The most important element of your golf swing – Balance. Like a stable ground to your house, which lot of people seem to ignore when it becomes to their golf swing.
The truth is that you can’t build anything onto unstable base, whether it’s a house, strength, power or your golf swing.
Paul Check, founder of CHECK Institute and renowed strength coach of many famous athletes in USA and around the world, used to say “You can’t fire a cannon from the canoon” – that in fact summons it all up!
We tend to lose balance and sense of gravity over the years, so older you are this area of fitness becomes more and more important thing you can (AND need!) to train!
There might be lot of things on your “To Do” list so this doesn’t have to be something that makes you feel overwhelmed and even more stressed. You can easily train your balance while you go on with your life in everyday life situations. I use Swiss Ball with a lot of my clients but equally well you can train your balance while commuting to work for example: challenge yourself with little games – can you stand in a bus without reaching a pole to help you balance on corners, next time when you are brushing your teeth try standing with one leg?
I used to do this a lot, being a bit (ok – a lot!) bored while I was training on my own in Texas one year, I was brushing my teeth with my left hand while standing on one foot and my having eyes closed – this takes a bit of practise but try it! If nothing else it’s a good laugh!
If you want to train a little more serious on your balance, get a Swiss Ball and start leaning forward (picture 1), so your hands are on top and your knees touching the ball. Keep leaning forwards gently till you reach a point where you are kneeling in all fours (picture 2.) on top of the Swiss Ball (can be a challenging at the beginning!). Keeping you balance while on all fours on top of Swiss Ball is excellent core excercise, so you get actually a double hit for your efforts!
If you want to take this even further you can work your way to lifting your opposite hand and the leg off from the Swiss Ball. This requiers a LOT of core stability and challenges your stability system to take over so don’t get fusturated if you don’t succeed on your first go – keep practising till you master it!