The golf swing, like many athletic movements, recruits your whole body. Your legs push against the ground as you rotate your trunk and arms towards the ball in the downswing. Your neck muscles are contracting to stay still as the rest of your body rotates below it, plus your forearms are working super hard to grip the golf club and release it at the right time. When we look at important areas to strengthen for golfers, it may seem that there are many to choose from.
While being stronger is always a good thing, we want you to maximize your time spent in the gym and help you reach a stronger golf swing more quickly than you would with a bodybuilding or powerlifting style of resistance training.
There are many benefits of increasing your strength for golf. If two golfers step up to the same tee and hit the same part of the clubface with the same equipment, mechanics, and swing speed, the stronger golfer will hit the ball further. The stronger golfer will have the potential to hit balls out of the rough more easily, have access to higher ground reaction forces to use to their advantage, and exert less effort when swinging the same swing as someone not as strong. Not to mention, the stronger golfer likely has a much lower injury risk. With back pain being very common in high and low handicappers, why wouldn’t you want your back to be more resilient?
We know stronger muscles have the ability to produce more force and make the ball travel further. Which begs the question, which muscles?
Mostly a strong core, hips, and arms. There is certainly some debate to be had but if you’re strong and mobile in those areas, you're going to be alright with a golf
club in your hands and a drop of athleticism. The few exercises below are a great foundation to build off of for those areas and are easy to progress over time. “Golf-specific” training does not need to look as sexy as you may be led to believe on social media, and it overlaps with areas of focus for all athletes. It simply includes challenging key muscles to a point where you will create a strength adaptation, which is something you may not be able to achieve if you are trying to make your exercises look like your golf swing. You should move in multiple planes of motion (rotation, side bending) and safely load these movements. If you are looking to carry over more benefits from the gym to the course, these are worth your time.
Single leg deadlift and trap bar deadlift
Staggered stance single arm rotational row and press
Kneeling chop w/o trunk rotation and then with rotation
Marching and side bends
With all of these, we highly encourage you to start with less weight than you think and only a small range of movement (Ex: only down to the knee for the single leg deadlift or half trunk rotation/side bend). Start with a weight you can easily move for 8-10 reps in a row and over a few weeks stay consistent with it to allow your muscles and connective tissue to adapt to the new challenge. Then you can begin moving more towards end ranges of movement and increasing towards a weight that is moderately challenging when doing 5-8 reps.
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