Golfers didn't used to focus so much on fitness as part of their golf training. It seemed unnecessary to spend your time doing stretches and exercises that worked out parts of the body that weren't "golf-specific."

Then, along came a 20-year-old kid who blew all these old golfers out of the water, hitting 180 mph balls off the tee. The era of tiger Woods had come.

Suddenly everyone wanted to unlock the secrets of the tiger Woods golf swing. It was obvious he had a different way of going about things, and eventually this young golfer would change the way we train and play.

There's more than just the mechanics of the swing. Let's take a look at what makes tiger Woods golf swing so solid.

It's All about Keeping Fit

one reason tiger can swing like that is that he's flexible and strong. If you need any evidence that a good overall fitness program to build strength and flexibility is essential for a great golf swing, look no further than our man tiger.

tiger Woods knows that golf is a full-body sport. That's why he follows a rigorous training routine that includes the whole body and not just golf-specific exercises. He has always advocated weight training and stretching as part of a golf practice routine.

It's All about Energy

tiger uses every little bit of energy he can. When he swings, he turns his body fast while gently pushing his right leg (the back leg in his swing) forward. The result is that no energy is wasted. All the potential energy he's built up in the backswing gets released, and the full force of it hits that ball.

He can do this because he has a strong core. The study of biomechanics has taught us the ways in which all the parts of the body work together to give you a good golf swing. The core is your lower body and torso. When you swing at a golf ball, your core is like the axis, and the rest of the body rotates around it.

A perfect golf swing like Tiger's involves efficiently winding up and storing your body's natural energy, then releasing it in a natural and controlled way.

It's All about Smooth, natural Movement

But, it's not over when he hits the ball. After he smacks the ball, he lets his body follow through and finish that rotation. The club ends up behind his back. He lets it swing freely around him, allowing it to follow its natural course.

tiger swings all the way through the ball. Stopping the full rotation before it reaches its natural end tenses up your body, and can have a disastrous effect on how you hit the ball. Swinging all the way through adds distance to your shots. This is why he lets the rotation follow all the way through.

It's All about Your Mind

Finally, tiger Woods keeps relaxed. It's hard enough to keep yourself relaxed when you're making a shot with your friends, but imagine when the entire golfing world is watching! But, keeping cool is essential in golf, more than any other sport, and tiger never loses it out on the green.

If you follow these tips, you'll be just as good as tiger Woods in no time. Just kidding. But seriously folks, watch tiger Woods golf swing and you'll see your own game improve.

You can also find more info on golf driving distance and golf improvement.GetGoodAtGolf.com is a comprehensive resource golf enthusiast to improve their game through helpful tips and instructions.

Runaway leaders Reading suffered their first league defeat in 33 games at the hands of Luton on Friday night. The in-form Kevin Doyle put the 9/10 Royals ahead but were stunned with two goals from Rowan Vine and one from Dean Morgan. Doyle pulled one back for Reading in stoppage time but Luton had done enough to earn an unlikely win at odds of 14/5.

Sheffield United took advantage and cut Readings lead to nine points with a derby victory away at city rivals Wednesday. michael Tonge and Ade Akinbiyi netted for the Blades before half-time before the Owls hit back 10 minutes from time with a steve MacLean penalty. The 5/4 win for Neil Warnocks side was Uniteds first double over Wednesday for 14 years.

Watford climbed above Leeds to claim third place in the table after beating second-from-bottom Brighton at the Withdean stadium. The Hornets withstood early pressure from the home side but secured a narrow 1-0 victory at 11/10 thanks to a Chris Eagles goal on the stroke of half-time.

Leeds were held to a draw at Leicester, despite the home side playing 79 minutes with just 10 men. Iain Hume put the Foxes in front after five minutes before Patrick McCarthy was sent off for a foul on Rob Hulse, which led to Robbie Blake equalising from the resulting penalty.

With Preston north End not playing, Cardiff made up ground and are now just three points away from a play-off place. The 4/5 Bluebirds beat Hull 1-0 thanks to Cameron Jeromes goal after 22 minutes.

Wolves also remain in the play-off hunt after a narrow 1-0 win against Ipswich. Castro Sito felled Jeremie Aliadiere in the box 16 minutes from time and Kenny Miller dispatched the penalty for 11/10 Wolves.

Millwall striker Ben May struck an 89th minute equaliser to earn his side a crucial point against Crystal Palace. Ben Watson looked set to give the Eagles a routine win at 11/10 with his goal after 67 minutes only for May to snatch the relegation strugglers a point at the death.

Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, a Tibetan yogi often compared to the great Milarepa, when addressing the issue of Yidam practice within the Vajrayana vehicle of Tibetan Buddhism, has said: It is the blissful body of the yogi or yogini that is the true Deity. So what might this mean? And how, if at all, is it (or could it be) related to the practice of Yoga asana? Lets explore

Yidam practice unfolds in two stages: (1) The generation or creation Stage, in which the specific deity that one is working with is created, i.e. given a form within the imagination of the practitioner; and (2) The Completion Stage, in which that created form of the deity is dissolved: resolved into emptiness, and (its residue, its true intelligence) light/radiance. The practice also, over time, evolves from one in which the deity is merely a conceptual projection, to one in which the natural deity appears, non-conceptually, before the practitioner, as a visible aspect of his/her own radiance.

Yidam practice as a whole is based, in large part, upon a productive use of the imagination. It takes that capacity (and strong tendency) most of us have to make mental pictures, and uses this as a tool to align us with, open us to, a reality that is deeper, more profound, and truer than the one were habitually tuned into. The imagined forms of the deities have the quality of being able, potentially, to act as portals, or gateways into these deeper realities to put us in touch, directly, with aspects of awakened mind.

Now its important to notice the distinction between ~ on the one hand ~ this Yidam-practice way of using our imagination (as a very specific form of mental training, which ultimately can liberate us), and ~ on the other hand ~ a use of the imagination which amounts to no more than (habitual, and often largely unconscious) fantasizing. To engage in fantasy is ~ from the perspective of Buddha dharma ~ a non-productive use of the imagination: one that takes us further into the territory of conceptualization, mental elaboration, and as such further and further away from a reality which has the potential to liberate us.

So how does any of this relate to the practice of Yoga asana? We could, first of all, consider each specific asana as a deity-form: something we construct/project (a la the creation Stage) and then dissolve (a la the Completion Stage). And certainly asana practice is based largely upon a distinction between productive and non-productive alignments/uses of the body. The productive alignments (a la the productive uses of mental imagination) are those which have the potential to open us into a reality deeper than the mere physical, e.g. to the level of the Central Channel/Shushumna Nadi, and the subsequent conscious flow of that awakened energy outward, into the whole network of nadis within the subtle body of the yogi or yogini. The non-productive alignments (a la fantasies), on the other hand, simply keep the energy of our subtle bodies circulating unconsciously (divorced from the truth of the Shushumna Nadi) in old samskaric patterns, i.e. keep us circling on the wheel of bith-and-death which in Buddhism is called Samsara.

And in the same way that in deity practice there is an evolution from the deity as a mere conceptual projection (though a potentially productive one!) to the non-conceptual appearance of the natural deity; just so in our asana practice we often begin with a rather outside-in approach, in which the asana is actually a form of conceptual projection, i.e. its an idea we have (from our teacher, or books, or whatever) that we put forth in the form of an arrangement of (the appearance of) bones, muscles, etc. but its not yet real or natural. As our asana practice matures, more and more were able to work from the inside-out, in which the asanas emerge spontaneously, non-conceptually, as aspects of our natural intelligence/radiance. Our movements in and out of the asanas are infused with the spirit of what in Taoism is called Wu Wei: an effortless effort which quite naturally produces the correct alignments (as opposed to imposing those alignments based upon some external moral code of asana practice).

So how then do we progress from a conceptual to a natural way of expressing our asana practice? From the poses as mere conceptual projections to expressions of an awakened bodymind? A practitioner of the generation Stage of Yidam practice might move in this direction by finding the Completion Stage within the creation Stage, by finding the dissolution of the form as an inherent aspect of the form itself (much as ~ in taoist theory/practice ~ Yang is an inherent aspect of Yin: they inter-are). In this same way, our asana practice might re-member the dissolution of form within every form/asana taken. And might ~ to extend the principle ~ put into conscious and ever-evolving relationship all opposing movements So little by little our ideas about the right way to do the pose are replaced by an ever-more-subtle tremoring which spontaneously aligns us in a way that allows our conceptually projected body to dissolve into the blissful body of the deity: an aspect of our own radiance, pouring forth, shedding itself continuously, for the benefit of all living beings.

One of the initial trainings in Dream Yoga ~ once the practitioner is able to be lucid (i.e. awake) within the dream ~ is to transform the body: to change the shape of ones body into the body of a bird; into an airplane (and fly to Paris!); or ~ relevant to our current exploration ~ into the shape of a deity, which ~ in the context of dreaming ~ is quite easy to experience and understand as being an empty form, i.e. a form made only of color, light & energy (much like a rainbow). In this same way, our vinyasa ~ our movement in and out of asanas, upon the thread of our awakened breath ~ might become, with practice, a kind of Rainbow Painting (Ive borrowed the phrase from a book with this same title written by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche): merely a play in color, light and energy, a toggling back and forth between the display of empty forms (the specific asanas), and the bliss which is the residue of their dissolution.

And this, perhaps, represents ~ simultaneously ~ the waking up of the dream of our asana practice, and the waking up of the dream of our Yidam practice; represents the waking up from the dream/fantasy of religious practice into the blissful radiance of the Present Moment Amen and Sobeit.

Elizabeth Reninger has been exploring yoga ~ in its Hindu, buddhist & taoist forms ~ for more than twenty years, and is a student of Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. She is also a published poet, and currently resides in Boulder, colorado. For more essays on yoga-related topics, please visit her website at: http://www.writingup.com/blog/elizabeth_reninger