Dr. Sadie Landwehr, DC

Golf can get the reputation of not being a physically demanding sport, however ask any golfer and they will tell you it requires strength, flexibility, and coordination.  Whether you are a weekend warrior or aspiring professional, incorporating targeted exercises and stretching routines into your regimen can significantly enhance your golf game.  

The Golf Swing: A Full-Body Motion

Before diving into specific exercises, it is important to understand what muscles and movements are required when swinging a golf club.  From your legs and core to arms and shoulders, each part plays a vital role in creating a fluid, powerful motion.  When strengthening these muscle groups and improving mobility, you can develop a more efficient and consistent swing.  

Core Strength: The Foundation of a Powerful Golf Swing

A stable core is essential for maintaining balance, generating power, and transferring energy through muscle slings from your lower body to upper body.  Intra-abdominal pressure is a term used to describe the contraction of the abdominal muscles working together to create a stable base of support.  When intra-abdominal pressure is able to be created, more power and strength are able to be transferred over to an improved golf game.  Exercises such as dead bug, side bridge, and medicine ball throws can help build core strength for a stable, powerful swing. 

Lower Body Strength and Power

Your legs and glutes are the primary source of power during the golf swing.  However, maximal strength and power cannot be unleashed until joint centration can be achieved.  This starts with understanding intra-abdominal pressure, that is mentioned above.  When the shared load from the lower extremities is distributed in relation to one another, your strength greatly increases.  Exercises such as squats, lunges, and deadlifts are all great exercises to build strength and power, however let’s try some unweighted movements as well.  Lazy squat, low oblique sit, hanging position, etc are all exercises based upon developmental positions.  All this increased power and strength translates directly to club head speed and, ultimately, longer drives. 

Upper Body Conditioning 

While the lower body proves power and strength, the upper body guides the club and controls the swing.  Being able to relax your upper body while generating a stable base of support through the legs and core can be difficult, but learning to do this will drastically improve your golf swing.  Exercises like push-ups, rows, and shoulder presses are great exercises to improve strength, but again, let’s look at some unweighted options.  Bear, modified low oblique, and transitional movements such as side-lying positions are again exercises based upon developmental positions.  Yes, I keep coming back to these developmental positions because a baby within the first year of life can move without errors, so why can’t everyone else?  

The Key to a Perfect Swing: Flexibility and Mobility

First, let’s define flexibility and mobility.  Flexibility is the ability of muscles, tendons, and ligaments to passively lengthen through a range of motion; passive meaning movement without the use of a voluntary effort or muscle contraction.  Mobility is the ability of joints to actively move through a range of motion; active meaning a voluntary and independent movement.  This is going back to our ability to relax without losing form.  Flexibility is often related to the tone of muscles, for example having tight muscles can restrict your range of motion, often leading to compensations in your swing.  When compensations occur, this leads to reduced power and accuracy and often injury.  By improving both flexibility and mobility, it allows for a fuller backswing and better follow-through, as these are the positions within the swing that allow for the full length of our muscles.  

Exercise Focus Points: 

1. Feet: The feet are often looked over with the golf swing.  When we do not have adequate control and stability of the feet, we cannot create a stable base of support to allow for the transfer of energy from the lower extremity through the core to the upper extremity.  
2. Hips: This might be getting a little technical, but the lead hip and back hip have very different roles within the game of golf.  Upon the back swing, we have to create stretch within the gluteal region – another way to picture this is a wind-up.  We are taking the musculature of the hips to allow for the club to reach horizontal before beginning acceleration.  Internal rotation of the lead leg must be accessible in order to drive the ball.  When this is limited, an adequate follow-through cannot be achieved, therefore robbing you of speed and distance.  
3. Core: The core is arguably the most important component of every movement in daily life, not just when hitting a golf ball.  In my opinion, humans cannot move properly, free of error and compensations, without being able to control proper respiration and intra-abdominal pressure.  This is a topic I can go on and on about and give you a million reasons why we all should be training the core every second of the day.  To keep it short and simple, the core is the energy transfer system, which is the foundation of being an excellent golfer – just ask Rory McIlroy.  
4. Shoulders: As mentioned above (a few times), being able to relax the upper extremity is a must.  I mean, go ahead hold the club as tight as you can, let’s see how many blisters you can get.  In all seriousness, when the muscles are relaxed you are able to create more stretch within the back sides of your shoulders, which is important in both the backswing and follow-through.  

While I am not lecturing you to change the mechanics of your golf swing, there is always room for improvement.  These tips are just the starting point to a lens into your swing.  Take them or leave them, but I have never met someone who does not want to improve one aspect of their game – whether it be power, distance, or even being able to play golf without their low back hurting.  Oh, I forgot to mention, the developmental exercises are not just “baby exercises”, they are the foundation of all injury prevention and rehabilitation – more on this to come.  

Until next time,

Dr. Sadie Landwehr