bracelet from my local pro shop. It was under $20, wasn’t too ugly, and I was in the mood to try something different.

The Trion bracelets claim that their products offer both magnetic and ionization benefits:

Trion:Z bracelets and necklaces bring minus ions and twin 1,000 Gauss magnets together to form the most unique product of its kind today.

Trion:Z is made with “Stayers™”, a unique material woven with minus-ion producing minerals, which generates and releases more than twenty times the minus ions of the metal “ionized” bracelets, silicon tourmaline-embedded bracelets, and titanium bracelets of the competition.

Trion:Z bracelets and necklaces use 1,000 Gauss axially magnetized magnets, arranged in a patented Alternating North-South Polarity Orientation (ANSPO) matrix that increases the penetrating power of the magnets.

I really can’t make any useful statement about the bracelet’s calming properties. At work, at home and on the course, I’m renowned for my ability to stay cool. Crisis, failure, and strife calm me because they get me to focus. Mrs. GolfBlogger gets frustrated with me because “nothing seems to bother you” and sometimes she wants me to be upset. My blood pressure, medically speaking, is always low.

That said, it was the “healing” part of the magnetic bracelet that attracted me. If it could help assuage some of the aches and pains I feel on the course, it might do something for my game.

There’s no rational way to analyze the effects of the bracelet. Am I feeling fewer twinges as I play? Maybe. Maybe not.

I will, however, relate the following anecdotal evidence about their healing properties:

After 36 holes on the first day of my summer vacation, followed by an extended range practice session to straighten out a problem with my mid irons, my right elbow was just killing me. It was the kind of feeling that often has led to several days of steady pain, in spite of large doses of what Mrs. GolfBlogger calls “Vitamin M” (motrin).

As an experiment, I skipped the Vitamin M this time, and instead switched the bracelet from the left wrist to the right. Strangely, in about two hours, the pain went away.

Now I don’t know whether the magnets were having their advertised effect, or if it simply is a placebo. There’s no doubt, however, that the pain is gone way ahead of schedule.

Mumbo Jumbo? Probably. But the bracelet stays—at least for a couple more days. I may even get one for the other wrist (the Trion people have some cool ones geared to this year’s election season).