Get Your Body Ready for Golf Season with these Tips

The annual ritual of the start of golf season is coming up fast. If you want to have a better season than last year (fingers crossed!), then here are some tips for preparing in advance. And I am not simply talking about getting your golf shoes out of the garage to clean them off. Rather, you need to prepare your body itself for golfing.

Many people see the game of golf itself as part of their fitness efforts. That’s fine to a degree, but what is even more important is getting your body ready for the new season after a winter of neglect.

And this year, why not take the leap and if you are physically able, walk the course instead of using a global-warming culprit and money guzzling golf cart? If you do that, and avoid on most occasions the call of the 19th hole grease pit, you will find it easier and easier to walk the full course as the summer goes along. It’s true!

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.

Aerobic and stamina-building exercises are the key to beating the long walks in the heat of summer. And flexibility and muscle training will help you achieve longer drives, better swing consistency, and overall mid-torso strength. You won’t need to become a heavy lifting body builder at all! No, the goal is to tackle the repetitive, asymmetrical movements of golf by gently strengthening your muscles in advance.

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.

Don’t feel intimidated by the time commitment, because you can perform many of these exercises during your lunch break, or at home in the evening in front of the television. You also don’t necessarily need to break a sweat doing most of them. The rotational power in your torso relies on the hips, buttocks, thighs, abdominals, and lower back muscles all working in coordination. So begin by stretching those core areas. Later you can begin strength training, but still maintain the emphasis on the core power zone areas.

The core is the area between the knees and chest made up of all the bones, ligaments, and muscles within. There are countless exercises to help you work your core, including hamstring stretches, lower back stretches such as imitating a "cat" doing arches and hunches, gentle torso twists, side rotations with resistance, crunches, and gentle trunk rotations.

If you are like me and tend to spend the winters being sedentary, make sure you begin gently. The risk is that you will overdo things at the beginning, and injure some of your core areas, causing you to push back that first tee-off date. Begin each session by warming up for a short while using some aerobic option such as walking on an incline on a treadmill, a stationary bike, or a rowing machine.

The most important factor is to start early! I will lay out some specific exercises in an upcoming article, but don’t wait to start the process until a week before your first round. Take a few minutes each day starting now, and your torso strength and stamina will improve tremendously before the first game of the season. Your enjoyment and perhaps your score will both improve, too.