How I Work on My Game During the Off Season

Winter time. It’s cold, dark, windy, and raining. Nobody wants to be out on the course working on their game. We definitely don’t want to be on the putting green with half frozen snot hanging from our nose and our hands frozen to the putter. It’s not a good look. So we think, there must be another way to work on my game during the off season.

And that’s when it hits you. I can get into the gym and strengthen my body through golf conditioning.

Great idea!

Here are a few insights and exercises to keep your body engaged during the offseason or preseason.

Maintaining Mobility

Maintaining mobility is essential for a strong golf game and preventing injuries on and off the course.

Over time, movement restrictions – caused by tight muscles – can result in incorrect compensation patterns. And when you compensate, you open yourself up for injury down the road.

For us golfers, it is imperative to move correctly through our thoracic spine (or mid back).

Grab a club and try this seated spine rotation

A great way to improve or maintain spinal mobility is to perform a seated spinal rotation.

Mobility is not the only factor when trying to improve your game; stability and balance play a key role as well.

Picture a golfer who has no stability or balance. We’ve all seen them on the range or on the course. We do not want to be that golfer!  Most of us know we need to transfer weight in the golf swing, right?

If we are off balance while weight shifting, we may fall into or away from the ball and the outcome could be disastrous.

A way to work on your stability (see the feature picture example) is to balance on a single leg while slowly rotating in and out of your swing with the upper body.

Once we have solidified a good base of support through stability and balance, we can move to strength exercises.

You aren’t a football player so there is no need to train like one.

Golf Strong

That said, a golfer needs a certain amount of strength throughout the body to perform at a high level. We call this being “golf strong”.

If we don’t have a good base of strength, we can’t build on other aspects of conditioning for golf like power production.

There are a few different ways we can train our body to get stronger. One is true strength, and that involves lifting weight where only 1-4 repetitions are possible.

Strength endurance is the other and this strategy involves multiple reps.

A great strength-based exercise during the offseason is a lunge with a rotation. It gets our body ready to move quickly.

When we imagine a fast golf swing, we think power… and power means distance!

Drive for Show. Putt for Dough.

It’s true. We would all like to be hitting driver, 9 iron into every green, right? Absolutely!

Power is all about how fast we can get to impact and through the ball. Moving our hips, core, and hands quickly and efficiently is the goal.

The way we can achieve this is to get our power from the ground up. By pushing our feet down into the ground, the ground will push back into us causing the energy to flow through the hips, core, hands, and ultimately into the club and golf ball.

A great exercise for lower body power is a squat jump. And a rotational ball toss into a wall is an example of an upper power move.   

It’s time to come out of the cold and defrost a little. Now that you have an understanding of how I work on my game during the off season and why it’s important to stay physically fit, practice these exercises and watch how it transforms your game.

Imgage courtesy golfgym.com

Stick with me, this stuff is good!

Joe

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