Golf Conditioning in the Off-season

The fall of the first flurries means golf season is officially over in southeast Wisconsin (for most).  To stay in shape, prevent injuries, and prepare for a better 2010 season, start your golf off-season conditioning.  Off-season conditioning will help golfers in two ways: improved performance and decreased injuries next season. As Tiger Woods puts it, “It would be asinine for someone not to work out and go play football.  It doesn’t make sense for golf, either.”  Golfers needs to be limber, yet strong and balanced.  Because of the repetitive nature of golf and the position you are playing from in a bent over position, postural muscles need to have strength and endurance to do their jobs effectively.  Inflexibility and weakness of postural muscles leads to back pain, particularly in the lumbar spine.  With more time in the off-season you can start training for a better 2010.

Here are the key elements to a golf conditioning program:

• Aerobic exercise
  • Golf requires endurance.  Examples: bike, treadmill, elliptical, stepper.  Mix it up with high intensity intervals: For 30 seconds go full force with some resistance, slow it down for 1 minute without resistance and do this 7 times.  This will really get the heart working.
• Flexibility
  • Golf demands flexibility from the ground up, meaning stretch from the calves up to the upper traps.   If you’re not stretching this way, you will decrease your turn or turn only from your low back, leading to bulging discs, pinched nerves, and arthritis.
• Core Strength
  • Because of the high amount of strain on the spine it is of utmost importance to strengthen the muscles that support it: glutes, abs (lower and upper), scapular muscles (rhomboids, mid and lower traps in particular)
• Balance
  • In the swing, weight is transferred from the trail leg to the lead leg.  If you don’t have the balance to stand on that lead leg and remain strong you won’t be able to transfer as much power on release.
• Weight Training
  • Power is generated in the swing from the ground up so I recommend working on developing strong legs: calves, hams, quads, and glutes.

Golfers who do not work on these areas put themselves at a performance disadvantage and a higher risk of developing injuries.  A lot of the golfers I see in physical therapy have to rehab low back or neck pain.  At times, these injuries can end a golf career or severely limit ability to play.  Of course the best way to train would be to find a professional that can identify your biggest golf-specific weaknesses and design a specific conditioning program and workout routine to match.  You can find a golf fitness or medical professional on the Titleist Performance Institute’s website: mytpi.com.  Get in the gym this winter and start preparing for an injury-free, lower-score 2010.