Playing Golf

 

Golf season is fast approaching, and if you want to have a good season this year (better than last year, at least!), then there are a few things you should do to prepare. No, I'm not talking about cleaning the mud off your golf clubs. These are things to help you get your body ready for golfing.

You might thing that playing golf itself is enough to qualify for your fitness goals. Certainly there are some moderate benefits, but even more important is preparing your body for the new golf season after a winter of too much sitting around.

And for those who ride the course in a cart rather than walking, and then pack away a couple of cold drinks after the round, the fitness element can be almost non-existent. If your body is capable, I encourage you to save the money and global-warming contributing emissions from your golf cart usage, and take to the fairways by foot this year.

However, well before the season begins, you can do a bunch of things to prepare your body for what lies ahead. The key is to get yourself prepared to tackle the long bouts of walking and standing around waiting on the course, and to slowly build strength in muscles that are used repetitively by golfers.

Therefore, you should combine aerobic and stamina-building exercises to prepare for the long walks on the course, and muscular strength and flexibility training to enhance your drives, swing accuracy, and overall strength in your mid-body region. Do you need to become a bulky body builder? Not at all. Rather, your goal is to gently strengthen those muscles that are repeatedly used in the repetitive golf moves that are mostly asymmetrical.

Rotational flexibility, hip flexibility, lower back muscles, and shoulder strength all play a role in each golfer's swing. And working these areas will also help you avoid getting spasms in your leg or back muscles during a long day on the links. If you have been cramped up in an office desk and chair all winter, then this is even more important.

This is not a huge time commitment. You can take 20 minutes from your lunch break, or work in front of the TV at night, and you most likely won't need a shower after each session either. The muscle groups that help build torso rotational power include the buttocks, hips, abdomen, lower back, and thighs. Begin with stretching those areas out, gently, and then move to weight and resistance training to strengthen them. Continue to concentrate on the power zone or core strength.

The core area is all the bones, muscles, and ligaments between your chest and your knees. Hundreds of exercises and variations can help you work your core, including abdominal crunches, gentle trunk rotations, gentle torso twists, lower back stretches such as "cat" arches and hunches, hamstring stretches, and side rotations using resistance.