With your choice of amazing public courses and top-tier country clubs all just minutes from Olympus Waterford, DFW is a golfer’s paradise. If you’re looking for a way to shave strokes off your game, it might be time to train smarter with some new golf-focused workouts. Check out these four routines to boost your flexibility, strength, and power for longer drives and lower scores.
Take a Dose of Medicine Ball
Concentrating weight and focusing balance, the medicine ball is the golfer’s best friend when it comes to training. Medicine balls work perfectly to build power and explosiveness – the stuff you’ll need in order to increase your swing speed and hit longer distances. For your lower body and shoulders, work in a squat and overhead push press with the heaviest medicine ball you can handle. To increase your core strength and improve your rotational mobility through your midsection, perform a standing twist, passing the ball off to a partner with each turn. Finally, stabilizer push-ups on the medicine ball not only work your chest and arms but also train your scapular stabilizer muscles for a more powerful swing.
Loosey-Goosey
When you’re training in the gym to enhance your performance on the course, you’re not just looking to build muscle. The name of the game is flexibility. Exercises that improve balance, loosen muscles, and improve coordination will all help to groove your swing. Relieve any hip tightness with longer stretches in pigeon pose. Try dynamic stretching like forward kicks and side kicks to activate your hamstrings and glutes. And make sure to warm up and stretch your shoulders with arm circles, cross-arm stretches, and reverse prayer poses.
Get Centered
Want more power behind your swing? It all starts with the core. Driving your hips and torquing your midsection for faster clubhead speed requires great core strength. Plus, you’ll need strong abdominals and lower back muscles to maintain balance as you shift your weight from the back foot to the front foot. One of the simplest and most effective core exercises out there is high plank pose. You’ll work your shoulders, arms, and forearms while building strength through your core, and you can do this one just about anywhere. When you have access to a cable machine or resistance bands, you can add in a standing wood chop. No exercise out there better replicates and enhances the golf swing than this one, which requires keeping your lower body steady while working your abs and obliques, building the twisting power you’ll need to drive through the ball.
Power Up From the Bottom Up
Power in your legs provides the foundation for your golf swing, and while golfers don’t need to do a bunch of heavy back squats, training specifically for explosiveness in the lower body can lead to big gains in your game. Start with the deadlift – making sure you have the right form and an appropriate weight – to work your quads, hamstrings, and glutes, plus your lower and upper back and your forearms. Deadlifts build explosive power for that moment of exertion when you start your downswing and make impact with the ball. Add in some lunges to build up strength and balance with an exercise that focuses on just one leg at a time. Like in your golf swing, your weight will shift from one leg to the other, and that coordination trains your body for an effective weight transfer when you get out on the course.
For more health and fitness tips to help you enjoy life in Keller, make sure to check out our Olympus Waterford blog.