Your go-to guide how to start of the golf fitness training (ideally around September – October time) starts with six weeks of Base Training Phase 1. This is when you really dedicate time for your golf fitness and strength: taking care of the flexibility, balance, stability and core issues that you may have. Starting with the basics: lots of work for core, legs, glutes and creating foundation for rotational power – even if you have trained many years – is important! Compare it to building a foundations for your future house. All the future work (strength and power) you do is based on how well you have build your foundations and (do I even need to say this?) they need to be solid as a rock! Circuit training of 15 repetitions is a common format. Your program should include lots of core and stability exercises as well as flexibility – unless you happen to be hyper-mobile (over flexible).
During this time you should also take care all of the technical issues of your golf game: swing, short game and putting. It’s now or never.. go and book session with your golf coach and go to work!!
Make some plans for your next season too: write down your goals with golf fitness and golf. Put all the important tournaments into your calendar (or if you don’t yet have the dates, make rough plans) that way you can plan and prepare when you would like to peak at your scoring game and it gives you a motivational boost to train when you see those goals and dates in your diary too over the long winter months!
Golf Fitness Exercise – Horse Stance
One of the best golf fitness exercises that combines balance, core and glute strength for your golf is called the “Horse Stance”. THE base where you build the swing speed in the future!
Start with kneeling on all fours on the floor. Have your knees under your hips and the hands under your shoulders. Keep the chin tucked and the elbows pointing backwards and slightly bent.
Using a long dowel rod and placing it straight along the spine gives you feed back. Three points of your dowel rod should touch: the base of the skull, shoulder blade area / the mid thoracic spine and the tail bone. Your hand should fit snugly between the pole and the lower back to create neutral curve for your spine.
Activate your pelvic floor then inner core and then gently pull your belly button inwards and up towards your rib cage. Once your core is ready slowly unload one hand and opposite knee up slightly (just about 0,5cm) from the floor – all this while keeping the dowel rod as still as possible!
Hold statically in this position 5 seconds at the time (adding one or two seconds each time you practise this exercise) before lowering and repeating on the other side. Keep going until you feel fatigued or reach your goal of 10 repetitions to each side (20 in total). However, remember that your form should be spot on – so if your three points fall apart – you are not doing any favors to your motor program and you definitely should stop! Rest about 60 seconds, and try again with better form until you have done those repetitions.
The picture of me doing this on the Swiss Ball, is a VERY advanced version of this exercise so you need to do your homework on the floor before adding extra challenge – start lifting arm and knee to be parallel to the floor first. Please don’t go any further and also remember – without dropping that dowel rod!!!
Once you master everything on the floor, only then you can slowly add the unstable element: a Bosu or a Swiss Ball (like the one on the picture!) to this exercise. Try to truly master the exercise with good form before advancing to the next one!
Good luck with the golf fitness balance training and start of your new season!!
Riikka
P.S Want to start training? Fill your details on the top at “Contact Me” and we get the ball rolling!