Is your workout hurting your golf game?

Photo by Kaka Sandhu on Unsplash

Golfers, are you working out? Is your workout hurting your golf game? How do you know?

Well, here’s the secret. Your workout may be hindering your ability to swing a golf club fast and with consistency.

First, whatever your goals are for your workout program, you should always proceed with an intelligent plan. It starts with a physical exam, some sort of test and assessment. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses enables you to focus your workout and helps you attain your goals. But what about specific exercises? Are all exercises good for you? Does it have to look like a golf swing to be effective and translatable to your golf swing?

Let’s take for example core / abdominal exercises.

Most people use an ab machine or bench to do sit-ups or curls up. Some will even go with doing curls or crunches on a physioball. How about planks? Static holds like planks seem to be popular as well.

If you understand what these exercises are designed to train then you can get a deeper understanding of whether these types of abdominal exercises are good for a golfer.

The abdominal muscle group basically has 4 parts, the vertical rectus abdominus, the diagonal external and internal obliques, and the horizontal transverse abdominus.

Exercises like crunches, sit-ups, or knee raises work primarily with rectus abdominus and obliques.

Golf is a rotational sport. Its movement occurs in the transverse plane. Most abdominal exercises occur in the sagittal plane. These two planes of motion are at right angles to each other. If your program only includes sit-up, curl-ups, leg or knee raises, or any variation of that sort, then you're really missing out.

Rotational sports athletes need rotational core strengthening. Paloff presses or any variation of a Paloff press that includes rotation or anti-rotation forces is a good example of what golfers should be including in their workout routine. Planks that include a rotary component are good as well. A plank drag through can be a challenging exercise for shoulder and core stability.

If athletes only work on sagittal plane movements, then their golf swing, tennis swing, or ball throwing movement begins to become inefficient and can result in some pain or injury.

When programming for core stability and abdominal strength for rotational sport athletes, don't neglect the transverse plane.

If you're a rotational sport athlete and want more information, contact PAR5PT to speak to a specialist.