Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays where we are bringing you one exercise topic, talking about it for two minutes, and giving you three reasons why you should follow our advice. This week we are talking to the golfers in the crowd. How do you strength train? How do you prepare your body for golf? What considerations should you take when you exercise to make sure you can enjoy the game that you love?
1) Keep Your Trunk Strong
Our first tip for golfers is to make sure to keep your trunk strong. By trunk, we mean your core, your midsection. There is a lot of twisting and bending over in golf. You need to make sure to keep the muscles in that area really strong so that your muscles can support your structure while you are golfing.
Action Step: When you workout, add in exercises to challenge the various motions of your trunk – trunk rotation, trunk flexion, trunk extension, and side bend. Isometric exercises can be extremely beneficial for strengthening your trunk, especially in the more extreme positions like the ones you move into while golfing.
Related: Do You Have “Golfer’s Foot”?
2) Warm Up With Active Range Of Motion
Tip number two – make sure to include a warm-up utilizing an active range of motion. A lot of times before golfing, golfers will do passive stretching. But here’s the thing – you are going to want to prepare your body to actively move you into and out of your extremes of motion when you swing. Actively warming up with some light swings and then progressing into full swings will help to ensure that your muscles stay strong and your joints stay protected while your motion improves.
Action Step: Instead of passively stretching before your round, warm up by doing some isometric exercises for trunk rotation and hip rotation. These can be done immediately before or after you take your practice shots on the driving range.
3) Keep Your Feet Healthy
Our third tip for golfers is to make sure you keep your feet healthy, and by healthy, we mean moving well. Our feet have a lot of joints and bones in them, and each of these joints are supposed to be able to move well. It is really important that you are doing exercises specific to your feet so you can keep exploring all of the motions that your feet should have. This will really help your pronation and supination in your golf game.
Action Step: Follow the strength training advice in this article for tips on how to keep your feet strong!
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