Working out is one of the best and healthiest ways to keep your golf game going for as long as possible into your older years. It’s an even better way to spend your time in the winter when golf season is not open. It keeps your body in shape, and it keeps your muscles and mind in great condition, so you don’t feel out of shape when handling physical activities like golf. This blog aims to provide you with an idea of what works for your body and how to plan accordingly if you’re ready and willing to ensure your golf game is in top shape by next golf season.
In this blog, we will break down the ultimate guide to physical fitness in the winter to make sure you’re in good shape to hit well in the next golf season.
Correlating Fitness to Playing a Sport
It’s our job to educate you about the finer details of what it means to play golf, and we know that many of you may not believe that working out in the gym or performing endurance and strength training will help improve it. We are not here to judge, but to help you see how great it can actually be for you.
When you look at sports in general, there are thousands of athletes in almost every major sport who use fitness and strength/endurance training as a way to keep themselves fit and help their muscles get used to the physical motion that is attributed to the sport they play. In golf, it’s no different! Take a look at what professional golfer Billy Horschel does below!
Improving your golf swing is something that goes a long way, and fitness training helps it significantly. Performance and longevity are crucial for you to be able to play as long as you can and, most importantly, to avoid any possible injury risk that can happen if you don’t implement fitness into your golf season preparation.
Every type of golfer is going to have their own routine, and that’s ok. There’s always something that works for someone with fitness training. You’ll be able to see the benefits in no time once the golf season starts, and improve upon your routine once you realize what is working and what doesn’t. So let’s get into talking about those exercises that work best!
3 Exercises and Fitness Routines That Work Best for Golfers
Let’s start with weight-lifting exercises for when you go to the gym to get a good pump in your muscles:
Leg Squats
Photo credit: https://www.menshealth.com/uk/fitness/a754495/ultimate-guide-to-the-barbell-squat/
The reason leg squats are universally loved by golfers is that they increase your speed of hitting the ball on your swing. If you’re a golfer who feels that your balls are not going far enough after you hit them, this exercise will work your legs to move faster when you swing through and rotate your hips. You’ll feel it through your hips, but also your ankles and knees. There’s a slight bend motion in your legs when you come up with the club, and squats help replicate that, and any type of squat works, whether it’s a dumbbell squat or a barbell squat.
The Medicine Ball
Photo credit: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/g25058598/medicine-ball-exercise/
The medicine ball has become a staple in the world of sports fitness for athletes, with its various uses. It can be used to help build strength and coordination, and if you’re someone trying to recover from an injury, it also helps with that. We mentioned the idea of swing speed from what leg squats benefit, and it’s very similar here with a medicine ball, with the motions of you throwing the ball at the wall or the ground through a medicine ball slam.
Most people know that golf is not the most physically demanding or movement-based sport to play, but you are still working your whole body when you swing at that ball on the ground. You move your arms, your legs, your core, your hips, your feet, your shoulders, and so on. The medicine ball as a fitness routine gives you a full-body workout that helps in all of those areas that you use to swing the club.
The Best Types of Stretches
Photo credit: https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/best-dynamic-warmup-any-workout
Doing stretches is not necessarily any form of exercise or fitness routine; they are usually done as a warm-up before you do the main workout. That’s why we want to include it here, because if you leave out stretching from exercising or before you go out on the golf course, it might leave you feeling worse off in your performance for both.
Hip rotation stretches are a good stretch to start with! This stretch puts you into the movement of what you do when you swing the club. Releasing that tightness in your hip muscles, it allows them to move more freely and without pain.
Lunge stretches are great for working your legs, and they’re a unilateral stretch, which means stretching them one at a time, and it works to affect your balance, whereas something like a leg squat does it for both legs.
Golf Fitness FAQ
How do fitness routines and other forms of working out prevent me from injuring myself while golfing?
We know this is a big question to ask, especially from older folks who want to continue playing golf in their later years and prevent injury to their lower back, hips, shoulders, or other areas of the body.
The simple answer to that question is this: always find time to stretch before you play, listen to health professionals about how to participate in the workouts and fitness routines we discussed, and, most importantly, always find time to rest and reenergize your body. You can’t play golf or exercise all the time; the body needs time to get in shape, which will help you with long-term success in this endeavor.
If you want to learn more about this from the professionals themselves, we have a few PGA golf instructors on hand to give you some lessons and golf tips for great and effective play. They will put you through our TrackMan Golf Simulator and see what you can. The simulator provides accurate data on your club head speed, ball speed, spin rate, launch angle, and much more.
We offer the best golf lessons in here in Buffalo, NY, and you can schedule a lesson with these instructors. They’ll pinpoint where you might be having issues, and after that, you can then figure out how to best improve upon that from a fitness perspective, from the information that this blog explains in detail.
Schedule a golf lesson when you can, or reach out to us with any other questions you might have through our contact form. We look forward to helping you!