Avoid Holiday Pounds and Improve Your Golf Game

KarenGolf Fitness, Misc

It is easy to skip your workouts during the holidays, let alone get in some golf practice. But you can avoid those unwanted holiday pounds if you just spend a few minutes everyday working on your golf game and get some needed exercise at the same time.  Check out my Cardiogolf program.  It is a program to help build muscle and strength specific to golf.

Which muscles and joints are used in the golf swing?

A lot of my students ask me which muscles and joints are used in the golf swing so they can target those musclses in the gym.  Well, it is safe to say that all muscles and joints are used to swing a club, so you can’t target specific muscles.  Besides, you use muscles in groups when you swing, so you want to do compound exercises (exercises involving two or more muscles) instead of isolating one muscle at a time.

The Backswing

The Backswing requires movement of a variety of muscles.

To complete your backswing, your body should feel like a coil. From the address position, you should swing the club back using your arms as if to sweep away a second ball.  As your arms rise, your wrists hinge and the torso rotates followed by the pelvis (hips) until the club reaches parallel. So you can see that there are numerous biomechanical requirements of the body using a variety of muscles.

Woodchop Exercise for Better Golf

This exercise has been adapted for strength-training purposes from real life movement patterns.  It uses an upper-body diagonal pattern that is functional for real-life activities. It mimics the ancient chore of chopping wood, something that a 21st-century golfer doesn’t often have the opportunity to do. But doing so, will help build strength in abs and obliques from pulling the heavy weight down across the body. The wood chop closely imitates the actions of a golf swing and builds strength in the rectus abdominus, transverse abdominus and oblique muscles just in case you wanted to know.

  • Using a small hand weight or medicine ball between 4 to 10 lbs.
  • Stand tall holding medicine ball with both hands.
  • Start with ball to the left about waist high.
  • Move ball from a low position to a high position, from left to right crossing the  body and upwards, like chopping wood.
  • Move the weight up and down smoothly, increasing the pace gradually.
  • Do 8 to 10 repetitions.
  • Repeat on opposite side.

Woodchop down

Woodchop Up

This exercise will help you improve your range of motion and strengthen your abs and obliques.

GOLF CHANNEL INSTRUCTOR SEARCH

As many of you know, I am a finalist for The Golf Channel Instructor Search.  The winner gets their own show.  I would appreciate your vote if you think I am worthy.  Vote today.

Thanks for your support.

Karen Palacios-Jansen

KPJ@swingbladegolf.com

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