By Pam Owens, Special Contributor
A golfer is an athlete and should train like one. Golf performance lives or dies on the mastery of basic athletic movements. In fact, for the over-40 golfers, the decline of golf skills is directly associated with the decline of general athletic skills. The athleticism required for movements like rotation, jumping, pushing and pulling, combined with skills like striking, balance and sequencing, is fundamental to the golf-lete.
Good golfers over 40 who still perform well, maintain a wide variety of the movement skills that come naturally to young athletes. Most often the childhood developmental path for athleticism comes through playing multiple sports, plus a hefty dose of outside play. Even great athletes on the PGA Tour tie their success to participating in a variety of childhood sports and lots of free play outside of golf when they were growing up.
So, let’s tap into your inner athlete – the guy/gal from years ago – to train like an athlete to maintain your golf performance. Before we get started, though, ask yourself if your current training is athletic or even looks athletic. To further understand athletic movements, let’s compare examples of various ways to exercise doing the same movement. Which version of these typical gym exercises do you think is more athletic?
PUSHING: seated chest press on a machine versus floor push-ups.
HIP/KNEE HINGING: seated leg press versus box squats holding dumbbells.
VERTICAL PULLING: seated machine pull-down versus standing band/cable pull-down.
OVERHEAD PRESSING: machine overhead press versus 1/2 kneeling overhead press.
One version of these exercises only engages one group of muscles for the task while allowing most of the body to rest. The more athletic version requires whole body engagement to sequence, coordinate multiple segments, stabilize core and balance to accomplish the task. As you might suspect, the whole-body version is a lot more athletic and is transferable to golf performance.
Today’s video shows a basic athletic workout from the Golf Mobility Club program for building strength and athleticism. Modify as needed for your fitness level or do the full workout as described below:
Strength/Circuit Workout Formula
Choose six athletic-style strength exercises to use in this workout video, which can be accessed by clicking here. Useful Tip: Great exercises are box squats, deadlifts, step-ups, hip bridges, lateral lunges, push-ups, dumbbell rows, planks, and Supermans.
WARM UP: Start with a general dynamic warm-up.
TRIPLET #1: Do 2-5 rounds of 3 full body strength exercises.
CARDIO INTERVAL: 3 minutes of cardio blasts/intervals.
TRIPLET #2: Do 2-5 rounds of the other 3 full body strength exercises.
CORE FINISHER: Finish with a challenging core exercise then cool down.
Follow the formula to get back to working out like an athlete with strength movements, and then add plyometrics (explosive movements) or speed bursts. Is throwing, sprinting, bounding or climbing something you’ve done lately? Perhaps you can get back to having fun like you did when you were a kid. Who knows how powerful you can become when you tap into your inner golf-lete.
Pam Owens is the Director of Fitness for Royal Oaks Country Club in Houston and the owner of Pam Owens Fitness. A four-time Golf Digest Top 50 Fitness Professional, Pam helps golfers all over the world get lean, bendy and powerful with online or in person coaching. For a free pre-golf activation routine and more resources, click here.
