Benefits of Strength Training for Golf

Improved Power and Distance

Once you have mastered your technique, increasing your strength and the transfer of power from your lower body will drastically help you increase the distance of your drive, which can be a deciding factor of many close games. If you’re looking to do everything you can to improve your game, strength training to improve your drive distance is a must do.

Mental Benefits

Lifting weights can make your feel more confident in your physicality, you will feel physically capable in a way that you’ve never felt before. It can also be a very challenging endeavour lifting weights, which can be used to improve your resilience and mental toughness, which are some of the hardest things to master in golf. Not only that but lifting weights can help you feel physically calm, tech you to control your breathing and relax in your own body, all of which making it extremely useful for golf.

Individualisation

This is the main benefit of strength training for golf, individualisation allows an individual to solve a specific problem or weakness that they have. They may be recovering from a knee injury, or looking to prevent lower back pain, strength training can be used in both instances to great effect.

Improved Recovery Time

The body is both a very effective and efficient machine, the recovery process is one that is learnt, if your constantly exposing your body to a variety of different physical stressors, resistance training included, you will be adapting and recovering from these stressors on a consistent basis. This recovery process will enable you to recover faster from any injuries you might sustain whilst playing golf.

Improved Endurance

Although golf is by no means the most intense sport, it does require a degree of physical endurance in that you need to be able to maintain physically active for long periods of time. Resistance training will make this sort of physical effort far easier to deal with, if you find yourself fatigued after a long round, strength training may help make the basics like walking and lifting your bag like nothing, allowing you to just focus on your game.

How To Use Strength Training for Golf

Full Body Resistance Training is a perfect way to use strength and resistance training to improve your golf game. This style of training only requires one to two sessions a week, done over a long period of time with high quality movement patterns to see drastic differences in physical performance. It uses multiple muscle groups in an individual session rather than a traditional bodybuilding split where you’re trying to grow an individual muscle group.

The 6 Golf Strength Exercises to Improve Your Game

The DB Squat in Lunge is my favourite single leg strengthening exercise for all populations. This exercise can be used and is effective for beginners to advanced individuals. Single leg strength will transfer to your game extremely well through strengthening the glutes, quads and hamstrings you will be able to generate more power and distance in your swing whilst also improving the stability of your knee.

The Back Squat is more advanced than the db squat in lunge but is more effective for strength training with heavier weights. This is because the barbell is easier to load with weights that will improve strength as it does not rely on grip strength like with the DB’s. This can be considered both a full body and lower body exercise as it requires a great deal of effort from many different parts of the body. Make sure your technique in the squat is solid before attempting the back squat because loading poor positions with heavy loads is a great way to cause injuries. The back squat is one of the best exercises for increase both strength and power in the lower body meaning it will be very effective at improving your golf.

The deadlift is one of the best movements for improving overall strength. Although it may seem simple, it is a very technical lift that requires a great deal of skill acquisition, so be sure that you’ve learn’t the correct technique and are able to perform the movement correctly before you start lifting heavy weights. Deadlift will help you build muscle and strength throughout your entire posterior chain (hamstrings, glutes, lower back, upper back) which will transfer very well into your golf game.

The wide stance KB Straight leg deadlift is an easier hinge variation for a beginner to use. Jumping straight into barbell deadlifts can be extremely difficult for most individuals who havn’t done much resistance training. So if you’re more of a beginner / intermediate lifter, you may want to consider starting out with a simpler and easier to grasp hinge variation like the wide stance KB straight leg deadlift.

The Landmine Full contact twists are one of the most athletic exercises that can be performed in the weight room. They are also one of the exercises that replicate the golf swing the most, making them an excellent addition to any golfer looking to improve the strength of their swing. That being said, they do require a pre-requisite of strength just to be able to perform this exercise with a barbell and no additional weights, so if your new to strength training you may want to start with the variation below which is both less technical and can be done with lighter weights. However if you do have some experience in the weight room and are looking for an exercise that will successful transfer to your gold this is a very safe bet.

Cross Chops are another very specific exercise for improve your golf strength. This is a rotational exercise that mainly increases the strength of the obliques which are the prime mover in rotation. If this was an article about general strength building, this kind of core exercise would never make the list, but as you are likely looking for exercises specific to golf, it’s important to add these kinds of exercises into your strength training routine.