Golf Fitness 101: Lower Your Scores!

It’s that time of year again – Golf Season! As a Personal Trainer for over 22 years, I’ve been fortunate to train thousands of people to achieve varied goals. Among my clients have been many golfers at all levels from Duffers to local champions to PGA professionals.

I’m sure you’ve read about the BENEFITS of exercise for golf, it’s a critical component to a great game! The most interesting thing to me is the variety and diversity in the recommendations. While most programs have great merit and variety can be a positive, the massive variety can be very confusing and many programs require equipment that isn’t available to all golfers. The purpose of this article is to provide you with a common sense –doable and proven program. Some of the recommendations you may recognize and others you may not! However, I promise you’ll be able to do them with no equipment, anywhere you happen to be and you’ll get great results! This is a no fluff, results oriented program. In this article I will highlight 4 basic strength training exercises that are at the ‘core’ of the program, I can’t promise you’ll make it to the PGA or win the Club championship but I can promise if you follow the simple plan, you’ll add 10-20 yards to your drive and you’ll feel much better.

The complete system:
1. Strength training
2. Flexibility
3. Cardio Vascular Fitness

Let’s begin by detailing the Strength portion of the System:

I will start with four basic strength exercises that make up the ‘core’ of my program; perform each exercise for only one set, follow the rules below and your drive will amaze you.

Each repetition should take 4 seconds for the lifting and 4 seconds for the lowering and be done in a constant, steady, pendulum-like motion. The movement doesn’t speed up, slow down, start or stop; it is a continuous pendulum motion.

You need to perform between 8-12 repetitions of each exercise in a slow controlled manner until you reach a point where you are unable to correctly complete the repetition. This is known as momentary muscular fatigue and it is the point where muscle development is signaled to occur. It’s the challenge that signals the body to grow.

Be sure to take each movement through as great a range of motion as possible without resting to assure full range of motion and to reap some flexibility benefits from the strength training portion of your workout.

The final step in your golf strength training routine is to move quickly (less then 10 secs) to the next exercise and repeat the above strength training rules. By moving quickly to the next exercise and starting the new exercise in less than 10 seconds of finishing the last exercise, you will reap cardiovascular benefits from your strength training workout *and decrease your workout time.

The exercise program is surprisingly short and will go against many of the articles you’ve read. However, over 20 years of implementing this workout, following the above rules have proven to increase the long ball and lower your scores!

1. Squats
2. Crunches3. Push Ups
4. Bird Dog

Take the next day off from strength training and let the body fully recover so the muscles can develop and you’ll have more power to drive the ball further. That’s right, this is a 3 day/wk program, anymore is counterproductive. Don’t do it daily, instead perform your golf strength training workout on Mon, Wed, Fri or any combination of three non-consecutive days per week that fit into your schedule.

Now, don’t wait, start right now to LOWER YOUR SCORES! Good luck and let me know how you do.

For complete descriptions and my complete golf workout go to www.troyhuggett.com