Lots of our clients are golfers, and they want to well… golf better. But either they don’t train for it deliberately, or they train the wrong way. In this article, you’ll learn how we consistently add 20-40 yards to our clients’ drives in a matter of 3-6 months.

Fitness for golf

Original source: here.

You’ll learn:

  • The biggest fitness mistakes that golfers make
  • How to optimize fitness for golf

 

And if you want help improving your own drive, just fill out the application form on our home page (we offer both in-person and virtual services, so it doesn’t matter where you are in the world).

 

The Biggest Fitness Mistakes that Golfers Make

Unlike other sports, like boxing, or weightlifting, where fitness is taken as a given, in golf, fitness is a relative newcomer. It wasn’t until Tiger Woods’ appearance that fitness started to be taken seriously in golf. Nonetheless, amongst casual golfers, there are 4 main mistakes.

Mistake #1: Not Exercising

This is the most obvious mistake. After all, golf is seen as recreational – you take a swing, then rest for a long time, take a cart to the next hole, etc. And if that’s all it is to you, that’s perfectly fine. Maybe you just play golf for the social aspect of it, not necessarily to get better at it.

But even if that’s you, it’s a good idea to exercise for the sake of injury prevention (there are more injuries in golf than in lifting weights), if not to improve your drive.

 

Mistake #2: Not Strength Training

For the golfers that do exercise, many of them don’t strength train. Or they think they strength train, but they really don’t. Why? For reasons that I talk about in my article on what is strength training.

 

Mistake #3: Seeking Fatigue

Most people who are serious, and pride themselves on being tough seek fatigue when they strength train.

In general, that’s a good thing. For overall health, you do want to work fairly hard a couple of days a week (and easier workouts on the other days).

It’s also good for the golfer who never strength trains. Going from doing nothing to doing something (even if it’s not the best thing) will improve your drive.

But past the point of the beginner phase (about 6-12 months of exercising correctly, progressively, etc.), your training needs to be more golf-specific and less general.

Once you get to that point, you have to stop seeking fatigue (most of the time). Here’s a quick exercise physiology crash course: there are 3 energy systems.

  1. The aerobic system. It’s used to fuel long activities. “Long” is anything over about 2 minutes.
  2. The glycolytic system. This one is used to fuel medium-duration activities. “Medium-duration” is defined as between 20-120 seconds. This is the energy system predominantly used in strength training. It generates lactic acid, and causes your muscles to burn.
  3. The alactic system. The word “alactic” means “without lactic acid.” This is the system used predominantly for short-duration activities, which last under 20 seconds. A golf drive is under 1 second. This energy system provides a lot of power, but very little endurance.

 

Most people strength train using the glycolytic system. A golf drive happens in the alactic system. The goal of strength training for golf isn’t to maximize fatigue or build endurance. The goal is to build power. Power is built by training predominantly in the alactic system. What that means practically is that each set of exercises will last under 10 seconds. Sure, you can do many sets of 10 seconds (or less), but it’s going to feel quite different from traditional strength training. In traditional strength training (where sets last 20-80 seconds), you really feel the burn. With strength training for golf, you actually don’t. In fact, you deliberately avoid it.

Why? Because of the principle of specificity. This principle states that to have the best possible transfer of training to sport, you have to match the demands (but not necessarily movements) of that sport. One of the key demands of any sport is the energy system used. After all, you don’t want to be a beast in the gym, yet, there’s no carryover to the golf course. Maximal transfer is the goal.

 

Mistake #4: Exercise Selection

Another common mistake is selecting the wrong exercises. Again, if someone is a complete beginner to strength training, even bad exercise selection is likely to improve someone’s golf drive. But past the beginner period, there needs to be more careful exercise selection.

Once again, we want maximal transfer from the gym to the golf course. Most traditional strength training exercises are linear – squats, deadlifts, overhead presses, bench presses, etc. Golf is not linear – it’s rotational.

I’m not saying that 100% of the exercises in a golf-specific fitness program need to be rotational, but certainly, a few.

With my clients, I like to establish a relationship between progress in an exercise and progress in the golf drive. For example, with one of my clients, I know that for every 2.5-pound improvement in his squat-to-punch, his drive improves by about 1-1.5 yards. But with other clients, the same exercise might result in a smaller or larger carryover. But it’s good to have certain “indicator exercises.”

 

How to Optimize Fitness for Golf

Optimizing fitness for golf is largely about avoiding the above mistakes. But if you’re a beginner to strength training, you can use a basic strength training program that’s not even targeted to golf, and everything will benefit – your golf, your energy levels, your muscle tone, your car insurance, and more.

Past the beginner stage, follow these principles:

 

  • Exercise selection: choose at least 2-3 rotational exercises. Some examples are:
  • Exercise frequency: at least twice per week.
  • Tempo: exercises that are meant to carry over to golf should be done explosively. Traditional strength training is not explosive. It doesn’t need to be. But if we want carryover from the gym to the course, the tempo of the rotational exercises needs to be explosive.
  • Number of reps: keep them low, like under 6.
  • Number of sets: inversely related to the number of exercises. If you only use 2-3 rotational exercises, you want to do 5-8 sets of about 3-6 reps.
  • Stop the set when the speed slows down. Unlike traditional strength training, where speed slows down (which is a desirable aspect of it) with accumulating fatigue, when training for golf, you don’t want to accumulate fatigue. Fatigue makes you slow. You want to be fast.

 

I usually shy away from providing general sample programs, for fear that they’re not necessarily right for every reader, and inevitably, someone gets hurt. But if you want a personal program designed for you specifically, and accommodates to your level, injuries, health conditions, etc. you can see if you qualify for our services by filling out the application form on our home page.