THE BEST EXERCISES TO IMPROVE YOUR GOLF SWING.
IMPROVING YOUR GOLF SWING.
Improving your golf swing: Where to begin? It is a minefield. Take it from someone who has tried every trick in the book.
As a junior golfer I was lucky enough to benefit from golf Scotland funding, which was available at that time at “selected clubs”. Weekly lessons were provided. This carried on until I was about 14 or 15. Lesson were uncool, and I felt that i knew better: I mean I was winning medals and I was in the team! Pah Lessons! Who needs them? It is funny because for my other sport, football, I trained twice a week and knew how much that mattered. When you think about football training was similar to golf lessons (for the skill component at least: “practise”). However, to my young mind one was necessary whilst the other was drag and unnecessary. Maybe it was because I had potential at golf, it felt like it came naturally whilst for football I knew I needed to put in the work as I was late to playing and not as gifted my teammates. I loved both sports equally, so enjoyment wasn’t the issue. Low and behold I went on to play football at a higher level and it became a pathway to a career. (and If you know me or know my story you will know why that stopped). Golf, however, has been the sport that was always there for me, like a parent in the background ready to pick me back up just when I needed it. When football stopped golf become the sport in my life again. I didn’t take it seriously initially but still…it doesn’t matter if I am playing snap with my three-year-old niece, playing golf with mates or playing football in a final I do everything I can to win. Why am I telling you all of this? What has this got to do with the best exercise for golf? You came to find out the best exercises to improve your golf swing, right? Well this story is just to let you know I understand. I understand what it feels like to want to improve, to want to be better; to want to win. That drive has motivated me to figure a lot of things out.
I have been that guy who has tried to slow their swing down, who works to stop letting hips get ahead of the ball. I have had lessons from good coaches and bad coaches. I have been that guy who went for a lesson one day, was striking the ball beautifully and then the very next day developed the shanks! Why!? Over complication! Too many swing thoughts bouncing about my head!
All that info: Take the club back, break wrist here, then feel the sensation of your weight moving onto your right foot, feel the stretch (oh by the way I’m still only on the backswing). Already I’m getting anxiety from the amount of information you have to compute in under a few seconds. Sometimes the less you have to think the better: Teach your body to take over. Train instinct
For me the best coaches I have worked with (regardless of the sport ) keep it simple The simpler the concept and the less I have to consciously think about as an athlete in the moment; the better and easier it is for me to perform the task at hand. Don’t you agree?
Andy are you ever going to get the point?
Of course, and here is the first: Why Fitness coaching for golf is important. My job and primary objective isn’t necessarily to get you to lose weight or to get you extremely healthy or to teach you how to swing a golf club. It is to prepare your body for swinging a golf club. It is to compliment what the swing coach is teaching you and to give you the movement capability you need to get into position, control it and generate power
Imagine a scenario in which you are at the course and you are booked in for a lesson and you’re being told by the pro to rotate your hips more in the backswing and in the downswing. Every time you hit it you hear something along the lines of “great job on the backswing but on the down swing you are sliding. “Or (perhaps more frustratingly) every time you hit the ball the pro says “almost but not quite”
There is nothing more infuriating than being told you need to do something but your body struggles. Or maybe you feel like you just can’t do it and can’t figure out WHY. Take for example struggling to rotate our hips. If we struggle to move this way, then in our backswing we are going to sway! Likewise, in the downswing (striking the ball) if we struggle to rotate our hips then this is going to cause a slide toward the ball. Both of these swing characteristics originate with a movement limitation. In some cases, it will cause lack of power and the club will go off plane causing unwanted shot types. So, getting the hips able to rotate is going to create a more efficient golf swing.
But I said it was important to have less to think about not more! Is this not just another thing to think about? Yes, but not when you are playing golf: During your golf fitness training session at home, in the gym or where-ever that may be: Off the course; so that when you show up to play your body remembers what it needs to do without you having to overthink it or struggle . It’s not a case of doing a certain exercise and then overnight suddenly having hips that could handle the rumba, but with consistent training it will soon become second nature and your hips will begin to work in the correct way for golf.
It’s a great feeling when you go back to lessons or you are practicing and that one thing your swing coach has taught you suddenly clicks and your body moves effortlessly and in just the right way to achieve the desired effect. I’ve got a great example of this. A good friend (and now client) of mine, started working with me 2 months ago during lockdown. When Chris and I did his initial body screening we found that his hips were very tight and lacked mobility. This also caused him to suffer from lower back pain. The hips weren’t moving as they should, so the lower back was compensating by doing some extra work. So, we put protocols into place that were designed to help create a little bit more mobility in his hips. Now he is swinging freer than he ever has and feeling loose and experiencing very little backpain. This was 2 months of work.
Some simple exercises go a long way. Here are some of the exercises that I think will help transform your golf game.
Exercise 1
90/90 hip mobilisation:
As you can see from above “it’s all in the hips yeah” (Happy Gilmore reference) this is a great exercise to help mobilise the hips.
Step 1: Sit up tall: Feel the bones of under your bottom press into the floor so that you’re not slouching down onto the back of your pelvis. Elongate your spine and reach the top of your head up towards the ceiling One leg is bent at an angle in front of you and the other is out to the back. Look at them. You should be making two approximately 90-degree angles.
Step 2: Imagine hovering your belly button over the front leg. You can also think about tilting your tailbone up. Try to let any forward movement come from a pivot in the hip socket rather than from a flexing/curving of your back. Aim to keep your back relaxed and neutral throughout the movement.
Step 3: Try to hover your shoulders as far forward as possible…forward not down! You should feel this deep in the hip socket rather than in your back, neck or shoulders.
Step 4: Once you’ve found that deep stretch on the underside of your front leg, hold it for 30 seconds.
Step 5: Switch to other leg
Exercise 2
Deadlift:
This exercise could be an article in itself but for now I will give a simple break down of the deadlift into 3 different variations.
For beginners (and where I get any new client to start) we have the kettlebell deadlift. This can then be progressed (when it can be executed with proper loading) onto a trap bar deadlift before then advancing on to a barbell deadlift (conventional stance) where it is appropriate. For many people there will be no need ever to progress to the barbell version of the exercise and a trap bar is a perfectly adequate variant to work with.
In each deadlift variant the movement pattern is very similar. There are slight differences in the degree of knee flexion involved in the lift vs. pure hinge pattern but the main variable is the how you grip the weight and how the load is distributed in relation to your body.
The reasons the deadlift is a great exercise for golfers are 1) It is whole body movement and so is golf. This makes it great practise for learning how to use many stabilizing and power generating muscles simultaneously up and down your kinetic chain. 2) It allows you to work on the vertical thrust, which is extremely important in generating power within the golf swing. 3) Finally, it helps you practise maintaining pelvic stability, which is hugely important in the golf swing given the variety of forces being transferred – through the pelvis – between the upper and lower body. When you are setting up to the ball your posture is a huge factor to how efficient your swing is going to be, so have control over your pelvis (hips) is crucial. (video insert of form)
Step 1 – Stand with your feet (measured from the heel) hips width (or slightly wider) apart. Your feet should point approximately straight forward. A slight pointing out of the toe relative to the heel is ok, but this should be small (We are not discussing sumo deadlifts here).
Step 2 – Hinge down far enough so that you can reach the weight. Hinging means breaking at the hip, keeping a long and neutral spine, whilst pushing your hips back towards the wall behind you. Depending on the deadlift variation you will be able to perform different degrees of knee bend. A good rough guide is to keep shins as close to vertical as you can. The knee (when it does move forwards taking the shin away from vertical to accommodate some knee bend) should track in line with the direction of the foot. How much of this knee bend is required will depend on the range of motion you currently have at your hips and the height of the grips/handles on your load.
Step 3 – For kettlebell deadlift the weight will be placed in between feet and you will grasp the handle with an overhand grip. For the trap bar deadlift, you will have stepped into the bar and will hold the handles with a neutral grip (the insides of your wrists are facing towards each other) both sides of your body. For a conventional deadlift the bar sits against your shins and you want to grip the bar with hands just outside of legs. Grip here can vary based on preference.
Step 4 – Imagine squeezing tennis balls in your armpits and keeping them squeezed throughout lift and brace core. This cue helps you to keep the load close to your body and can help avoid putting unwelcome force vectors through the lower back.
Step 5 – Making sure that our lower back doesn’t start the movement (i.e. keep that spine stable in a neutral position), push the floor away from you and stand tall. Focus on bringing your hips forwards back in line with the rest of your body and squeezing your glutes at the top. Be careful not to thrust hips too far forwards at the top of movement – keep your pelvis in line with your ribcage to finish. Then bring bar back down to the ground using the same hinging movement to return it there and repeat for allotted rep count. If need be reset every time bar hits the ground. Getting a good set up and ensuring everything is in the correct alignment is a better goal than performing the repetitions as quickly as possible without stopping.
Exercises 3
Back squat
A fantastic exercise for golf as it encourages us to work on the vertical thrust: An integral part of the golf swing for creating power. Not only that it helps us learn how to create stability when moving multiple joints simultaneously as well as strengthening our quads, hamstring, core and glutes all in one movement.
I believe that there are 2 exercises you should be doing in any golf specific program: A form of squat and a form of deadlift. If you aren’t you are missing out on two of the biggest bang for your buck exercises, there are. Both deadlift and squat will help you develop the foundation to start working towards proper power training. Remember if you are new to training you will notice a huge carry over into you golf game from general strength training before needing to go to power training. (insert video for form)
Step 1 – Stand with feet hips width apart of slightly wider. Feet can point anywhere from a “ten to two” (think about the face of a clock) angle to narrower. The “best” squat stance varies from person to person, but it should be one that lets you move through the fullest range of motion and feel it in your glutes whilst doing so.
Step 2 – Place the bar anywhere from up directly on top of your shoulders to across your upper back (around the level of your shoulder blades. The best bar location for you will also depend on your lever lengths and hip and ankle mobility as how you will move, keeping that load over your centre of mass will vary. Most importantly before beginning your movement: Brace your core. This provides stability to your spine and will stop you “using your back” to perform the movement.
Step 3 – Feel the weight right down the middle of your feet. You shouldn’t feel that your pushing your toes hard into the ground (like the feeling of being up on your tip toes).
Step 4 – Unlike the deadlift where you hinge at the hips and only allow slight knee bending in the squat you will hinge simultaneously at both the hip and the knee. It’s perfectly safe for your knee to be coming forwards as long as it is in the same direction as your feet are pointing. Keeping your spine stable and neutral sit down until your thigh is parallel to the floor. This is full squat depth. If you’re unable to come that far yet (due to reduced mobility in your hips, knees or ankles there are things you should work on to improve that – let me know).
Step 5 – Once at full depth ensure core is braced and glutes are engaged before pushing the floor away to stand tall back at your start position. This is one full squat cycle. Reset your stance and brace and then repeat for allotted rep range.
Working on these three areas is going to have a massive carry over to your golf game.
If you have any other questions or want to know more.
You can drop me an email: andrew@thegolffitnesscoach.com
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Andy