Pete Dougherty, newstimes.com

As the world’s greatest golfers competed last week at the Masters, Larry Novik just wanted to improve his game. He took up golf three years ago, at the relatively late age of 37, and became frustrated with his inability to play at a consistent level.

Novik, who lives in Saratoga Springs, isn’t trying to become Tiger Woods or Rory McIlroy. He said he usually can get his score under 100, but not much lower. (Most pros can shoot in the 60s on much longer and more difficult courses.) “I was struggling as I was learning,” Novik said. “Every once in a while you’d hit a flush, crisp shot and say, `I want to be able to do that again.’ Mostly what my teacher was saying was my posture was slipping, for whatever reason.

“I got to talking to people about it, and they said, `You’ve got to get more flexible. You’ve got to get more core strength. You didn’t grow up playing golf. Now that you’re getting serious about it at this age, you’ve got to exercise.’?” His quest took him down a path not traveled by many golfers. Novik turned to Pilates, a body-conditioning system that helps build flexibility and posture by working core muscles.

Unlike many types of exercise that use only the big muscle groups, Pilates works the entire body. The foundation, which Pilates instructors call the “powerhouse,” includes the abdomen, lower and upper back, hips, buttocks and inner thighs.

Novik is in week eight of a 10-week program at Reform, a Romana’s Pilates studio that stays authentic to the Joseph Pilates method.

“We’re trying to give him the flexibility and strength so he can play golf better,” said Cindy Potoker, one of Novik’s instructors at Reform.

“He was very tight in the upper back through his hip area, so we’ve been trying to strengthen that and loosen it up.” Meghan Del Prete, the studio owner, said she has never played golf, but she was able to detect what Novik needed to do to reach his goals.

“I had him show me some video, and he showed me his swing,” she said. “He showed me an ideal swing and how the shoulders separate from the back. He said, `If you look at my swing, you can see they don’t separate as much as they should.’ ” Novik goes through three one-hour sessions weekly with an individual instructor. He will do numerous exercises on each piece of apparatus.

Much like a football coach, the instructor has a plan of an exercise routine for the student but may alter that in the middle of a session.

Del Prete said, “We have to really think on our feet: `The body needs this,’ or `That didn’t really get what I was trying to have them get out of that exercise. What is another way I can get the same result?’

“With Pilates, most things we do, we do like three or five times. It’s not like we’re doing 40 push-ups.” A blog on the studio’s website follows Novik’s progress, charts his measurements and offers photographs of his workouts.

“I’ve worked out in the typical gym workout, the typical male workout,” Novik said, “which is very focused on extremities o big arms, big shoulders, big quads. You do your crunches, you do these core exercises.

“What I realized when I started doing Pilates is that (gym) type of core exercise is very one-dimensional. You work out your core by doing crunches, you’re just working out the center of your stomach. In here, you’re exercising the core from all different angles.” Del Prete, who has operated Reform since 2007, said that only about 20 percent of her client base is male.

“We’re hoping to try to change that perception a little bit,” she said.

While different than a typical gym workout, Pilates can be physically taxing.

“This stuff is so hard when you first start, when you’re a man,” Novik said.

“Muscles are hurting that you didn’t know you had. When they say do something, you say, `How?’ You didn’t even know how to activate the muscles.” How long will it take to realize results?

Novik went to Florida after the third week of his program and played golf, shooting an 85. Beyond the improvement in score, he said he had no difficulty walking 18 holes.

“That core feeling of tiredness totally went away,” he said. “That, and I really feel differently swinging a club. More flexible, and more relaxed, but in a strong sort of way.” “He was skeptical until he went to Florida,” said Potoker, who then turned to Novik and added, “and when you came back, you were like, `I think there’s something going on here. I definitely felt after you came back from Florida, you were like empowered about it.” “I thought originally I’d do it just for the 10 weeks,” Novik said, “but I’m definitely considering continuing, because it makes you feel great.” Novik, the father of two small children, said he tries to get out to play twice a week. He gets in a nine-hole round or heads to the driving range once during the week after work, then gets in a full round each weekend.

He recognizes that Pilates can’t help much with golf’s chipping and putting, which is the quickest way to improve a player’s score, but he said he likes the results he is seeing.

“My dad tried to get me to play golf when I was younger,” he said. “I never had the time for it, never had the inclination. I was thinking about spending more time with him, so I thought I’d give this a shot. I never expected to get hooked on it. I’m that old-fashioned kind of golfer. I just want to get better.”
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