Pre Season Golf Fitness Training

Pre Season is the time to get ready to start playing golf. Your fitness program should reflect exercises that will immediately affect your game. These parameters are flexibility, power, balance and cardio-respiratory conditioning.

We have defined flexibility above, however, power, balance and cardio-respiratory conditioning are defined as follows:

Power is determined by the formula of force multiplied by distance, divided by time and is an accepted measure of strength and speed. Training your muscles to contract in an explosive manner will help increase club head speed, which ultimately increases driving distance.

Additionally, power training can also help prevent injury because the training stresses of speed and force closely resemble those experienced on the course

Balance, as it refers to pre-season training, is the ability to maintain correct postural alignment, essential to accomplishing any movement pattern. The body relies on three systems to maintain balance: vision (the eyes), vestibular (the inner ear), and proprioception (sensory receptors found in joints and soft tissue). Maintaining position and alignment is a learned and trainable fitness parameter.

Any change and/or loss of balance within the golf swing will change the relationship of club face to the ball and have a dramatic effect on the ball’s direction of flight. Training your body’s “balanced position” and mid-section stability both with and without a club in your hand, will translate to a more controlled and stable swing and fewer trips to the rough and/or the pro-shop for new balls.

Cardio-respiratory conditioning: Golf is a game of nerves, both mentally and physically. Mentally, you need to be able to “see the big picture,” but still be able to focus on the details of the moment. Physically, you need to have control over both gross and fine motor skills, which are affected by the fitness level of your cardio-respiratory system.

The affects of your aerobic (with oxygen) fitness level on your golf game tend to be evident during the course of a round. As you combat fatigue, all aspects of your game quietly erode. As you get tired you tend to change your posture, your relationship to the ball and your gross motor skills. Hence, your swing changes and your game is negatively affected.

There have only been a handful of studies that have examined the affects of anaerobic (without oxygen) fitness, on your game. However, it is evident that a lack of anaerobic capacity can trigger a decrease in fine motor skills (short game) within a single shot at that critical moment between address and ball strike.

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