Ep. #532: How Pro Golfer Dru Love Dropped 40 Pounds and Fixed His Relationship with Food

Today's episode is the story of a professional golfer named Dru Love (son of the Hall of Fame golfer, Davis Love III), and how my team of coaches helped Dru lose close to 40 pounds and gain a bunch of strength and muscle.

When Dru was first introduced to me and my work, he was struggling with his body composition and fitness. He’s 6’5” and at the time weighed about 250 pounds. He had no idea what to do with his diet because of all the myths he’d heard in the past.

You’d be shocked what sort of fad diets make their way into professional sports, and most people don’t realize athletes don’t get good advice on how to eat, how to train, or how to do many things outside of how to play their sport.

There are plenty of good coaches specific to their sport, but when it comes to diet and training, athletes have a lot of people giving them a lot of bad advice. And that was definitely the case with Dru.

On the dietary side of things, he’d go from one extreme diet to the next, and fall off the wagon because it was too restrictive. His plans weren’t sustainable and he hated it.

He couldn't wait to get back to eating what he wanted, when he wanted, and as much as he wanted.

On the training side of things, Dru wasn’t much better off. Instead of strength training, he was working out with cables and BOSU balls—a bunch of “functional fitness” stuff—as it's often called in the golf space.

Those are the workouts I see many professional golfers doing, and really, they’re kind of silly. It's a lot of very low weight, low resistance exercises, with tons of reps and a lot of isolation work.

Of course, this is better than nothing. But I always wondered, why isn't strength training more popular in golf, especially considering most of the power in your swing comes from your lower body?

Wouldn't it be helpful to have stronger legs, stronger hips, and stronger glutes that can produce more force and produce it faster? You know, more power.

The faster you can swing the club, the more energy you can transfer to the ball, and the further you hit it. That's one of the things I talk to Dru about—why aren't more golfers doing strength training?

We also talk more in-depth about how his training looked before and after working with my coaching team, and how that’s impacted his golf game.

Dru has lost upward of about 40 pounds now, and while he saw his swing speed drop initially, he saw it come back up as he gained muscle and strength. Now, he’s 40 pounds lighter yet his swing speeds are higher than they were when he weighed 250 pounds.

And Dru’s just getting started. He’s 6 months into coaching and probably has another 6 months of newbie gains to go. So it's going to be exciting to see where this journey takes him.

Dru and I also chat about how his relationship with food has dramatically improved. Before, he struggled to “eat well”—eating a lot of fried foods and barbecue instead. (He lives in Georgia.)

Then he’d go from some extreme diet to the next, yo-yo dieting his way to nowhere.

Now, he's eating a lot of nutritious foods and fitting in indulgences to celebrate tournament wins on tour.

Anyway, I found this podcast particularly enjoyable because I like golf and I admire people who are really good at it. And as you’ll hear, what Dru is doing now is setting himself up for future big wins, and has positive ramifications outside of his sport as well.

Hit play and I hope you enjoy!

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8:58 - Where were you before you found Legion and my work?
11:34 - What did your body composition and weight look like before and after Legion?
19:30 - What is the fitness scene like in professional golf?
26:42 - Is there a stigma in golf against losing weight?
31:03 - How have you managed your workouts so soreness doesn’t get in the way of your goal? What have you noticed in terms of flexibility?
42:50 - How was t