Get Your Body Ready for Golf Season with these Tips

By: Morgan Fobbs

It will be golf season very soon, and you've got to prepare now if you want to improve on last season's performance. No, I am not referring to cleaning your golf balls and favorite tees. These tips are designed to help you get your body ready for the new season.

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 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.

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.

You can do many exercises at home, or during your lunch break at work, and for the most part, you don't need to get all sweaty doing so. When golfing, your torso rotational power depends on the muscle groups in the lower back, abdominals, thighs, buttocks, and hips, so start by doing some stretching of those areas. Then move on to strength training, still concentrating on the core areas--your power zone.

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.

Be sure to start slowly if you have led a sedentary existence during the winter months. The risk is that you may injure a core muscle, and your golf season would be pushed back by several weeks. Take a few minutes to warm up before each strength building session, using whatever aerobic method you prefer such as a treadmill, elliptical trainer, or stair climber.

The key is to start early in the spring. I will provide some specific exercises in my next article, but don't delay starting until a few days before your first tee-off! Try some of these things in an easy, short, daily effort, long before the first game of the year, and your torso strength and stamina will be much enhanced. Your body will thank you right up until the final hole of the round.

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Morgan Fobbs loves helping people improve their golf game and is a golf guru. For more great advice and to get an absolutely free copy of a shocking golf secret, click the link now to change your golf world view.
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